I wondered what the Spirit of the Mountain was thinking, and
looked up and saw jackpines in the moon... In the whole eastern dark wall of
the Divide this night there was silence and the whisper of the wind, except in
the ravine where we roared; and on the other side of the Divide was the great
Western Slope, and the big plateau that went to Steamboat Springs, and dropped,
and led you to the western Colorado desert and the Utah desert; all in darkness
now as we fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the
mighty land.
Monday, December 22, 2014
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott, r. Dec. 2014
p. xxvi Our ancestors were not more distinct from us, surely, than Jews are from Christians; they had "eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions" [Shakespeare]; were "fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer," as ourselves. The tenor, therefore, of their affections and feelings, must have borne the same general proportion to our own.
p. 52 The walls of the apartment were so ill finished, and so full of crevices, that the rich hangings shook to the night blast, and, in despite of a sort of screen intended to protect them from the wind, the flame of the torches streamed sideways into the air, like the unfurled pennon of a chieftain. Magnificence there was, with some rude attempt at taste; but of comfort their was little, and, being unknown, it was unmissed.
p. 82 At length the barriers were opened, and five knights, chosen by lot, advanced slowly into the area…. It is unnecessary to be particular on these subjects. To borrow lines from a contemporary poet, who has written but too little - "The knights are dust, And their good sword are rust, Their souls are with the saints, we trust" [Coleridge]. Their escutcheons have long mouldered from the walls of their castles. Their castles themselves are but green mounds and shattered ruins - the place that once knew them, knows them no more - nay, many a race since theirs has died out and been forgotten in the very land which they occupied, with all the authority of feudal proprietors and feudal lords. What, then, would it avail the reader to know their names, or the evanescent symbols of their martial rank!
p. 291 These men were Saxons, and not free by any means from the national love of ease and good living which the Normans stigmatized as laziness and gluttony.
p. 304 …Glory, maiden, glory! …
p. 330 Trust me each state must have its policies: Kingdoms have edicts, cities have their charters; Even the wild outlaw, in his forest-walk, Keeps yet some touch of civil discipline; For not since Adam wore his verdant apron, Hath man with man in social union dwelt, But laws were made to draw that union closer." [Old Play]
p. 359 For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears.
p. 388 …trial moves rapidly on when the judge has determined the sentence beforehand.
p. 52 The walls of the apartment were so ill finished, and so full of crevices, that the rich hangings shook to the night blast, and, in despite of a sort of screen intended to protect them from the wind, the flame of the torches streamed sideways into the air, like the unfurled pennon of a chieftain. Magnificence there was, with some rude attempt at taste; but of comfort their was little, and, being unknown, it was unmissed.
p. 82 At length the barriers were opened, and five knights, chosen by lot, advanced slowly into the area…. It is unnecessary to be particular on these subjects. To borrow lines from a contemporary poet, who has written but too little - "The knights are dust, And their good sword are rust, Their souls are with the saints, we trust" [Coleridge]. Their escutcheons have long mouldered from the walls of their castles. Their castles themselves are but green mounds and shattered ruins - the place that once knew them, knows them no more - nay, many a race since theirs has died out and been forgotten in the very land which they occupied, with all the authority of feudal proprietors and feudal lords. What, then, would it avail the reader to know their names, or the evanescent symbols of their martial rank!
p. 291 These men were Saxons, and not free by any means from the national love of ease and good living which the Normans stigmatized as laziness and gluttony.
p. 304 …Glory, maiden, glory! …
p. 330 Trust me each state must have its policies: Kingdoms have edicts, cities have their charters; Even the wild outlaw, in his forest-walk, Keeps yet some touch of civil discipline; For not since Adam wore his verdant apron, Hath man with man in social union dwelt, But laws were made to draw that union closer." [Old Play]
p. 359 For he that does good, having the unlimited power to do evil, deserves praise not only for the good which he performs, but for the evil which he forbears.
p. 388 …trial moves rapidly on when the judge has determined the sentence beforehand.
Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Crow Lake by Mary Lawson, r. Dec. 2014
p. 6 …children have very little concept of time. Tomorrow is forever, and years pass in no time at all.
p. 20 And then, back in February, I found a letter from Matt waiting for me when I got home from work on Friday evening. I saw the writing and instantly I saw Matt - you know how handwriting conjures up the person.
p. 144 It was getting dark, and the cold was creeping in with the night. Matt told me that cold was just the absence of heat, but it didn't feel like that. It felt like a presence. It felt stealthy, like a thief. You had to wrap your clothes tight around you or it would steal your warmth, and when all your warmth was gone you'd just be a shell, empty and brittle as a dead beetle.
p. 196 The research I love. It calls for patience, precision, and a methodical approach, and all of those I have. That makes it sound dull, but it is far from full. On a pure level, it allows you to feel that you have added your own tiny piece to the jigsaw of scientific knowledge.
p. 241 Things change. Everyone has to grow up. But not grow apart, as we had done, surely?
p. 243 Daniel remarked… that [the backwoods of northern Ontario] seemed an unlikely environment to have produced an academic. That irritated me. Surely the most unlikely place to produce an academic is a city, with its noise and confusion and lack of time for thought or contemplation?
p. 259 That last stretch of the journey from Toronto to Crow Lake always takes me by the throat. Partly it's the familiarity; I know every tree, every rock, every boggy bit of marshland so well, that even though I almost always arrive after dark I can feel them around me, lying there in the darkness as if they were my own bones. Partly, too, it is the sensation of going back in time, moving from "now" to "then," and the recognition that wherever you are now and wherever you may be in the future, nothing alters the point you started from.
p. 20 And then, back in February, I found a letter from Matt waiting for me when I got home from work on Friday evening. I saw the writing and instantly I saw Matt - you know how handwriting conjures up the person.
p. 144 It was getting dark, and the cold was creeping in with the night. Matt told me that cold was just the absence of heat, but it didn't feel like that. It felt like a presence. It felt stealthy, like a thief. You had to wrap your clothes tight around you or it would steal your warmth, and when all your warmth was gone you'd just be a shell, empty and brittle as a dead beetle.
p. 196 The research I love. It calls for patience, precision, and a methodical approach, and all of those I have. That makes it sound dull, but it is far from full. On a pure level, it allows you to feel that you have added your own tiny piece to the jigsaw of scientific knowledge.
p. 241 Things change. Everyone has to grow up. But not grow apart, as we had done, surely?
p. 243 Daniel remarked… that [the backwoods of northern Ontario] seemed an unlikely environment to have produced an academic. That irritated me. Surely the most unlikely place to produce an academic is a city, with its noise and confusion and lack of time for thought or contemplation?
p. 259 That last stretch of the journey from Toronto to Crow Lake always takes me by the throat. Partly it's the familiarity; I know every tree, every rock, every boggy bit of marshland so well, that even though I almost always arrive after dark I can feel them around me, lying there in the darkness as if they were my own bones. Partly, too, it is the sensation of going back in time, moving from "now" to "then," and the recognition that wherever you are now and wherever you may be in the future, nothing alters the point you started from.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
The World As We Know It by Joseph Monninger, r. Nov. 2014
p. 25 His workshop - a converted two-horse barn with a large, nickel-plated Franklin coal stove in the middle - was the kind of space that made visitors stop and silently evaluate their own lives.
p. 30 "Don't be fooled that there is something better than land. There isn't. The land will belong to you both. Don't divide it. Don't fracture it. Cut it judiciously. Walk it often and let it seep into you."
p. 31 He was a happy man. He had work to do and breakfast to come.
p. 38 I could hear a light, freezing rain falling on the roof. It felt delicious to be in bed, to feel the ache of a day spent outdoors in the cold, yet to be utterly warm and tired and ready for sleep.
p. 39 "You know Romeo and Juliet were only a little older than we are right now and they're the most famous lovers in the world." "But that's a story." "Everything is a story. If it didn't happened right in front of you, then it's a story."
p. 57 It was the world that I lived in, the world of my youth, and I knew and trusted it and believed it would always remain with me, carried in my heart like blood or knowing. And I understood for the first time that the great land did not exist in the north, or anywhere distant at all, really. It was here instead, on a hillside in New Hampshire, beside a white river flowing south and carrying the snow away each spring.
p. 69 "Character is plot," Sarah said often. "That's what my English teacher always says. She says we're interested in characters, not simple events. If all you need to make a film interesting is a bunch of events, then it would be easy. No, we have to care about the characters and see their predicaments."
p. 149 "There are no outdoorsmen! Just guys running around in the woods."
p. 153 "Dad helped us to be men. It sounds all weird when you talk like this, but it's true. He never made it look hard. He just spent time with us."
p. 30 "Don't be fooled that there is something better than land. There isn't. The land will belong to you both. Don't divide it. Don't fracture it. Cut it judiciously. Walk it often and let it seep into you."
p. 31 He was a happy man. He had work to do and breakfast to come.
p. 38 I could hear a light, freezing rain falling on the roof. It felt delicious to be in bed, to feel the ache of a day spent outdoors in the cold, yet to be utterly warm and tired and ready for sleep.
p. 39 "You know Romeo and Juliet were only a little older than we are right now and they're the most famous lovers in the world." "But that's a story." "Everything is a story. If it didn't happened right in front of you, then it's a story."
p. 57 It was the world that I lived in, the world of my youth, and I knew and trusted it and believed it would always remain with me, carried in my heart like blood or knowing. And I understood for the first time that the great land did not exist in the north, or anywhere distant at all, really. It was here instead, on a hillside in New Hampshire, beside a white river flowing south and carrying the snow away each spring.
p. 69 "Character is plot," Sarah said often. "That's what my English teacher always says. She says we're interested in characters, not simple events. If all you need to make a film interesting is a bunch of events, then it would be easy. No, we have to care about the characters and see their predicaments."
p. 149 "There are no outdoorsmen! Just guys running around in the woods."
p. 153 "Dad helped us to be men. It sounds all weird when you talk like this, but it's true. He never made it look hard. He just spent time with us."
Monday, November 10, 2014
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, r. Nov. 2014
(unknown page numbers b/c audiobook)
Still though, I think if you're not self-obsessed, you're probably boring.
Still though, I think if you're not self-obsessed, you're probably boring.
Friday, October 31, 2014
Both Flesh and Not by David Foster Wallace, r. Oct. 2014
p. 59 [minutia that a creative writing teacher must be
sensitive to beyond straight-up quality of fiction]…straightforward mechanics
of traditional fiction production like fidelity to point-of-view, consistency
of tense and tone, development of character, verisimilitude of setting, etc.
Faults or virtues that cannot quickly be identified or discussed between bells
– little thing like interestingness, depth of vision, originality, political
assumptions and agendas, the question whether deviation from norm is in some
cases OK – must, for sound Program-pedagogical reason, be ignored or
discouraged.
p. 61 A sheepheaded willingness to toe any line just because
it’s the most comfortable way to survive is contemptible in any student.
p. 111 Wittgenstein by life’s end conceived meaningful human
brain-activity (i.e., philosophy) as exactly & nothing more than “…a battle
against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”
p. 211 “Vocational Travelogue” is a very shorthand way of
acknowledging that for a long time one reason people used to read fiction was
for a kind of imaginative tourism to places and cultures they’d never get to
really see; that modernity’s jetliners, TV, etc. have pretty well obsoleted
this function; but that modern tech has also created such extreme vocational
specialization that few people anymore are in a position to know much about any
professional field but their own; and thus that a certain amount of fiction’s
“touristic” function now consists in giving readers dramatized access to the
nuts and bolts of different professional disciplines and specialties.
p. 261 … “formal writing” does not mean gratuitously fancy
writing; it means clean, clear, maximally considerate writing.
p. 269 Unique:
This is one of a class of adjectives, sometimes called “uncomparables,” that
can be a little tricky. Among other incomparables are precise, exact, correct, entire, accurate, preferable, inevitable,
possible, false; there are probably two dozen in all. These adjectives all
describe absolute, non-negotiable states: something is either false or it’s
not; something is either inevitable or it’s not.
p. 288 But Borges’s stories are very different. They are
designed primarily as metaphysical arguments; the are dense, self-enclosed,
with their own deviant logics. Above all, they are meant to be impersonal, to
transcend individual consciousness – “to be incorporated,” as Borges puts it,
“like the fables of Theseus or Ahasuerus, into the general memory of the
species and even transcend the fame of their creator or the extinction of the
language in which they were written.”
p. 293 Whether for seminal artistic reasons or neurotic
personal ones or both, Borges collapses reasons or neurotic personal ones or
both, Borges collapses reader and writer into a new kind of aesthetic agent,
one for whom reading is essentially – consciously – a creative act.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
What God Has Joined Together: The Christian Case for Gay Marriage by David G. Myers, r. Oct. 2014
p. 7 The life of faith is a dance on the boundary between conviction and humility.
p. 7 Sometimes, said the novelist Albert Camus, life calls us to make a 100 percent commitment to something about which we are 51 percent sure.
p. 14 [Past American Psychological Association president Martin Seligman] believes that depression is especially common among young Westerners because of the epidemic hopelessness that stems from the rise of individualism and the decline of commitment to faith and family. When facing failure or rejection, contends Seligman, the self-focused individual takes on personal responsibility for problems and has nothing to fall back on for hope. A well-connected person is a well-supported person. A lonely person is an unhappy person.
p. 21 As the Christian author C. S. Lewis said, "The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal."
p. 129 Many people we talk with are mystified by the intensity of the opposition to gay marriage. Whatever any of us may think, they tell us, we can probably agree that the Bible has little to say about same-sex behavior, certainly much less than what it has to say about God's concern for justice, the poor, and caring for creation.
p. 129 As the Scottish philosopher David Hume recognized long ago, reason is often the slave of passion. Moral reasoning aims to convince others of what we intuitively feel.
p. 135 Might we then come together in honest, open dialogue? In small groups, might we engage on another in the spirit of Christ? Perhaps we can keep these thoughts in mind as we struggle to love one another and be receptive to God's will: When torn between judgement and grace, let us err on the side of grace. When torn between self-certain conviction and uncertain humility, let us err of the side of humility. When torn between contempt and love, let us err on the side of love. In so doing, may we be more faithful disciples of the one who embodied grace, humility, and love in all he said and did. For "love is the fulfilling of the law" (Rom. 13:10).
p. 183 I'm motivated to write, and to offer information to the public sphere, whenever I'm struck by the thought that "Hey, people ought to know about this!"
p. 7 Sometimes, said the novelist Albert Camus, life calls us to make a 100 percent commitment to something about which we are 51 percent sure.
p. 14 [Past American Psychological Association president Martin Seligman] believes that depression is especially common among young Westerners because of the epidemic hopelessness that stems from the rise of individualism and the decline of commitment to faith and family. When facing failure or rejection, contends Seligman, the self-focused individual takes on personal responsibility for problems and has nothing to fall back on for hope. A well-connected person is a well-supported person. A lonely person is an unhappy person.
p. 21 As the Christian author C. S. Lewis said, "The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal."
p. 129 Many people we talk with are mystified by the intensity of the opposition to gay marriage. Whatever any of us may think, they tell us, we can probably agree that the Bible has little to say about same-sex behavior, certainly much less than what it has to say about God's concern for justice, the poor, and caring for creation.
p. 129 As the Scottish philosopher David Hume recognized long ago, reason is often the slave of passion. Moral reasoning aims to convince others of what we intuitively feel.
p. 135 Might we then come together in honest, open dialogue? In small groups, might we engage on another in the spirit of Christ? Perhaps we can keep these thoughts in mind as we struggle to love one another and be receptive to God's will: When torn between judgement and grace, let us err on the side of grace. When torn between self-certain conviction and uncertain humility, let us err of the side of humility. When torn between contempt and love, let us err on the side of love. In so doing, may we be more faithful disciples of the one who embodied grace, humility, and love in all he said and did. For "love is the fulfilling of the law" (Rom. 13:10).
p. 183 I'm motivated to write, and to offer information to the public sphere, whenever I'm struck by the thought that "Hey, people ought to know about this!"
What God Has Joined Together: The Christian Case for Gay Marriage by David G. Myers, r. Oct. 2014
p. 7 The life of faith is a dance on the boundary between conviction and humility.
p. 7 Sometimes, said the novelist Albert Camus, life calls us to make a 100 percent commitment to something about which we are 51 percent sure.
p. 14 [Past American Psychological Association president Martin Seligman] believes that depression is especially common among young Westerners because of the epidemic hopelessness that stems from the rise of individualism and the decline of commitment to faith and family. When facing failure or rejection, contends Seligman, the self-focused individual takes on personal responsibility for problems and has nothing to fall back on for hope. A well-connected person is a well-supported person. A lonely person is an unhappy person.
p. 21 As the Christian author C. S. Lewis said, "The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal."
p. 129 Many people we talk with are mystified by the intensity of the opposition to gay marriage. Whatever any of us may think, they tell us, we can probably agree that the Bible has little to say about same-sex behavior, certainly much less than what it has to say about God's concern for justice, the poor, and caring for creation.
p. 129 As the Scottish philosopher David Hume recognized long ago, reason is often the slave of passion. Moral reasoning aims to convince others of what we intuitively feel.
p. 135 Might we then come together in honest, open dialogue? In small groups, might we engage on another in the spirit of Christ? Perhaps we can keep these thoughts in mind as we struggle to love one another and be receptive to God's will: When torn between judgement and grace, let us err on the side of grace. When torn between self-certain conviction and uncertain humility, let us err of the side of humility. When torn between contempt and love, let us err on the side of love. In so doing, may we be more faithful disciples of the one who embodied grace, humility, and love in all he said and did. For "love is the fulfilling of the law" (Rom. 13:10).
p. 183 I'm motivated to write, and to offer information to the public sphere, whenever I'm struck by the thought that "Hey, people ought to know about this!"
p. 7 Sometimes, said the novelist Albert Camus, life calls us to make a 100 percent commitment to something about which we are 51 percent sure.
p. 14 [Past American Psychological Association president Martin Seligman] believes that depression is especially common among young Westerners because of the epidemic hopelessness that stems from the rise of individualism and the decline of commitment to faith and family. When facing failure or rejection, contends Seligman, the self-focused individual takes on personal responsibility for problems and has nothing to fall back on for hope. A well-connected person is a well-supported person. A lonely person is an unhappy person.
p. 21 As the Christian author C. S. Lewis said, "The sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal."
p. 129 Many people we talk with are mystified by the intensity of the opposition to gay marriage. Whatever any of us may think, they tell us, we can probably agree that the Bible has little to say about same-sex behavior, certainly much less than what it has to say about God's concern for justice, the poor, and caring for creation.
p. 129 As the Scottish philosopher David Hume recognized long ago, reason is often the slave of passion. Moral reasoning aims to convince others of what we intuitively feel.
p. 135 Might we then come together in honest, open dialogue? In small groups, might we engage on another in the spirit of Christ? Perhaps we can keep these thoughts in mind as we struggle to love one another and be receptive to God's will: When torn between judgement and grace, let us err on the side of grace. When torn between self-certain conviction and uncertain humility, let us err of the side of humility. When torn between contempt and love, let us err on the side of love. In so doing, may we be more faithful disciples of the one who embodied grace, humility, and love in all he said and did. For "love is the fulfilling of the law" (Rom. 13:10).
p. 183 I'm motivated to write, and to offer information to the public sphere, whenever I'm struck by the thought that "Hey, people ought to know about this!"
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Ten Great Mysteries by Edgar Allan Poe, r. Oct. 2014
p. 11 There are few persons who have not, at some period of their lives, amused themselves in retracing the steps by which particular conclusions of their own minds must have been attained. The occupation is often full of interest; and he who attempts it for the first time is astonished by the apparently illimitable distance and incoherence between the starting-point and the goal.
p. 52 "That is another of your odd notions," said the Prefect, who had the fashion of calling everything "odd" that was beyond his comprehension, and thus lived amid and absolute legion of "oddities."
Friday, October 17, 2014
Fooled by Randomness by Nicholas Taleb, r. Oct. 2014
p. ix This book is the synthesis of, on one hand, the no-nonsense practitioner of uncertainty who spent his professional life trying to resist being fooled by randomness and trick the emotions associated with probabilistic outcomes and, on the other, the aesthetically obsessed, literature-loving human being willing to be fooled by any form of nonsense that is polished, refined, original, and tasteful. I am not capable of avoiding being the fool of randomness; what I can do is confine it to where it brings some aesthetic gratification.
p. xi I believe that the principal asset I need to protect and cultivate is my deep-seated intellectual insecurity. My motto is "my principal activity is to tease those who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously."
p. xviii Most journalists do not take things to seriously: After all, this business of journalism is about pure entertainment, not a search for truth, particularly when it comes to radio and television.
p. xxi There seems to be some evidence that conversations and correspondence with intelligent people is a better engine for personal edification that plain library-ratting (human warmth: Something in our nature may help us grow ideas while dealing and socializing with other people).
p. 30 The interesting thing about these physicists did not lie in their ability to discuss fluid dynamics; it is that they were naturally interested in a variety of intellectual subjects and provided pleasant conversation.
p. 58 The applicability of Solon's warning to a life in randomness, in contrast with the exact opposite message delivered by the prevailing media-soaked culture, reinforces my instinct to value distilled thought over newer thinking, regardless of its apparent sophistication - another reason to accumulate the hoary volumes by my bedside (I confess that the only news items I currently read are the far more interesting upscale social gossip stories found in Tatler, Paris Match, and Vanity Fair - in addition to The Economist). Aside from the decorum of ancient thought as opposed to the coarseness of fresh ink, I have spent some time phrasing the idea in the mathematics of evolutionary arguments and conditional probability. For an idea to have survived so long across so many cycles is indicative of its relative fitness. Noise, at least some noise, was filtered out.
p. 67 Finally, I reckon that I am not immune to such an emotional defect [of monitoring seemingly important (but really meaningless) information real-time]. But I deal with it by having no access to information, except in rare circumstance. Again, I prefer to read poetry. If an event is important enough, it will find its way to my ears. I will return to this point in time.
p. 68 My problem is that I am not rational and I am extremely prone to drown in randomness and to incur emotional torture. I am aware of my need to ruminate on park benches and in cafes away form information, but I can only do so if I am somewhat deprived of it. My sole advantage in life is that I know some of my weaknesses, mostly that I am incapable of taming my emotions facing news and incapable of seeing a performance with a clear head. Silence is far better.
p. 71 One conceivable way to discriminate between a scientific intellectual and a literary intellectual is by considering that a scientific intellectual can usually recognize the writing of another but that the literary intellectual would not be able to tell the difference between lines jotted down by a scientist and those by a glib nonscientist.
p. 77 We do not need to be rational and scientific when it comes to the details of our daily life - only in those that can harm us and threaten our survival. Modern life seems to invite us to do the exact opposite; become extremely realistic and intellectual when it comes to such matters as religion and personal behavior, yet as irrational as possible when it comes to matters ruled by randomness.
p. 85 Veteran trader Marty O'Connell calls this the firehouse effect. He had observed that firemen with much downtime who talk to each other for too long come to agree on many things that an outside, impartial observer would find ludicrous (they develop political ideas that are very similar).
p. 92 There is a saying that bad traders divorce their spouse sooner than abandon their positions. Loyalty to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists - or anyone.
p. 102 Accordingly, it is not how likely an event is to happen that matters, it is how much is made when it happens that should be the consideration. How frequent the profit is irrelevant; it is the magnitude of the outcome that counts.
p. 122 I do not know if it applies to other people, but, in spite of my being a voracious reader, I have rarely been truly affected in my behavior (in any durable manner) by anything I have read. A book can make a strong impression, but such an impression tends to wane after some newer impression replaces it in my brain (a new book). I have to discover things by myself (…the "Stove is Hot"…). These self-discoveries last.
p. 124 I was at the age [teens and early twenties] when one felt like one needed to read everything, which prevented one from making contemplative stops.
p. 144 I will set aside the point that I see no special heroism in accumulating money, particularly if, in addition, there person is foolish enough to not even try to derive any tangible benefit from the wealth (aside from the pleasure of regularly counting the beans). I have no large desire to sacrifice much of my personal habits, intellectual pleasures, and personal standards in order to become a billionaire like Warren Buffett, and I certainly do not see the point of becoming one if I were to adopt Spartan (even miserly) habits and live in my starter house. Something about the praise lavished upon him for living in austerity while being so rich escapes me; if austerity is the end, he should become a monk or a social worker - we should remember that becoming rich is a purely selfish act, not a social one. The virtue of capitalism is that society can take advantage of people's greed rather than their benevolence, but there is no need to, in addition, extol such greed as a moral (or intellectual) accomplishment (the reader can easily see that, aside from very few exceptions like George Soros, I am not impressed by people with money).
p. 151 I will probably lecture him that Machiavelli ascribed to luck at least a 50% role in life (the rest was cunning and bravura), and that was before the creation of modern markets.
p. 175 It is obvious that the information age, by homogenizing our tastes, is causing the unfairness to be even more acute - those who win capture almost all the customers.
p. 198 What used to strike me as a child upon visiting museums is that ancient Greek statues exhibit men with traits indistinguishable from ours (only more harmonious and aristocratic). I was so wrong to believe that 2,200 years was a long time. Proust wrote frequently about the surprise people have when coming across emotions in Homeric heroes that are similar to those we experience today.
p. 231 For it is harder to act as if one were ignorant than as if one were smart; scientists know that it is emotionally harder to reject a hypothesis than to accept it (what are called type I and type II errors) - quite a difficult matter when we have such sayings as felix qui po'tuit cognoscere causas (happy is he who understands what is behind things). It is very hard for us to just shut up. We are not cut out for it.
p. 244 I conclude with the following saddening remark about scientists in the soft sciences. People confuse science and scientists. Science is great, but individual scientists are dangerous. They are human; they are marred by the biases humans have. Perhaps even more. For most scientists are hard-headed, otherwise they would not derive the patience and energy to perform the Herculean tasks asked of them, like spending eighteen hours a day perfecting their doctoral thesis. A scientist may be forced to act like a cheap defense lawyer rather than a pure seeker of the truth. A doctoral thesis is "defended" by the applicant; it would be a rare situation to see the student change his mind upon being supplied with a convincing argument. But science is better than scientists. It was said that science evolves from funeral to funeral. After the LTCM collapse, a new financial economist will emerge, who will integrate such knowledge into his science. He will be resisted by the older ones, but, again, they will be much closer to their funeral date than he.
p. 258 ...research on happiness shows that those who live under a self-imposed pressure to be optimal in their enjoyment of things suffer a measure of distress.... We know that people of a happy disposition tend to be of the satisficing [a blend of satisfying and maximizing] kind, with a set of what they want in life and an ability to stop upon gaining satisfaction. Their goals and desires do not move along with the experiences.... An optimizer, by comparison, is the kind of person who will uproot himself and change his official residence just to reduce his tax bill by a few percentage points. (You would think that the entire point of a higher income is to be free to choose where to live; in fact it seems, for these people, wealth causes them to increase their dependence!) Getting rich results in his seeing flaws in the goods and services he buys. The coffee is not warm enough.... The table is too far from the window...
p. 260 I came to this conclusion when, about a decade ago, I stopped using an alarm clock. I still woke up around the same time, but I followed my own personal clock. A dozen minutes of fuzziness and variability in my schedule made a considerable difference.... Living like this, one can also go to bed early and not optimize one's schedule by squeezing every minute out of one's evening. At the limit, you can decide whether to be (relatively) poor, but free of your time, or rich but as dependent as a slave.
p. 262 It took me an entire lifetime to find out what my generator is. It is: We favor the visible, the embedded, the personal, the narrated, and the tangible; we scorn the abstract. Everything good (aesthetics, ethics) and wrong (Fooled by Randomness) with us seems to flow from it.
p. xi I believe that the principal asset I need to protect and cultivate is my deep-seated intellectual insecurity. My motto is "my principal activity is to tease those who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously."
p. xviii Most journalists do not take things to seriously: After all, this business of journalism is about pure entertainment, not a search for truth, particularly when it comes to radio and television.
p. xxi There seems to be some evidence that conversations and correspondence with intelligent people is a better engine for personal edification that plain library-ratting (human warmth: Something in our nature may help us grow ideas while dealing and socializing with other people).
p. 30 The interesting thing about these physicists did not lie in their ability to discuss fluid dynamics; it is that they were naturally interested in a variety of intellectual subjects and provided pleasant conversation.
p. 58 The applicability of Solon's warning to a life in randomness, in contrast with the exact opposite message delivered by the prevailing media-soaked culture, reinforces my instinct to value distilled thought over newer thinking, regardless of its apparent sophistication - another reason to accumulate the hoary volumes by my bedside (I confess that the only news items I currently read are the far more interesting upscale social gossip stories found in Tatler, Paris Match, and Vanity Fair - in addition to The Economist). Aside from the decorum of ancient thought as opposed to the coarseness of fresh ink, I have spent some time phrasing the idea in the mathematics of evolutionary arguments and conditional probability. For an idea to have survived so long across so many cycles is indicative of its relative fitness. Noise, at least some noise, was filtered out.
p. 67 Finally, I reckon that I am not immune to such an emotional defect [of monitoring seemingly important (but really meaningless) information real-time]. But I deal with it by having no access to information, except in rare circumstance. Again, I prefer to read poetry. If an event is important enough, it will find its way to my ears. I will return to this point in time.
p. 68 My problem is that I am not rational and I am extremely prone to drown in randomness and to incur emotional torture. I am aware of my need to ruminate on park benches and in cafes away form information, but I can only do so if I am somewhat deprived of it. My sole advantage in life is that I know some of my weaknesses, mostly that I am incapable of taming my emotions facing news and incapable of seeing a performance with a clear head. Silence is far better.
p. 71 One conceivable way to discriminate between a scientific intellectual and a literary intellectual is by considering that a scientific intellectual can usually recognize the writing of another but that the literary intellectual would not be able to tell the difference between lines jotted down by a scientist and those by a glib nonscientist.
p. 77 We do not need to be rational and scientific when it comes to the details of our daily life - only in those that can harm us and threaten our survival. Modern life seems to invite us to do the exact opposite; become extremely realistic and intellectual when it comes to such matters as religion and personal behavior, yet as irrational as possible when it comes to matters ruled by randomness.
p. 85 Veteran trader Marty O'Connell calls this the firehouse effect. He had observed that firemen with much downtime who talk to each other for too long come to agree on many things that an outside, impartial observer would find ludicrous (they develop political ideas that are very similar).
p. 92 There is a saying that bad traders divorce their spouse sooner than abandon their positions. Loyalty to ideas is not a good thing for traders, scientists - or anyone.
p. 102 Accordingly, it is not how likely an event is to happen that matters, it is how much is made when it happens that should be the consideration. How frequent the profit is irrelevant; it is the magnitude of the outcome that counts.
p. 122 I do not know if it applies to other people, but, in spite of my being a voracious reader, I have rarely been truly affected in my behavior (in any durable manner) by anything I have read. A book can make a strong impression, but such an impression tends to wane after some newer impression replaces it in my brain (a new book). I have to discover things by myself (…the "Stove is Hot"…). These self-discoveries last.
p. 124 I was at the age [teens and early twenties] when one felt like one needed to read everything, which prevented one from making contemplative stops.
p. 144 I will set aside the point that I see no special heroism in accumulating money, particularly if, in addition, there person is foolish enough to not even try to derive any tangible benefit from the wealth (aside from the pleasure of regularly counting the beans). I have no large desire to sacrifice much of my personal habits, intellectual pleasures, and personal standards in order to become a billionaire like Warren Buffett, and I certainly do not see the point of becoming one if I were to adopt Spartan (even miserly) habits and live in my starter house. Something about the praise lavished upon him for living in austerity while being so rich escapes me; if austerity is the end, he should become a monk or a social worker - we should remember that becoming rich is a purely selfish act, not a social one. The virtue of capitalism is that society can take advantage of people's greed rather than their benevolence, but there is no need to, in addition, extol such greed as a moral (or intellectual) accomplishment (the reader can easily see that, aside from very few exceptions like George Soros, I am not impressed by people with money).
p. 151 I will probably lecture him that Machiavelli ascribed to luck at least a 50% role in life (the rest was cunning and bravura), and that was before the creation of modern markets.
p. 175 It is obvious that the information age, by homogenizing our tastes, is causing the unfairness to be even more acute - those who win capture almost all the customers.
p. 198 What used to strike me as a child upon visiting museums is that ancient Greek statues exhibit men with traits indistinguishable from ours (only more harmonious and aristocratic). I was so wrong to believe that 2,200 years was a long time. Proust wrote frequently about the surprise people have when coming across emotions in Homeric heroes that are similar to those we experience today.
p. 231 For it is harder to act as if one were ignorant than as if one were smart; scientists know that it is emotionally harder to reject a hypothesis than to accept it (what are called type I and type II errors) - quite a difficult matter when we have such sayings as felix qui po'tuit cognoscere causas (happy is he who understands what is behind things). It is very hard for us to just shut up. We are not cut out for it.
p. 244 I conclude with the following saddening remark about scientists in the soft sciences. People confuse science and scientists. Science is great, but individual scientists are dangerous. They are human; they are marred by the biases humans have. Perhaps even more. For most scientists are hard-headed, otherwise they would not derive the patience and energy to perform the Herculean tasks asked of them, like spending eighteen hours a day perfecting their doctoral thesis. A scientist may be forced to act like a cheap defense lawyer rather than a pure seeker of the truth. A doctoral thesis is "defended" by the applicant; it would be a rare situation to see the student change his mind upon being supplied with a convincing argument. But science is better than scientists. It was said that science evolves from funeral to funeral. After the LTCM collapse, a new financial economist will emerge, who will integrate such knowledge into his science. He will be resisted by the older ones, but, again, they will be much closer to their funeral date than he.
p. 258 ...research on happiness shows that those who live under a self-imposed pressure to be optimal in their enjoyment of things suffer a measure of distress.... We know that people of a happy disposition tend to be of the satisficing [a blend of satisfying and maximizing] kind, with a set of what they want in life and an ability to stop upon gaining satisfaction. Their goals and desires do not move along with the experiences.... An optimizer, by comparison, is the kind of person who will uproot himself and change his official residence just to reduce his tax bill by a few percentage points. (You would think that the entire point of a higher income is to be free to choose where to live; in fact it seems, for these people, wealth causes them to increase their dependence!) Getting rich results in his seeing flaws in the goods and services he buys. The coffee is not warm enough.... The table is too far from the window...
p. 260 I came to this conclusion when, about a decade ago, I stopped using an alarm clock. I still woke up around the same time, but I followed my own personal clock. A dozen minutes of fuzziness and variability in my schedule made a considerable difference.... Living like this, one can also go to bed early and not optimize one's schedule by squeezing every minute out of one's evening. At the limit, you can decide whether to be (relatively) poor, but free of your time, or rich but as dependent as a slave.
p. 262 It took me an entire lifetime to find out what my generator is. It is: We favor the visible, the embedded, the personal, the narrated, and the tangible; we scorn the abstract. Everything good (aesthetics, ethics) and wrong (Fooled by Randomness) with us seems to flow from it.
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, r. Oct. 2014
p. 60 "A dead man looks created," Lauderback continued. "As a scuplture looks created. It makes you marvel at the work of the design; makes you think of the designer."
p. 119 Tom complete this costume (for so he perceived of his daily dress: as a costume that could be completed, to effect) he smoked a pipe, a fat calabash with a bitten-down stem - though his affection for the instrument had less to do with the pleasures of the habit than for the opportunity for emphasis it provided. He often held it in his teeth unlit, and spoke out of the corner of his mouth like a comic player delivering an aside - a comparison which suited him, for if Nilssen was vain of the impressions he created, it was because he knew that he created them well.
p. 119 Tom complete this costume (for so he perceived of his daily dress: as a costume that could be completed, to effect) he smoked a pipe, a fat calabash with a bitten-down stem - though his affection for the instrument had less to do with the pleasures of the habit than for the opportunity for emphasis it provided. He often held it in his teeth unlit, and spoke out of the corner of his mouth like a comic player delivering an aside - a comparison which suited him, for if Nilssen was vain of the impressions he created, it was because he knew that he created them well.
Thursday, October 9, 2014
What Makes Us Happy? by Joshua Wolf Shenk (article in The Atlantic), r. Oct. 2014
The youth that the old envy is accommpanied by the miserable process of getting from 25 to 35. We've got all this health, and all this youth, and you're scared stiff that when it's all said and done, you're not going to amount to a hill of beans; and if you just wait, virtually all the men, by the time they were 45, or 50, amounted to something. Knowing that is such relief, and you just don't know it at 30. I mean, this process is fun - it's all change - but it's just as much fun to have wrinkles and reminisce. The job isn't conforming, it isn't keeping up with the Joneses, it is playing and working and loving, and loving is probably the most important. Happiness is love.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/307439/?single_page=true
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/what-makes-us-happy/307439/?single_page=true
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard, r. Sep. 2013
(Kindle)
A former professor of ancient languages, literature, and mathematics who had paid for his first year of college by working as a carpenter, Garfield's interests and abilities were as deep as they were broad.
Inexplicably, it seemed that the only cause for which Garfield would not fight was his own political future. In an early-adopted eccentricity that would become for him a central "law of life," he refused to seek an appointment or promotion of any kind. "I suppose I am morbidly sensitive about any reference to my own achievements," he admitted. "I so much despise a man who blows his own horn, that I go to the other extreme."
Garfield himself referred to [the Democrat party] as the "rebel party" and growled that "every Rebel guerrilla and jayhawker, every man who ran to Canada to avoid the draft, every bounty-jumper, every deserter, every cowardly sneak that ran from danger and disgraced his flag,… every villain, of whatever name or crime, who loves power more than justice, slavery more than freedom, is a Democrat.
Watson had left the Bell Telephone Company about the same time Bell did, announcing his attention to travel and enjoy his modest wealth.
"You [black men] were not made free merely to be allowed to vote, but in order to enjoy an equality of opportunity in the race of life," Garfield had told a delegation of 250 black men just before he was elected president. "Permit no man to praise you because you are black, nor wrong you because you are black. Let it be known that you are ready and willing to work out your own material salvation by your own energy, your own worth, your own labor."
I have sometimes thought that we cannot know any man thoroughly well while he is in perfect health. As the ebb-tide discloses the real lines of the shore and the bed of the sea, so feebleness, sickness, and pain bring out the real character of a man. - James A. Garfield
Science had not been able to prevent the president's death, Bell conceded, but neither had religion. "If prayers could avail to save the sick," he reasoned sadly, "surely the earnest heartfelt cry of a whole nation to God would have availed in this case.
A former professor of ancient languages, literature, and mathematics who had paid for his first year of college by working as a carpenter, Garfield's interests and abilities were as deep as they were broad.
Inexplicably, it seemed that the only cause for which Garfield would not fight was his own political future. In an early-adopted eccentricity that would become for him a central "law of life," he refused to seek an appointment or promotion of any kind. "I suppose I am morbidly sensitive about any reference to my own achievements," he admitted. "I so much despise a man who blows his own horn, that I go to the other extreme."
Garfield himself referred to [the Democrat party] as the "rebel party" and growled that "every Rebel guerrilla and jayhawker, every man who ran to Canada to avoid the draft, every bounty-jumper, every deserter, every cowardly sneak that ran from danger and disgraced his flag,… every villain, of whatever name or crime, who loves power more than justice, slavery more than freedom, is a Democrat.
Watson had left the Bell Telephone Company about the same time Bell did, announcing his attention to travel and enjoy his modest wealth.
"You [black men] were not made free merely to be allowed to vote, but in order to enjoy an equality of opportunity in the race of life," Garfield had told a delegation of 250 black men just before he was elected president. "Permit no man to praise you because you are black, nor wrong you because you are black. Let it be known that you are ready and willing to work out your own material salvation by your own energy, your own worth, your own labor."
I have sometimes thought that we cannot know any man thoroughly well while he is in perfect health. As the ebb-tide discloses the real lines of the shore and the bed of the sea, so feebleness, sickness, and pain bring out the real character of a man. - James A. Garfield
Science had not been able to prevent the president's death, Bell conceded, but neither had religion. "If prayers could avail to save the sick," he reasoned sadly, "surely the earnest heartfelt cry of a whole nation to God would have availed in this case.
Monday, September 15, 2014
The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, r. Sep. 2014
p. 56 And in autumn airy spheres of thistledown floated into the same street, lodged upon the shop fronts, blew into drains; and innumerable tawny and yellow leaves skimmed along the pavement, and stole through people's doorways into their passages with a hesitating scratch on the floor, like the skirts of timid visitors.
p. 116 [Elizabeth-Jane] sat up with her mother to the utmost of her strength night after night. To learn to take the universe seriously there is no quicker way than to watch - to be a "waker," as the country-people call it. Between the hours at which the last toss-pot went by and the first sparrow shook himself, the silence in Casterbridge - barring the rare sound of the watchman - was broken in Elizabeth's ear only by the time-piece in the bedroom ticking frantically against the clock on the stairs; ticking harder and harder till it seemed to clang like a gong; and all this while the subtle-souled girl asking herself why she was born, why sitting in a room, and blinking at the candle; why things around her had taken the shape they wore in preference to every other possible shape. Why they stared at her so helplessly, as if waiting for the touch of some wand that would release them from terrestrial constraint; what that chaos called consciousness, which spin in her at this moment like a top, tended to, and began in. Her eyes fell together; she was awake, yet she was asleep.
p. 157 "It's better to stay at home, and that's true; but a man must live where his money is made. It is a great pity, but it's always so!"
p. 172 The Scotchman seemed hardly the same Farfrae who had danced with her and walked with her in a delicate poise between love and friendship - that period in the history of a love when alone it can be said to be unalloyed with pain.
p. 184 [The fortune teller] was sometimes astonished that men could profess so little and believe so much at his house, when at church they professed so much and believed so little.
p. 192 Nearly the whole town had gone into the fields. The Casterbridge populace still retained the primitive habit of helping one another in time of need; and thus, though the corn belonged to the farming section of the little community - that inhabiting the Durnover quarter - the remainder was no less interested in the labour of getting it home."
p. 231 "If I could afford it, be hanged if I wouldn't keep a church choir at my own expense to play and sing to me at these low, dark times of my life. But the bitter thing is, that when I was rich I didn't need what I could have, and now I be poor I can't have what I need!"
p. 317 And thus Henchard found himself again on the precise standing which he had occupied a quarter of a century before. Externally there was nothing to hinder his making another start on the upward slope, and by his new lights achieving higher things than his soul in its half-formed state had been able to accomplish. But the ingenious machinery contrived by the Gods for reducing human possibilities of amelioration to a minimum - which arranges that wisdom to do shall come pari passu with the departure of zest for doing - stood in the way of all that. He had no wish to make an arena a second time of a world that had become a mere painted scene to him…. Very often, as his hay-knife crunched down among the sweet-smelling grassy stems, he would survey mankind and say to himself: "Here and everywhere be folk dying before their time like frosted leaves, though wanted by their families, the country, and the world; while I, an outcast, an encumberer of the ground, wanted by nobody, and despised by all, live on against my will!"
p. 332 …[Elizabeth-Jane] thought she could perceive no great personal difference between being respected in the nether parts of Casterbridge and glorified at the uppermost end of the social world.
p. 116 [Elizabeth-Jane] sat up with her mother to the utmost of her strength night after night. To learn to take the universe seriously there is no quicker way than to watch - to be a "waker," as the country-people call it. Between the hours at which the last toss-pot went by and the first sparrow shook himself, the silence in Casterbridge - barring the rare sound of the watchman - was broken in Elizabeth's ear only by the time-piece in the bedroom ticking frantically against the clock on the stairs; ticking harder and harder till it seemed to clang like a gong; and all this while the subtle-souled girl asking herself why she was born, why sitting in a room, and blinking at the candle; why things around her had taken the shape they wore in preference to every other possible shape. Why they stared at her so helplessly, as if waiting for the touch of some wand that would release them from terrestrial constraint; what that chaos called consciousness, which spin in her at this moment like a top, tended to, and began in. Her eyes fell together; she was awake, yet she was asleep.
p. 157 "It's better to stay at home, and that's true; but a man must live where his money is made. It is a great pity, but it's always so!"
p. 172 The Scotchman seemed hardly the same Farfrae who had danced with her and walked with her in a delicate poise between love and friendship - that period in the history of a love when alone it can be said to be unalloyed with pain.
p. 184 [The fortune teller] was sometimes astonished that men could profess so little and believe so much at his house, when at church they professed so much and believed so little.
p. 192 Nearly the whole town had gone into the fields. The Casterbridge populace still retained the primitive habit of helping one another in time of need; and thus, though the corn belonged to the farming section of the little community - that inhabiting the Durnover quarter - the remainder was no less interested in the labour of getting it home."
p. 231 "If I could afford it, be hanged if I wouldn't keep a church choir at my own expense to play and sing to me at these low, dark times of my life. But the bitter thing is, that when I was rich I didn't need what I could have, and now I be poor I can't have what I need!"
p. 317 And thus Henchard found himself again on the precise standing which he had occupied a quarter of a century before. Externally there was nothing to hinder his making another start on the upward slope, and by his new lights achieving higher things than his soul in its half-formed state had been able to accomplish. But the ingenious machinery contrived by the Gods for reducing human possibilities of amelioration to a minimum - which arranges that wisdom to do shall come pari passu with the departure of zest for doing - stood in the way of all that. He had no wish to make an arena a second time of a world that had become a mere painted scene to him…. Very often, as his hay-knife crunched down among the sweet-smelling grassy stems, he would survey mankind and say to himself: "Here and everywhere be folk dying before their time like frosted leaves, though wanted by their families, the country, and the world; while I, an outcast, an encumberer of the ground, wanted by nobody, and despised by all, live on against my will!"
p. 332 …[Elizabeth-Jane] thought she could perceive no great personal difference between being respected in the nether parts of Casterbridge and glorified at the uppermost end of the social world.
Friday, September 5, 2014
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner, r. Sep. 2014
p. 3 Floating upward through a confusion of dreams and memory, curving like a trout through the rings of previous risings, I surface. My eyes open. I am awake. Cataract sufferers must see like this when the bandages are removed after the operation: every detail as sharp as if seen for the first time, yet familiar too, known from before the time of blindness, the remembered and the seen coalescing as in a stereoscope.
p. 10 [Reminiscing] is what I do for a good long time. It is no effort. Everything compels it. From the high porch, the woods pitching down to the lake are more than a known and loved place. They are a habitat we were once fully adapted to, a sort of Peaceable Kingdom where species such as ours might evolve unchallenged and find their step on the staircase of being. Sitting with it all under my eye, I am struck once more, as I was up on the Wightman road, by its changelessness. The light is nostalgic about mornings past and optimistic about mornings to come.
p. 18 Is that the basis of friendship? Is it as reactive as that? Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting? Was our friendship for the Langs born out of simple gratitude to this woman who had the kinds to call on a strange young wife stuck in a basement without occupation or friends? Was I that avid for praise, to feel so warm toward them both because the professed to like my story? Do we all buzz or ring or light up when people press our vanity buttons, and only then? Can I think of anyone in my whole life whom I have liked without his first showing signs of liking me? Or did I (I hope I did) like Charity Lang on sight because she was what she was, open, friendly, frank, a little ribald as it turned out, energetic, interested, as full of vitality as her smile was full of light?
p. 43 I believe that most people have some degree of talent for something - forms, colors, words, sounds. Talent lies around in us like kindling waiting for a match, but some people, just as gifted as others, are less lucky. Fate never drops a match on them. The times are wrong, or their health is poor, or their energy low, or their obligations too many. Something.
p. 46 But he won't talk about his poems. He turns the conversation to that banal subject, fascinating to non-writers, of why writers write. Ego enhancement, sure. What else? Psychological imbalance? Neurosis? Trauma? And if trauma, how far can trauma go before it stops being stimulating and becomes destructive? Academic pressures to publish, do those mean anything? Not much, we agree. How about the reforming impulse, a passion for social justice?
p. 57 Aunt Emily believes in the freedom of summer. She doesn't much care what the children do so long as they do something, and know what they are doing. It is idleness and randomness of mind that she cannot abide.
p. 59 it is a fact that no child ever followed George Barnwell Ellis to his work, or aped his way with any tool. His routines are simply not imitable. He appears mistily and cheerfully at breakfast, and shortly disappears - in winter to his office or to the Divinity School, where a child would have a difficult time finding anything at all to do, and in summer up the path to his think house, which by his assumption and Aunt Emily's interdict is off limits to the young.
p. 88 "She's great, she's thoughtful, and loving, she's kept a book on both of the children since the day they were born - you know, first smile, first tooth, first word, first sign of individuality as they develop. Pictures at every stage. She's teaching Barney to count and tell time and read already, they set aside a half hour every afternoon. She's simply incredible, the way she can organize a day. But one thing, I don't think I ever saw her pick up one of those cute kids and give him a big squeeze, just because he's himself, and hers, and she loves him. When we get ours, don't let me have an agenda every time I'm with him."
p. 89 But what memory brings back from there is not politics, or the meagerness of living on a hundred and fifty dollars a month, or even the writing I was doing, but the details of friendship - parties, picnics, walks, midnight conversations, glimpses from the occasional unencumbered hours. Amicitia lasts better than res publica, and at least as well as ars publica. Or so it seems now. What really illuminates those months is the faces of our friends.
p. 123 Some things that astonished Sally - hard beds, hard chairs, unfinished walls, Ivory soap, no liquor harder than sherry - could not dispel the impression I got of a complicity expensively purchased and self-consciously cherished…
p. 130 It seemed to me that nothing could do so much for a man as a good long jail sentence. To have all of one's physical needs taken care of by specially appointed assistants; to be marched to and from meals with neither choice nor cooking, payment nor dishwashing, on one's mind; to be sent at stipulated times to the yard for exercise; to have whole mornings, afternoons, evenings of freedom from interruption, with only the passing and repassing of a guard's steps in the corridor to assure and emphasize it; to hear the clang of opening and closing of doors down the cellblock and know that one needn't be concerned, one still had months to serve - who could not write the history of the world under such circumstances? Who could not, in a well-insulated but austerely padded cell, think all the high thoughts, read all the great books, perhaps even write one or two?
p. 157 While we were at it, we might have discussed the dangers inherent in conducting your life according to rules whimsically adopted from some book, and ignoring the testimony and experience of people around you.
p. 174 I said, "Puttering can be a comfort. It goes with rumination, and he's a ruminator. He should have been a literate gentleman farmer with a telescope in his backyard, and a big library, and all kinds of time to think." "A rustic Newton?" she flashed. "Where's his Principia?" There was something so close to contempt in her voice that she made me mad. "Is it compulsory to be one of the immortals?" I said. "We're all decent godless people, Hallie. Let's not be too hard on each other if we don't set the world afire. There's been enough of that."
p. 185 Good cooks dirty a lot of dishes, especially when they themselves don't have to wash them.
p. 194 - Hallie, you've got the wrong idea of what writers do. They don't understand any more than other people. They invent only plots they can resolve. They ask the questions they can answer. Those aren't people that you see in books, those are constructs. Novels or biographies, it makes no difference. I couldn't reproduce the real Sid and Charity Lang, much less explain them; and if I invented them I'd be falsifying something I don't want to falsify.
p. 202 Youth hasn't got anything to do with chronological age. It's times of hope and happiness.
p. 237 "[Death]'s as natural as being born," she said, "and even if we stop being the individuals we once were, there's an immortality of organic molecules that's absolutely certain. Don't you find that a wonderful comfort? I do. To think that we'll become part of the grass and trees and animals, that we'll stay right here where we loved it while we were alive. People will drink us with their morning milk and pour us as maple syrup over their breakfast pancakes. So I say we should be happy and grateful, and make the most of it. I've had a wonderful life, I've loved every minute."
p. 263 For a moment I studied her sad, resigned, trying-to-be-cheerful face. I thought of how it might be to look at the face of the woman you loved and had lived your life with, and know that this might be the last, or the next-to-last, or the next-to-next-to-last time you would see it.
p. 10 [Reminiscing] is what I do for a good long time. It is no effort. Everything compels it. From the high porch, the woods pitching down to the lake are more than a known and loved place. They are a habitat we were once fully adapted to, a sort of Peaceable Kingdom where species such as ours might evolve unchallenged and find their step on the staircase of being. Sitting with it all under my eye, I am struck once more, as I was up on the Wightman road, by its changelessness. The light is nostalgic about mornings past and optimistic about mornings to come.
p. 18 Is that the basis of friendship? Is it as reactive as that? Do we respond only to people who seem to find us interesting? Was our friendship for the Langs born out of simple gratitude to this woman who had the kinds to call on a strange young wife stuck in a basement without occupation or friends? Was I that avid for praise, to feel so warm toward them both because the professed to like my story? Do we all buzz or ring or light up when people press our vanity buttons, and only then? Can I think of anyone in my whole life whom I have liked without his first showing signs of liking me? Or did I (I hope I did) like Charity Lang on sight because she was what she was, open, friendly, frank, a little ribald as it turned out, energetic, interested, as full of vitality as her smile was full of light?
p. 43 I believe that most people have some degree of talent for something - forms, colors, words, sounds. Talent lies around in us like kindling waiting for a match, but some people, just as gifted as others, are less lucky. Fate never drops a match on them. The times are wrong, or their health is poor, or their energy low, or their obligations too many. Something.
p. 46 But he won't talk about his poems. He turns the conversation to that banal subject, fascinating to non-writers, of why writers write. Ego enhancement, sure. What else? Psychological imbalance? Neurosis? Trauma? And if trauma, how far can trauma go before it stops being stimulating and becomes destructive? Academic pressures to publish, do those mean anything? Not much, we agree. How about the reforming impulse, a passion for social justice?
p. 57 Aunt Emily believes in the freedom of summer. She doesn't much care what the children do so long as they do something, and know what they are doing. It is idleness and randomness of mind that she cannot abide.
p. 59 it is a fact that no child ever followed George Barnwell Ellis to his work, or aped his way with any tool. His routines are simply not imitable. He appears mistily and cheerfully at breakfast, and shortly disappears - in winter to his office or to the Divinity School, where a child would have a difficult time finding anything at all to do, and in summer up the path to his think house, which by his assumption and Aunt Emily's interdict is off limits to the young.
p. 88 "She's great, she's thoughtful, and loving, she's kept a book on both of the children since the day they were born - you know, first smile, first tooth, first word, first sign of individuality as they develop. Pictures at every stage. She's teaching Barney to count and tell time and read already, they set aside a half hour every afternoon. She's simply incredible, the way she can organize a day. But one thing, I don't think I ever saw her pick up one of those cute kids and give him a big squeeze, just because he's himself, and hers, and she loves him. When we get ours, don't let me have an agenda every time I'm with him."
p. 89 But what memory brings back from there is not politics, or the meagerness of living on a hundred and fifty dollars a month, or even the writing I was doing, but the details of friendship - parties, picnics, walks, midnight conversations, glimpses from the occasional unencumbered hours. Amicitia lasts better than res publica, and at least as well as ars publica. Or so it seems now. What really illuminates those months is the faces of our friends.
p. 123 Some things that astonished Sally - hard beds, hard chairs, unfinished walls, Ivory soap, no liquor harder than sherry - could not dispel the impression I got of a complicity expensively purchased and self-consciously cherished…
p. 130 It seemed to me that nothing could do so much for a man as a good long jail sentence. To have all of one's physical needs taken care of by specially appointed assistants; to be marched to and from meals with neither choice nor cooking, payment nor dishwashing, on one's mind; to be sent at stipulated times to the yard for exercise; to have whole mornings, afternoons, evenings of freedom from interruption, with only the passing and repassing of a guard's steps in the corridor to assure and emphasize it; to hear the clang of opening and closing of doors down the cellblock and know that one needn't be concerned, one still had months to serve - who could not write the history of the world under such circumstances? Who could not, in a well-insulated but austerely padded cell, think all the high thoughts, read all the great books, perhaps even write one or two?
p. 157 While we were at it, we might have discussed the dangers inherent in conducting your life according to rules whimsically adopted from some book, and ignoring the testimony and experience of people around you.
p. 174 I said, "Puttering can be a comfort. It goes with rumination, and he's a ruminator. He should have been a literate gentleman farmer with a telescope in his backyard, and a big library, and all kinds of time to think." "A rustic Newton?" she flashed. "Where's his Principia?" There was something so close to contempt in her voice that she made me mad. "Is it compulsory to be one of the immortals?" I said. "We're all decent godless people, Hallie. Let's not be too hard on each other if we don't set the world afire. There's been enough of that."
p. 185 Good cooks dirty a lot of dishes, especially when they themselves don't have to wash them.
p. 194 - Hallie, you've got the wrong idea of what writers do. They don't understand any more than other people. They invent only plots they can resolve. They ask the questions they can answer. Those aren't people that you see in books, those are constructs. Novels or biographies, it makes no difference. I couldn't reproduce the real Sid and Charity Lang, much less explain them; and if I invented them I'd be falsifying something I don't want to falsify.
p. 202 Youth hasn't got anything to do with chronological age. It's times of hope and happiness.
p. 237 "[Death]'s as natural as being born," she said, "and even if we stop being the individuals we once were, there's an immortality of organic molecules that's absolutely certain. Don't you find that a wonderful comfort? I do. To think that we'll become part of the grass and trees and animals, that we'll stay right here where we loved it while we were alive. People will drink us with their morning milk and pour us as maple syrup over their breakfast pancakes. So I say we should be happy and grateful, and make the most of it. I've had a wonderful life, I've loved every minute."
p. 263 For a moment I studied her sad, resigned, trying-to-be-cheerful face. I thought of how it might be to look at the face of the woman you loved and had lived your life with, and know that this might be the last, or the next-to-last, or the next-to-next-to-last time you would see it.
Tuesday, August 12, 2014
The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, r. Aug. 2014
p. 51 It's never the changes we want that change everything.
p. 119 ...folks always underestimate what the promise of a lifetime of starvation, powerlessness, and humiliation can provoke in a young person's character. By the time the Gangster was twelve this scrawny, unremarkable boy had shown a resourcefulness and fearlessness beyond his years.
p. 214 He encouraged his daughters to read and prepared them to follow him into the Profession (they could speak French and read Latin before they were nine), and so keen was he about learning that any new piece of knowledge, no matter how arcane or trivial, could send his ass over the Van Allen belt.
p. 119 ...folks always underestimate what the promise of a lifetime of starvation, powerlessness, and humiliation can provoke in a young person's character. By the time the Gangster was twelve this scrawny, unremarkable boy had shown a resourcefulness and fearlessness beyond his years.
p. 214 He encouraged his daughters to read and prepared them to follow him into the Profession (they could speak French and read Latin before they were nine), and so keen was he about learning that any new piece of knowledge, no matter how arcane or trivial, could send his ass over the Van Allen belt.
Monday, August 4, 2014
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson, r. Aug. 2014
p. ix Growing up was easy. It required no though or effort on my part. It was going to happen anyway. So what follows isn't terribly eventful, I'm afraid. And yet it was by a very large margin the most fearful, thrilling, interesting, instructive, eye-popping, lustful, eager, troubled, untroubled, confused, serene, and unnerving time of my life.
p. 29 So this is a book about being small and getting larger slowly. One of the great myths of life is that childhood passes quickly. In fact, because time moves more slowly in Kid World - five times more slowly in a classroom on a hot afternoon, eight times more slowly on any car journey of more than five miles (rising to eighty-six times more slowly when driving across Nebraska or Pennsylvania lengthwise), and so slowly during the last week before birthdays, Christmases, and summer vacations as to be functionally immeasurable - it goes on for decades when measured in adult terms. It is adult life that is over in a twinkling.
p. 29 So this is a book about being small and getting larger slowly. One of the great myths of life is that childhood passes quickly. In fact, because time moves more slowly in Kid World - five times more slowly in a classroom on a hot afternoon, eight times more slowly on any car journey of more than five miles (rising to eighty-six times more slowly when driving across Nebraska or Pennsylvania lengthwise), and so slowly during the last week before birthdays, Christmases, and summer vacations as to be functionally immeasurable - it goes on for decades when measured in adult terms. It is adult life that is over in a twinkling.
Wednesday, July 30, 2014
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, r. Jul. 2014
p. 40 "He's a nice fella," said Slim. "Guy don't need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems to me sometimes it jus' works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain't hardly ever a nice fella."
Monday, July 28, 2014
The Americas on the Eve of Discovery by Harold Drive, r. Jul. 2014
p. 87 (Zuñi) The breath is the symbol of life. It also is the means by which spiritual substance communicate and the seat of [impersonal] power or mana. Inhaling is an act of ritual blessing. One inhales from all sacred objects to derive benefit from their mana.
p. 91 (Zuñi) The sense of conflict as the basic principle of life does not dominate man's relation to the universe any more than it dominates man's relation to man. The Promethean theme - man's tragic and heroic struggle against the gods - has no place in Zuñi philosophic speculation. Nor have any of the other concepts of cosmic conflicts which have always absorbed the interest of Asiatic and European philosophers and mystics, the antithesis between good and evil, or between matter and spirit. There is no Satan in Zuñi ideology, and no Christ. The world, then, is as it is, and man's plan in it is what it is. Day follows night and the cycles of the years complete themselves. In the spring the corn is planted, and if all goes well the young stalks grow to maturity and fulfill themselves. They are cut down to serve man for food, but their seeds remain against another planting. So man, too, has his days, and his destined place in life. His road may be long or short, but in time it is fulfilled and he passes on to fill another rôle in the cosmic scheme. He, too, leaves his seed behind him. Man dies but mankind remains. This is the way of life; the whole literature of prayer shows no questioning of these fundamental premises. This is not resignation, the subordination of desire to a stronger force, but the sense of man's oneness with the universe. The conditions controlling human affairs are no more moral issues than those, like the blueness of the sky, to which we may well be indifferent. It is a remarkably realistic view of the universe. It is an attitude singularly free from terror, guilt, and mystery. The Zuñi feels great awe of the supernatural, and definitely fears certain beings in his pantheon - the recently dead, the Koyemci, certain "dangerous" katcinas, but this is quite different from the cosmic terror that crushes many primitive and civilized peoples.
p. 111 (Incas) In this way there were very few cultivable lands that remained desert in the time of the Incas, but all were peopled, as is well known to the first Christians who entered the country. Assuredly, it causes no small grief to reflect that these Incas, being gentiles and idolaters, should have established such good order in the government and maintenance of such vast provinces, while we, being Christians, have destroyed so many kingdoms. For wherever the Christians have passed, discovering and conquering, nothing appears but destruction.
p. 91 (Zuñi) The sense of conflict as the basic principle of life does not dominate man's relation to the universe any more than it dominates man's relation to man. The Promethean theme - man's tragic and heroic struggle against the gods - has no place in Zuñi philosophic speculation. Nor have any of the other concepts of cosmic conflicts which have always absorbed the interest of Asiatic and European philosophers and mystics, the antithesis between good and evil, or between matter and spirit. There is no Satan in Zuñi ideology, and no Christ. The world, then, is as it is, and man's plan in it is what it is. Day follows night and the cycles of the years complete themselves. In the spring the corn is planted, and if all goes well the young stalks grow to maturity and fulfill themselves. They are cut down to serve man for food, but their seeds remain against another planting. So man, too, has his days, and his destined place in life. His road may be long or short, but in time it is fulfilled and he passes on to fill another rôle in the cosmic scheme. He, too, leaves his seed behind him. Man dies but mankind remains. This is the way of life; the whole literature of prayer shows no questioning of these fundamental premises. This is not resignation, the subordination of desire to a stronger force, but the sense of man's oneness with the universe. The conditions controlling human affairs are no more moral issues than those, like the blueness of the sky, to which we may well be indifferent. It is a remarkably realistic view of the universe. It is an attitude singularly free from terror, guilt, and mystery. The Zuñi feels great awe of the supernatural, and definitely fears certain beings in his pantheon - the recently dead, the Koyemci, certain "dangerous" katcinas, but this is quite different from the cosmic terror that crushes many primitive and civilized peoples.
p. 111 (Incas) In this way there were very few cultivable lands that remained desert in the time of the Incas, but all were peopled, as is well known to the first Christians who entered the country. Assuredly, it causes no small grief to reflect that these Incas, being gentiles and idolaters, should have established such good order in the government and maintenance of such vast provinces, while we, being Christians, have destroyed so many kingdoms. For wherever the Christians have passed, discovering and conquering, nothing appears but destruction.
Wednesday, July 23, 2014
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, r. Jul. 2014
p. 132 Focus your attention on your lungs, as if only your lungs exist. Feel the pleasure when your lungs expand to fulfill the biggest need of the human body - to breathe. Take a deep breath and feel the air as it fills your lungs. Feel how the air is nothing but love. Notice the connection between the air and the lungs, a connection of love. Expand your lungs with air until your body has the need to expel that air. And then exhale, and feel the pleasure again. Because when we fulfill any need of the human body, it gives us pleasure. To breathe gives us much pleasure. Just to breathe is enough for us to always be happy, to enjoy life. Just to be alive is enough. Feel the pleasure to be alive, the pleasure of the feeling of love...
Thursday, July 17, 2014
American Gods by Neil Gaiman, r. Jul. 2014
p. 50 His motel was a good two miles away, but after spending three years in prison he was relishing the idea that he could simply walk and walk, forever if need be. He could keep walking north, and wind up in Alaska, or head south, to Mexico and beyond. He could walk to Patagonia, or to Tierra del Fuego.
p. 153 Laura looked up at him with dead blue eyes. "I want to be alive again," she said. "Not in this half-life. I want to be really alive. I want to feel my heart pumping in my chest again. I want to feel blood moving through me - hot, and salty, and real. It's weird, you don't think you can feel it, the blood, but believe me, when it stops flowing, you'll know."
p. 215 There had been a snowstorm in the night: six inches had fallen, perhaps more. The corner of the town that Shadow could see from his window, dirty and run-down, had been transformed into somewhere clean and different: these houses were not abandoned and forgotten, they were frosted into elegance. The streets had vanished completely, lost beneath a white field of snow.
p. 289 "And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be."
p. 323 We draw our lines around these moments of pain, and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearllike, from our souls without real pain. Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives. A life that is, like any other, unlike any other.
p. 395 "Would you believe that all the gods that people have ever imagined are still with us today?"
p. 439 There was only one guy in the whole Bible Jesus ever personally promised a place with him in Paradise. Not Peter, not Paul, not any of those guys. He was a convicted thief, being executed. So don't knock the guys on death row. Maybe they know something you don't.
p. 444 "As for the why of it...I guess it's just another one of life's little mysteries." "I'm tired of mysteries." "Yeah? I think they add a kind of zest to the world. Like salt in a stew.
p. 585 Shadow smiled at the pretty women, because they made him feel pleasantly male, and he smiled at the other women too, because he was having a good time.
p. 153 Laura looked up at him with dead blue eyes. "I want to be alive again," she said. "Not in this half-life. I want to be really alive. I want to feel my heart pumping in my chest again. I want to feel blood moving through me - hot, and salty, and real. It's weird, you don't think you can feel it, the blood, but believe me, when it stops flowing, you'll know."
p. 215 There had been a snowstorm in the night: six inches had fallen, perhaps more. The corner of the town that Shadow could see from his window, dirty and run-down, had been transformed into somewhere clean and different: these houses were not abandoned and forgotten, they were frosted into elegance. The streets had vanished completely, lost beneath a white field of snow.
p. 289 "And I know an eighteenth charm, and that charm is the greatest of all, and that charm I can tell to no man, for a secret that no one knows but you is the most powerful secret there can ever be."
p. 323 We draw our lines around these moments of pain, and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearllike, from our souls without real pain. Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives. A life that is, like any other, unlike any other.
p. 395 "Would you believe that all the gods that people have ever imagined are still with us today?"
p. 439 There was only one guy in the whole Bible Jesus ever personally promised a place with him in Paradise. Not Peter, not Paul, not any of those guys. He was a convicted thief, being executed. So don't knock the guys on death row. Maybe they know something you don't.
p. 444 "As for the why of it...I guess it's just another one of life's little mysteries." "I'm tired of mysteries." "Yeah? I think they add a kind of zest to the world. Like salt in a stew.
p. 585 Shadow smiled at the pretty women, because they made him feel pleasantly male, and he smiled at the other women too, because he was having a good time.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Labyrinths by Jorge Borges, r. May 2014
p. 21 ...I sensed that the Chief somehow feared people of my race - for the innumerable ancestors who merge within me.
p. 143 In the first volume of Parerga und Paralipomena I read again that everything which can happen to a man, from the instant of his birth until his death, has been preordained by him. Thus, every negligence is deliberate, every humiliation a penitence, every failure a mysterious victory, every death a suicide.
p. 145 Meanwhile we reveled in the great days and nights of a successful war. In the very air we breathed there was a feeling not unlike love. Our hearts beat with amazement and exaltation, as if we sensed the sea nearby.... Every man aspires to the fullness of life, that is, to the sum of experiences which he is capable of enjoying; nor is there a man unafraid of being cheated out of some part of his infinite patrimony.
p. 196 Why does it disturb us that the map be included in the map and the thousand and one nights in the book of the Thousand and One Nights? Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote be a reader of the Quixote and Hamlet a spectator of Hamlet? I believe I have found the reason: these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictitious. In 1833, Carlyle observed that the history of the universe is an infinite sacred book that all men write and read and try to understand, and in which they are also written.
p. 212 What is a divine mind? the reader will perhaps inquire. There is not a theologian who does no define it; I prefer an example. The steps a man takes from the day of his birth until that of his death trace in time and inconceivable figure. The Divine Mind intuitively grasps that form immediately, as men do a triangle. This figure (perhaps) has its given function in the economy of the universe.
p. 233 No man has ever lived in the past, and none will live in the future; the present alone is the form of all life, and is its sure possession which can never be taken from it...
p. 243 Deeds which populate the dimensions of space and which reach their end when someone dies may cause us wonderment, but one thing, or an infinite number of things, dies in every final agony, unless there is a universal memory as the theosophists have conjectured. In time there was a day that extinguished the last eyes to see Christ; the battle of Junin and the love of Helen dies with the death of a man. What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a red horse int he vacant lot at Serrano and Charcas, a bar of sulphur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?
p. 143 In the first volume of Parerga und Paralipomena I read again that everything which can happen to a man, from the instant of his birth until his death, has been preordained by him. Thus, every negligence is deliberate, every humiliation a penitence, every failure a mysterious victory, every death a suicide.
p. 145 Meanwhile we reveled in the great days and nights of a successful war. In the very air we breathed there was a feeling not unlike love. Our hearts beat with amazement and exaltation, as if we sensed the sea nearby.... Every man aspires to the fullness of life, that is, to the sum of experiences which he is capable of enjoying; nor is there a man unafraid of being cheated out of some part of his infinite patrimony.
p. 196 Why does it disturb us that the map be included in the map and the thousand and one nights in the book of the Thousand and One Nights? Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote be a reader of the Quixote and Hamlet a spectator of Hamlet? I believe I have found the reason: these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers or spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictitious. In 1833, Carlyle observed that the history of the universe is an infinite sacred book that all men write and read and try to understand, and in which they are also written.
p. 212 What is a divine mind? the reader will perhaps inquire. There is not a theologian who does no define it; I prefer an example. The steps a man takes from the day of his birth until that of his death trace in time and inconceivable figure. The Divine Mind intuitively grasps that form immediately, as men do a triangle. This figure (perhaps) has its given function in the economy of the universe.
p. 233 No man has ever lived in the past, and none will live in the future; the present alone is the form of all life, and is its sure possession which can never be taken from it...
p. 243 Deeds which populate the dimensions of space and which reach their end when someone dies may cause us wonderment, but one thing, or an infinite number of things, dies in every final agony, unless there is a universal memory as the theosophists have conjectured. In time there was a day that extinguished the last eyes to see Christ; the battle of Junin and the love of Helen dies with the death of a man. What will die with me when I die, what pathetic or fragile form will the world lose? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a red horse int he vacant lot at Serrano and Charcas, a bar of sulphur in the drawer of a mahogany desk?
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Uttermost Part of the Earth by E. Lucas Bridges, r. Apr. 2014
p. 296 A glance at the comparatively recent history of witchcraft in England, Europe, and America should persuade one not to judge the On a too harshly. They were in the act of taking, in one generation or less, the stride from prehistoric man to a civilization that has taken us thousands of years to accomplish, if we can be said to have accomplished it yet.
p. 336 Across leagues of wooded hills up the forty-mile length of Lake Kami, Talimeoat and I gazed long and silently towards a glorious sunset. I knew that he was searching the distance for any sign of smoke from the camp-fires of friends or foes. After a while his vigilance relaxed and, lying near me, he seemed to become oblivious to my presence. Feeling the chill of evening, I was on the point of suggesting a move, when he heaved a deep sigh and said to himself, as softly as an On a could say anything:
"Yak haruin. ("My country.")
That sigh followed by those gentle words, so unusual for one of his kind - was it caused by a vision of the not far distant future, when the Indian hunter would roam his quiet woods no more; when the light wraith from his camp fire would five place to the smoke from saw-mills; when throbbing engines and hooting sirens would shatter for ever the age-old silence?
p. 343 I vividly recall a dance to which I was invited by some friends. From among the onlookers, I watched the couples waltzing. I had never before seen men and women in evening dress. This was supposed to be a children's ball, yet a great many of those children were quite grown up. The girls, with their radiant faces and their brightly colored, not too abundant clothing, looked magically beautiful to me. With the music and the lights, they dazzled me - and made me sad. I realized, for the first time, how much grace and gaiety I had missed; pleasures of early manhood that would never come to me again. I saw then that, right through life, I should be unlike other men; unable to throw myself whole-heartedly into such a joyous party as I was then watching. Yet, as my thoughts turned from civilization to the snowy forests and windswept heights of my native land, I echoed the words of Adam Lindsay Gordon's dying jockey: "I'd live the same life over if I had to live it again."
p. 513 When I was demobilized in January, 1919, I took a short lease of a house four miles from Despard's home; and happy indeed I was with my precious little wife and [our daughter] Stephanie. We had three acres of land and a car. But life was too easy. That thrice-accursed - or thrice-blessed - wanderlust was on me and I could not rest in such peaceful surroundings. The only work I felt fitted for was breaking new trails; reclaiming unused land; and the thought of the thousands of leagues in distant parts of the world, unpeopled and producing nothing, continually troubled me.
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Barren Lives by Graciliano Ramos, r. Apr. 2014
p. 126
Now she wanted to know what the boys were going to do when they grew up.
"Herd cattle," was Fabiano's opinion.
Vitoria made a face of disgust, shaking her head in disagreement at the risk of causing the tin trunk to fall. Our Lady save them from such misfortune! Herd cattle! What an idea! They were going to a far country, where they would forget the brushland with its hills and hollows, its pebbles, its dry rivers, thorns, vultures, dying cattle, and dying people. They would never com back; they would resist the homesickness that attacks backlanders in green country. Were they to die of sadness for lack of thorns? They would settle down far away and would take on new ways.
Now she wanted to know what the boys were going to do when they grew up.
"Herd cattle," was Fabiano's opinion.
Vitoria made a face of disgust, shaking her head in disagreement at the risk of causing the tin trunk to fall. Our Lady save them from such misfortune! Herd cattle! What an idea! They were going to a far country, where they would forget the brushland with its hills and hollows, its pebbles, its dry rivers, thorns, vultures, dying cattle, and dying people. They would never com back; they would resist the homesickness that attacks backlanders in green country. Were they to die of sadness for lack of thorns? They would settle down far away and would take on new ways.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Machado de Assis, r. Mar. 2014
p. xvii …any writer has the right to look for "spices" in the work of any other writer, but the "final sauce" has to be of his or her own making.
p. 9 An uncle of mine, a canon with full prebend, liked to say that love of temporal glory was the perdition of souls, who should covet only eternal glory. To which another uncle, an officer in one of those old infantry regiments called terços, would retort that love of glory was the most truly human thing there was in a man and, consequently, his most genuine attribute.
p. 18 The minute that passes doesn't matter to time, only the minute that's coming. The minute that's coming is strong, merry, it thinks it carries eternity in itself and it carries death, and it perishes just like the other one, but time carries on.
p. 32 What was it that my old primary teacher wanted, after all? Memorization and behavior in the classroom. Nothing more, nothing less than what life, the final class, wants, with the difference that if you put fear into me, you never put anger.
p. 46 And that was how I disembarked in Lisbon and continued on to Coimbra. The university was waiting for me with its difficult subjects. I studied them in a very mediocre way, but even so I didn't lose my law degree. They gave it to me with all the solemnity of the occasion, following years of custom, a beautiful ceremony that filled me with pride and nostalgia - mostly nostalgia.
p. 53 The sensuality of boredom: memorize that expression, reader, keep it, examine it, and if you can't get to understand it you may conclude that you're ignorant of one of the most subtle sensations of this world and that time.
p. 58 Fear obscurity, Brás, flee from the negligible. Men are worth something in different ways, and the surest one of all is being worthy in the opinions of other men.
p. 86 So I, Brás Cubas, discovered a sublime law, the law of the equivalencies of windows, and I established the fact that the method of compensating for a closed window is to open another, so that morality can continuously aerate one's conscience.
p. 110 The world may have been too small for Alexander, but the eaves of a garret are an infinity for swallows. Take a look now at the neutrality of this globe that carries us through space like a lifeboat heading for shore: today a virtuous couple sleeps on the same plot of ground that once held a sinning couple. Tomorrow a churchman may sleep there, then a murderer, then a blacksmith, then a poet, and they will all bless that corner of earth that gave them a few illusions.
p. 111 …the main defect of this book is you, reader. You're in a hurry to grow old and the book moves slowly.
p. 117 The intensity of love was the same, the difference was that the flame had lost the mad brightness of the early days and had become a simple sheaf of rays, peaceful and content, as with marriages.
p. 143 As I contemplated how it chastely and completely covered her knee, I made a subtle discovery, to wit, that nature foresaw human clothing, a condition necessary for the development of our species. Habitual nudity, given the multiplicity of the works and cares of the individual, would tend to dull the senses and retard sex, while clothing, deceiving nature, sharpens and attracts desires, activates them, reproduces them, and consequently, drives civilization. A blessed custom that gave us Othello and transatlantic packets.
p. 158 …public opinion is a good glue for domestic institutions.
p. 161 … Uninstructed reader, if you don't keep the letters from your youth, you won't get to know the philosophy of old pages someday, you won't enjoy the pleasure of seeing yourself from a distance, in the shadows, with a three-cornered hat, seven-league boots, and a long Assyrian beard, dancing to the sound of Anachreonic pipes. Keep the letters of your youth! Or, if the three-cornered hat doesn't suit you, I'll use the expression of an old sailor, a friend of the Cotrims. I'll say that if you keep the letters of your youth, you'll find a chance to "sing a bit of nostalgia." It seems that our sailors give that name to songs of the land sung on the high seas. As a poetic expression it's something that can make you even sadder.
p. 165 We kill time; time buries us.
p. 166 Yes, it was fitting for me to be a father. The life of a celibate may have certain advantages of its own, but they would be tenuous and purchased at the price of loneliness.
p. 181 Good Lord! You've got to be a man! Be strong! Fight! Conquer! Dominate! Fifty is the age of science and government. Courage, Brás Cubas. Don't turn fool on me. What have you got to do with that succession from ruin to ruin, from flower to flower? Try to savor life. And be aware that the worst philosophy is that of the weeper who lies down on the riverbank to mourn the incessant flow of the waters. Their duty is never to stop. Make an adjustment to the law and try to take advantage of it.
p. 194 Why is is that a pretty woman looks into a mirror so much if not because she finds herself pretty and, therefore, it gives her a certain superiority over a multitude of women less pretty or absolutely ugly? Conscience is just the same. It looks at itself quite often when it finds itself pretty. Nor is remorse anything else but the twitch of a conscience that sees itself repugnant.
p. 195 …man executes, to the turn of the wheel of the great mystery, a double movement of rotation and translation. Its days are unequal, like those of Jupiter, and they comprise its more or less long year.
p. 9 An uncle of mine, a canon with full prebend, liked to say that love of temporal glory was the perdition of souls, who should covet only eternal glory. To which another uncle, an officer in one of those old infantry regiments called terços, would retort that love of glory was the most truly human thing there was in a man and, consequently, his most genuine attribute.
p. 18 The minute that passes doesn't matter to time, only the minute that's coming. The minute that's coming is strong, merry, it thinks it carries eternity in itself and it carries death, and it perishes just like the other one, but time carries on.
p. 32 What was it that my old primary teacher wanted, after all? Memorization and behavior in the classroom. Nothing more, nothing less than what life, the final class, wants, with the difference that if you put fear into me, you never put anger.
p. 46 And that was how I disembarked in Lisbon and continued on to Coimbra. The university was waiting for me with its difficult subjects. I studied them in a very mediocre way, but even so I didn't lose my law degree. They gave it to me with all the solemnity of the occasion, following years of custom, a beautiful ceremony that filled me with pride and nostalgia - mostly nostalgia.
p. 53 The sensuality of boredom: memorize that expression, reader, keep it, examine it, and if you can't get to understand it you may conclude that you're ignorant of one of the most subtle sensations of this world and that time.
p. 58 Fear obscurity, Brás, flee from the negligible. Men are worth something in different ways, and the surest one of all is being worthy in the opinions of other men.
p. 86 So I, Brás Cubas, discovered a sublime law, the law of the equivalencies of windows, and I established the fact that the method of compensating for a closed window is to open another, so that morality can continuously aerate one's conscience.
p. 110 The world may have been too small for Alexander, but the eaves of a garret are an infinity for swallows. Take a look now at the neutrality of this globe that carries us through space like a lifeboat heading for shore: today a virtuous couple sleeps on the same plot of ground that once held a sinning couple. Tomorrow a churchman may sleep there, then a murderer, then a blacksmith, then a poet, and they will all bless that corner of earth that gave them a few illusions.
p. 111 …the main defect of this book is you, reader. You're in a hurry to grow old and the book moves slowly.
p. 117 The intensity of love was the same, the difference was that the flame had lost the mad brightness of the early days and had become a simple sheaf of rays, peaceful and content, as with marriages.
p. 143 As I contemplated how it chastely and completely covered her knee, I made a subtle discovery, to wit, that nature foresaw human clothing, a condition necessary for the development of our species. Habitual nudity, given the multiplicity of the works and cares of the individual, would tend to dull the senses and retard sex, while clothing, deceiving nature, sharpens and attracts desires, activates them, reproduces them, and consequently, drives civilization. A blessed custom that gave us Othello and transatlantic packets.
p. 158 …public opinion is a good glue for domestic institutions.
p. 161 … Uninstructed reader, if you don't keep the letters from your youth, you won't get to know the philosophy of old pages someday, you won't enjoy the pleasure of seeing yourself from a distance, in the shadows, with a three-cornered hat, seven-league boots, and a long Assyrian beard, dancing to the sound of Anachreonic pipes. Keep the letters of your youth! Or, if the three-cornered hat doesn't suit you, I'll use the expression of an old sailor, a friend of the Cotrims. I'll say that if you keep the letters of your youth, you'll find a chance to "sing a bit of nostalgia." It seems that our sailors give that name to songs of the land sung on the high seas. As a poetic expression it's something that can make you even sadder.
p. 165 We kill time; time buries us.
p. 166 Yes, it was fitting for me to be a father. The life of a celibate may have certain advantages of its own, but they would be tenuous and purchased at the price of loneliness.
p. 181 Good Lord! You've got to be a man! Be strong! Fight! Conquer! Dominate! Fifty is the age of science and government. Courage, Brás Cubas. Don't turn fool on me. What have you got to do with that succession from ruin to ruin, from flower to flower? Try to savor life. And be aware that the worst philosophy is that of the weeper who lies down on the riverbank to mourn the incessant flow of the waters. Their duty is never to stop. Make an adjustment to the law and try to take advantage of it.
p. 194 Why is is that a pretty woman looks into a mirror so much if not because she finds herself pretty and, therefore, it gives her a certain superiority over a multitude of women less pretty or absolutely ugly? Conscience is just the same. It looks at itself quite often when it finds itself pretty. Nor is remorse anything else but the twitch of a conscience that sees itself repugnant.
p. 195 …man executes, to the turn of the wheel of the great mystery, a double movement of rotation and translation. Its days are unequal, like those of Jupiter, and they comprise its more or less long year.
Sunday, March 16, 2014
The Saddest Pleasure by Moritz Thomsen, r. Mar. 2014
p. xii Whatever else travel is, it is also an occasion to dream and remember. You sit in an alien landscape and you remember all the people who have been awful to you. You have nightmares in strange beds. You remember episodes that you have not thought of for years and but for that noise from the street or that powerful odor of jasmine you might have forgotten.
p. 19 I walk up and down through the empty hall examining everything carefully in the brightly lit cases, delighted to discover that there is absolutely nothing there that I would wish to own. I had spent forty years modestly collecting this kind of garbage and then, let us hope, grown wiser, the next twenty years giving it away.
p. 27 Into that chill building rushes a great warm, soft, languorous movement of tropical southern air that is simply amazing in its power to seduce. It is the sweet air of Brazil...
p. 46 My curiosity is too easily satisfied - or rather I have learned that the fascination of a strange place is centered in its people rather than in its views and monuments.
p. 76 Here is what is horrible about dying, I decide: not that you are obliterated by death but that everything you love is also obliterated. The eyes close for the last time, the brain deprived of oxygen comes unplugged, and everything, everything is destroyed, the world disintegrates - trees, lakes, mountains, children, wind and sunshine, the sea, canoes floating across tranquil rivers, ponds full of frogs, night and the stars, music and the music of silence.... [but] death destroys not only everything we love, but everything we hate as well. Our rages, our betrayals, our failures, our capacity for evil. It is all destroyed. How can death, then, be anything but a friend since so much more pain than joy is obliterated.
p. 83 And what suffering won't a man endure to live in his own hut on his own land, proud and half-mad with the delusion that to some extent he is in control of his own destiny.
p. 90 What is heaven for most of us if it is not the satisfaction of having worked hard for yourself, and of knowing that after you have eaten well that you will lie down, make love, and fall into the deep eight-hour sleep of total obliteration that you have earned?
p. 106 [Salvador] is a city where, underneath the normal pursuits, the people in it seem to be thinking of nothing else but their power to attract and of the great psychic charges that are going off between people in their most casual encounters. Connections are being made; people are looking at one another and with innocent delight.
p. 135 It is intensely moving to be in a city where everyone believes in God, and I consider joining them, not because I believe in God, but because, though the spectacle is depressing for its ritual, I believe in the emotion that has joined them together.
p. 171 If life has any meaning at all toward the end, it is certainly only in one's ability to draw from the well of memory a satisfying amount of intense experience to contemplate, for the things that are forgotten are only symbols for the parts of us that have already died. Part of the middle-class tragedy lies in the facility with which intense experience can be synthesized and bought.
p. 206 When I refuse to cook for them and drag them off to some restaurant to eat strange food that is past their comprehension, I feel a vague guilt now as though I were taking them to a pornographic movie that would by teaching perverse techniques confuse and complicate the pure, straightforward intensity of their romantic and passionate sensibilities.
p. 236 Are we not all born with a certain bias, an innate proclivity for feeling either that man is more good than bad or that he is more bad than good? This basic way of looking at mankind probably even determines the way we vote. Do we join a political party that demands more freedom to more nearly achieve our potential, or a party that wants more restrictive laws to curtail our evil instincts? Did I, who had always believed in more freedom, still believe in the face of the abuses that had been committed in its name?
p. 270 In a larger sense home, that symbol of stability, is only one more concept being shattered by a crazy world where whole nations are stood against the wall and where millions are driven to clog the roads as they stagger toward another border and a temporary haven. There is no way to buy or beg continuity; there is no spot on earth from which one may not be driven. Home is where you are; home is where you find yourself. (Reading that sentence over and giving it a double meaning I note with a glow of pride that we have arrived at the edge of profundity.) It is that cubic space that the body claims - if roofed, that area where you store your dirty clothes and your books.
p. 273 Man is most godlike when he sweats; the potential moral beauty of man lies in this simplest of things; man doing well something that he loves doing - the juggler juggling, the baker baking bread, the teacher before a class of children; a farmer hoeing out a row of corn. Even the trained killer who kills well fulfills, in some inscrutable way, his deepest contract with life and forgets for a time his own mortality, that stinking death that awaits him, too.
p. 19 I walk up and down through the empty hall examining everything carefully in the brightly lit cases, delighted to discover that there is absolutely nothing there that I would wish to own. I had spent forty years modestly collecting this kind of garbage and then, let us hope, grown wiser, the next twenty years giving it away.
p. 27 Into that chill building rushes a great warm, soft, languorous movement of tropical southern air that is simply amazing in its power to seduce. It is the sweet air of Brazil...
p. 46 My curiosity is too easily satisfied - or rather I have learned that the fascination of a strange place is centered in its people rather than in its views and monuments.
p. 76 Here is what is horrible about dying, I decide: not that you are obliterated by death but that everything you love is also obliterated. The eyes close for the last time, the brain deprived of oxygen comes unplugged, and everything, everything is destroyed, the world disintegrates - trees, lakes, mountains, children, wind and sunshine, the sea, canoes floating across tranquil rivers, ponds full of frogs, night and the stars, music and the music of silence.... [but] death destroys not only everything we love, but everything we hate as well. Our rages, our betrayals, our failures, our capacity for evil. It is all destroyed. How can death, then, be anything but a friend since so much more pain than joy is obliterated.
p. 83 And what suffering won't a man endure to live in his own hut on his own land, proud and half-mad with the delusion that to some extent he is in control of his own destiny.
p. 90 What is heaven for most of us if it is not the satisfaction of having worked hard for yourself, and of knowing that after you have eaten well that you will lie down, make love, and fall into the deep eight-hour sleep of total obliteration that you have earned?
p. 106 [Salvador] is a city where, underneath the normal pursuits, the people in it seem to be thinking of nothing else but their power to attract and of the great psychic charges that are going off between people in their most casual encounters. Connections are being made; people are looking at one another and with innocent delight.
p. 135 It is intensely moving to be in a city where everyone believes in God, and I consider joining them, not because I believe in God, but because, though the spectacle is depressing for its ritual, I believe in the emotion that has joined them together.
p. 171 If life has any meaning at all toward the end, it is certainly only in one's ability to draw from the well of memory a satisfying amount of intense experience to contemplate, for the things that are forgotten are only symbols for the parts of us that have already died. Part of the middle-class tragedy lies in the facility with which intense experience can be synthesized and bought.
p. 206 When I refuse to cook for them and drag them off to some restaurant to eat strange food that is past their comprehension, I feel a vague guilt now as though I were taking them to a pornographic movie that would by teaching perverse techniques confuse and complicate the pure, straightforward intensity of their romantic and passionate sensibilities.
p. 236 Are we not all born with a certain bias, an innate proclivity for feeling either that man is more good than bad or that he is more bad than good? This basic way of looking at mankind probably even determines the way we vote. Do we join a political party that demands more freedom to more nearly achieve our potential, or a party that wants more restrictive laws to curtail our evil instincts? Did I, who had always believed in more freedom, still believe in the face of the abuses that had been committed in its name?
p. 270 In a larger sense home, that symbol of stability, is only one more concept being shattered by a crazy world where whole nations are stood against the wall and where millions are driven to clog the roads as they stagger toward another border and a temporary haven. There is no way to buy or beg continuity; there is no spot on earth from which one may not be driven. Home is where you are; home is where you find yourself. (Reading that sentence over and giving it a double meaning I note with a glow of pride that we have arrived at the edge of profundity.) It is that cubic space that the body claims - if roofed, that area where you store your dirty clothes and your books.
p. 273 Man is most godlike when he sweats; the potential moral beauty of man lies in this simplest of things; man doing well something that he loves doing - the juggler juggling, the baker baking bread, the teacher before a class of children; a farmer hoeing out a row of corn. Even the trained killer who kills well fulfills, in some inscrutable way, his deepest contract with life and forgets for a time his own mortality, that stinking death that awaits him, too.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Brazil on the Rise by Larry Rohter, r. Mar. 2014
p. 82 In Brazil, work may be a necessity and can sometimes bring satisfaction. But learning to enjoy one's time on earth is an art, and those who have mastered that art are held in high esteem.
p. 249 But until it throws off the inferiority complex that has dogged it for so long, Brazil is likely to remain yoked to a foreign policy that is essentially reactive, and the rest of the world will have to continue to tread lightly if it wants to gain Brazil's cooperation and avoid giving offense.
p. 249 But until it throws off the inferiority complex that has dogged it for so long, Brazil is likely to remain yoked to a foreign policy that is essentially reactive, and the rest of the world will have to continue to tread lightly if it wants to gain Brazil's cooperation and avoid giving offense.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, r. Feb. 2014
p. 52 At the time, she believed that it was because she was selflessly team-spirited that direct personal compliments made her so uncomfortable. The autobiographer now thinks that compliments were like a beverage she was unconsciously smart enough to deny herself even one drop of, because her thirst for them was infinite.
p. 114 Time passed in a peculiar manner which the autobiographer, with her now rather abundant experience of murdered afternoons, is able to identify as depressive (at once interminable and sickeningly swift; chock-full second-to-second, devoid of content hour-by-hour)
p. 130 That next afternoon, in Room 21, in broad daylight, with the windows open and the faded curtains billowing, they laughed and cried and fucked with a joy whose gravity and innocence it fairly wrecks the autobiographer to think back on, and cried some more and fucked some more and lay next to each other with sweating bodies and full hearts and listened to the sighing of the pines. Patty felt like she'd taken some powerful drug that wasn't wearing off, or like she'd fallen into an incredibly vivid dream that she wasn't waking up from, except that she was fully aware, from second to second to second, that it wasn't a drug or a dream but just life happening to her, a life with only a present and no past, a romance unlike any romance she'd imagined. Because Room 21! How could she have imagined Room 21? It was such a sweetly clean old-fashioned room, and Walter such a sweetly clean old-fashioned person. And she was 21 and could feel her 21ness in the young, clean, strong wind that was blowing down from Canada. Her little taste of eternity.
p. 156 The days were bright and long, the nights startlingly cool. Patty loved early summer in the north, it took her back to her first days in Hibbing with Walter. The crisp air and moist earth, the conifer smells, the morning of her life.
p. 184 "Mom, I make your life so easy for you. Do you have any idea how easy? I don't do drugs, I don't do any of the shit that Joey does, I don't embarrass you, I don't create scenes, I never did any of that---" "I know! And I am truly grateful for it." "OK, but then don't complain if I have my own life and my own friends and don't feel like suddenly rearranging everything for you. You get all the benefits of me taking care of myself, the least you can do is not make me feel guilty about it."
p. 362 "The reason the system can't be overthrown in this country," Walter said, "is all about freedom. The reason the free market in Europe is tempered by socialism is that they're not so hung up on personal liberties there. They also have lower population growth rates, despite comparable income levels. The Europeans are all-around more rational, basically. And the conversation about rights in this county isn't rational. It's taking place on a level of emotion, and class resentments, which is why the right is so good at exploiting it."
p. 390 He was alone with his body; and since, weirdly, he was his body, this meant he was entirely alone.
p. 464 He watched a catbird hopping around in an azalea that was readying itself to bloom; he envied the bird for knowing nothing of what he knew; he would have swapped souls with it in a heartbeat.
p. 476 They had a tacit trusting way with each other, a way that reminded Walter of his and Patty's way when they were very young, the way of a couple united as a front against the world; his eyes misted up at the sight of their wedding bands.
p. 490 "To me," Walter said, "the difference is that birds are only killing because they have to eat. They're not doing it angrily, they're not doing it wantonly. It's not neurotic. To me that's what makes nature peaceful. Things live or they don't live, but it's not all poisoned with resentment and neurosis and ideology. It's a relief from my own neurotic anger."
p. 559 And so he stopped looking at her eyes and started looking into them, returning their look before it was too late, before this connection between life and what came after life was lost, and let her see all the vileness inside him, all the hatreds of two thousand solitary nights, while the two of them were still in touch with the void in which the sum of everything they'd ever said or done, every pain they'd inflicted, every joy they'd shared, would weigh less than the smallest feather on the wind. "It's me," she said. "Just me." "I know," he said, and kissed her.
p. 114 Time passed in a peculiar manner which the autobiographer, with her now rather abundant experience of murdered afternoons, is able to identify as depressive (at once interminable and sickeningly swift; chock-full second-to-second, devoid of content hour-by-hour)
p. 130 That next afternoon, in Room 21, in broad daylight, with the windows open and the faded curtains billowing, they laughed and cried and fucked with a joy whose gravity and innocence it fairly wrecks the autobiographer to think back on, and cried some more and fucked some more and lay next to each other with sweating bodies and full hearts and listened to the sighing of the pines. Patty felt like she'd taken some powerful drug that wasn't wearing off, or like she'd fallen into an incredibly vivid dream that she wasn't waking up from, except that she was fully aware, from second to second to second, that it wasn't a drug or a dream but just life happening to her, a life with only a present and no past, a romance unlike any romance she'd imagined. Because Room 21! How could she have imagined Room 21? It was such a sweetly clean old-fashioned room, and Walter such a sweetly clean old-fashioned person. And she was 21 and could feel her 21ness in the young, clean, strong wind that was blowing down from Canada. Her little taste of eternity.
p. 156 The days were bright and long, the nights startlingly cool. Patty loved early summer in the north, it took her back to her first days in Hibbing with Walter. The crisp air and moist earth, the conifer smells, the morning of her life.
p. 184 "Mom, I make your life so easy for you. Do you have any idea how easy? I don't do drugs, I don't do any of the shit that Joey does, I don't embarrass you, I don't create scenes, I never did any of that---" "I know! And I am truly grateful for it." "OK, but then don't complain if I have my own life and my own friends and don't feel like suddenly rearranging everything for you. You get all the benefits of me taking care of myself, the least you can do is not make me feel guilty about it."
p. 362 "The reason the system can't be overthrown in this country," Walter said, "is all about freedom. The reason the free market in Europe is tempered by socialism is that they're not so hung up on personal liberties there. They also have lower population growth rates, despite comparable income levels. The Europeans are all-around more rational, basically. And the conversation about rights in this county isn't rational. It's taking place on a level of emotion, and class resentments, which is why the right is so good at exploiting it."
p. 390 He was alone with his body; and since, weirdly, he was his body, this meant he was entirely alone.
p. 464 He watched a catbird hopping around in an azalea that was readying itself to bloom; he envied the bird for knowing nothing of what he knew; he would have swapped souls with it in a heartbeat.
p. 476 They had a tacit trusting way with each other, a way that reminded Walter of his and Patty's way when they were very young, the way of a couple united as a front against the world; his eyes misted up at the sight of their wedding bands.
p. 490 "To me," Walter said, "the difference is that birds are only killing because they have to eat. They're not doing it angrily, they're not doing it wantonly. It's not neurotic. To me that's what makes nature peaceful. Things live or they don't live, but it's not all poisoned with resentment and neurosis and ideology. It's a relief from my own neurotic anger."
p. 559 And so he stopped looking at her eyes and started looking into them, returning their look before it was too late, before this connection between life and what came after life was lost, and let her see all the vileness inside him, all the hatreds of two thousand solitary nights, while the two of them were still in touch with the void in which the sum of everything they'd ever said or done, every pain they'd inflicted, every joy they'd shared, would weigh less than the smallest feather on the wind. "It's me," she said. "Just me." "I know," he said, and kissed her.
Monday, January 27, 2014
At Home by Bill Bryson, r. Jan. 2014
p. 6 ...that's really what history mostly is: masses of people doing ordinary things. Even Einstein will have spent large parts of his life thinking about his holidays or new hammock or how dainty was the ankle on the young lady alighting from the tram across the street.
p. 184 This new and swelling middle class served not only the very wealthy but also, even more lucratively, one another. This was the change that made the modern world.
p. 350 Without his books, Thomas Jefferson could not have been Thomas Jefferson. For someone like him living on a frontier, remote from actual experience, books were vital guides to how life might be lived...
p. 532 Of the total energy produced on Earth since the Industrial Revolution began, half has been consumed in just the last twenty years. Disproportionately, it was consumed by us in the rich world; we are an exceedingly privileged fraction. Today it takes the average citizen of Tanzania almost a year to produce the same volume of carbon emissions as is effortlessly generated every two and a half days by a European, or every twenty-eight hours by an American...
p. 184 This new and swelling middle class served not only the very wealthy but also, even more lucratively, one another. This was the change that made the modern world.
p. 350 Without his books, Thomas Jefferson could not have been Thomas Jefferson. For someone like him living on a frontier, remote from actual experience, books were vital guides to how life might be lived...
p. 532 Of the total energy produced on Earth since the Industrial Revolution began, half has been consumed in just the last twenty years. Disproportionately, it was consumed by us in the rich world; we are an exceedingly privileged fraction. Today it takes the average citizen of Tanzania almost a year to produce the same volume of carbon emissions as is effortlessly generated every two and a half days by a European, or every twenty-eight hours by an American...
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, r. Dec. 2013
p. 18 The genius of the American system is not freedom; the genius of the American system is checks and balances. Nobody gets all the power. Everybody is watching everybody else. It is as if the founding fathers knew, intrinsically, that the soul of man, unwatched, is perverse.
p. 51 The goofy thing about Christian faith is that you believe it and don't believe it at the same time. It isn't unlike having an imaginary friend. I believe in Jesus; I believe He is the Son of God, but every time I sit down to explain this to somebody I feel like a palm reader, like somebody who works at a circus...
p. 54 Light cannot be proved scientifically, and yet we all believe in light and by light see all things. There are plenty of things that are true that don't make any sense. I think one of the problems Laura was having was that she wanted God to make sense. He doesn't. He will make no more sense to me than I will make sense to an ant.
p. 57 In his book Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton says chess players go crazy, not poets. I think he is right. You'd go crazy trying to explain penguins. It's best just to watch them and be entertained. I don't think you can explain how Christian faith works either. It is a mystery. And I love this about Christian spirituality. It cannot be explained and yet it is beautiful and true. It is something you feel, and it comes from the soul.
p. 77 I found myself trying to love the right things without God's help, and it was impossible. I tried to go one week without thinking a negative thought about another human being, and I couldn't do it. Before I tried that experiment, I thought I was a nice person, but after trying it, I realized I thought bad things about people all day long, and that, like Tony says, my natural desire was to love darkness.
p. 98 I started thinking about how odd it was to be human, how we are stuck inside this skin, forced to be attracted to the opposite sex, forced to eat food and use the rest room and then stuck to the earth by gravity.... I also felt a little bitter about sleep. Why do we have to sleep? I wanted to be able to stay awake for as long as I wanted, but God had put me in this body that had to sleep. Life no longer seemed like an experience of freedom.
p. 100 There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing.... I know a little of why there is blood in my body, pumping life into my limbs and thought into my brain. I am wanted by God. He is wanting to preserve me, to guide me through the darkness of the shadow of death, up into the highlands of His presence and afterlife.
p. 109 If you believe something, passionately, people will follow you. People hardly care what you believe, as long as you believe something. If you are passionate about something, people will follow you because they think you know something they don't, some clue to the meaning of the universe.
p. 110 Andrew is the one who taught me that what I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do.
p. 122 You never question the truth of something until you have to explain it to a skeptic.
p. 144 "You know, Don, marriage is worth the trade. You lose all your freedom, but you get this friend. This incredible friend."
p. 146 "It is great, don't get me wrong, and I am glad I married Danielle, and I will be with her forever. But there are places in our lives that only God can go."
p. 171 On of my new housemates, Stacy, wants to write a story about an astronaut. In his story the astronaut is wearing a suit that keeps him alive by recycling his fluids. In the story the astronaut is working on a space station when an accident takes place, and he is cast into space to orbit the earth, to spend the rest of his life circling the glove. Stacy says this is how he imagines hell, a place where a person is completely alone, without others and without God.
p. 181 Having had my way for so long, I became defensive about what I perceived as encroachments on my rights. My personal bubble was huge. I couldn't have conversations that lasted more than ten minutes. I wanted efficiency in personal interaction, and while listening to one of my housemates talk, I wondered why the couldn't get to the point. Tuck told me later that in the first few months of living with me he felt judged, as though there was something wrong with him. He felt unvalued any time he was around me.
p. 192 A writer I like named Ravi Zacharias says that the heart desires wonder and magic. He says technology is what man uses to supplant the desire for wonder. Ravi Zacharias says that what the heart is really longing to do is worship, to stand in awe of a God we don't understand and can't explain.
p. 206 And wonder is that feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want God to follow. I don't think there is any better worship than wonder.
p. 220 God had never withheld love to teach me a lesson. Here is something simple about relationships that Spencer helped me discover: Nobody will listen to you unless they sense that you like them.
p. 221 When I am talking to somebody there are always two conversations going on. The first is on the surface; it is about politics or music or whatever it is our mouths are saying. The other is beneath the surface, on the level of the heart, and my heart is either communication that I like the person I am talking to or I don't. God wants both conversations to be true.... The Bible says that if you talk to somebody with your mouth, and your heart does not love them, that you are like a person standing there smashing two cymbals together. You are only annoying everybody around you. I think that is very beautiful and true.
p. 51 The goofy thing about Christian faith is that you believe it and don't believe it at the same time. It isn't unlike having an imaginary friend. I believe in Jesus; I believe He is the Son of God, but every time I sit down to explain this to somebody I feel like a palm reader, like somebody who works at a circus...
p. 54 Light cannot be proved scientifically, and yet we all believe in light and by light see all things. There are plenty of things that are true that don't make any sense. I think one of the problems Laura was having was that she wanted God to make sense. He doesn't. He will make no more sense to me than I will make sense to an ant.
p. 57 In his book Orthodoxy, G. K. Chesterton says chess players go crazy, not poets. I think he is right. You'd go crazy trying to explain penguins. It's best just to watch them and be entertained. I don't think you can explain how Christian faith works either. It is a mystery. And I love this about Christian spirituality. It cannot be explained and yet it is beautiful and true. It is something you feel, and it comes from the soul.
p. 77 I found myself trying to love the right things without God's help, and it was impossible. I tried to go one week without thinking a negative thought about another human being, and I couldn't do it. Before I tried that experiment, I thought I was a nice person, but after trying it, I realized I thought bad things about people all day long, and that, like Tony says, my natural desire was to love darkness.
p. 98 I started thinking about how odd it was to be human, how we are stuck inside this skin, forced to be attracted to the opposite sex, forced to eat food and use the rest room and then stuck to the earth by gravity.... I also felt a little bitter about sleep. Why do we have to sleep? I wanted to be able to stay awake for as long as I wanted, but God had put me in this body that had to sleep. Life no longer seemed like an experience of freedom.
p. 100 There is something beautiful about a billion stars held steady by a God who knows what He is doing.... I know a little of why there is blood in my body, pumping life into my limbs and thought into my brain. I am wanted by God. He is wanting to preserve me, to guide me through the darkness of the shadow of death, up into the highlands of His presence and afterlife.
p. 109 If you believe something, passionately, people will follow you. People hardly care what you believe, as long as you believe something. If you are passionate about something, people will follow you because they think you know something they don't, some clue to the meaning of the universe.
p. 110 Andrew is the one who taught me that what I believe is not what I say I believe; what I believe is what I do.
p. 122 You never question the truth of something until you have to explain it to a skeptic.
p. 144 "You know, Don, marriage is worth the trade. You lose all your freedom, but you get this friend. This incredible friend."
p. 146 "It is great, don't get me wrong, and I am glad I married Danielle, and I will be with her forever. But there are places in our lives that only God can go."
p. 171 On of my new housemates, Stacy, wants to write a story about an astronaut. In his story the astronaut is wearing a suit that keeps him alive by recycling his fluids. In the story the astronaut is working on a space station when an accident takes place, and he is cast into space to orbit the earth, to spend the rest of his life circling the glove. Stacy says this is how he imagines hell, a place where a person is completely alone, without others and without God.
p. 181 Having had my way for so long, I became defensive about what I perceived as encroachments on my rights. My personal bubble was huge. I couldn't have conversations that lasted more than ten minutes. I wanted efficiency in personal interaction, and while listening to one of my housemates talk, I wondered why the couldn't get to the point. Tuck told me later that in the first few months of living with me he felt judged, as though there was something wrong with him. He felt unvalued any time he was around me.
p. 192 A writer I like named Ravi Zacharias says that the heart desires wonder and magic. He says technology is what man uses to supplant the desire for wonder. Ravi Zacharias says that what the heart is really longing to do is worship, to stand in awe of a God we don't understand and can't explain.
p. 206 And wonder is that feeling we get when we let go of our silly answers, our mapped out rules that we want God to follow. I don't think there is any better worship than wonder.
p. 220 God had never withheld love to teach me a lesson. Here is something simple about relationships that Spencer helped me discover: Nobody will listen to you unless they sense that you like them.
p. 221 When I am talking to somebody there are always two conversations going on. The first is on the surface; it is about politics or music or whatever it is our mouths are saying. The other is beneath the surface, on the level of the heart, and my heart is either communication that I like the person I am talking to or I don't. God wants both conversations to be true.... The Bible says that if you talk to somebody with your mouth, and your heart does not love them, that you are like a person standing there smashing two cymbals together. You are only annoying everybody around you. I think that is very beautiful and true.
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