Quotes

In spite of all the poetry, all the philosophy to the contrary, we are not really masters of our fate.

Katherine Anne Porter (via theparisreview)

Good designers transform insights into inspiration

and inspiration into something tangible – Simon Rucker – Harvard Business Review (via gregmelander)

There is no surer foundation for a beautiful friendship than a mutual taste in literature.

P.G. Wodehouse (via libraryland)

I don’t try to be prophetic, as I don’t sit down to write literature. It is simply this: a writer has to take all the risks of putting down what he sees. No one can tell him about that. No one can control that reality. It reminds me of something Pablo Picasso was supposed to have said to Gertrude Stein while he was painting her portrait. Gertrude said, “I don’t look like that.” And Picasso replied, “You will.” And he was right.

James Baldwin (via theparisreview)

You cannot write autobiographically; you cannot write from memory… If one is writing from memory, one is writing ultimately a kind of shapeless, amorphous slice of lifeism.

Stanley Elkin (via theparisreview)

Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry.

Gabriel García Márquez (via theparisreview)

What each man does will shape his trial and fortune. For Jupiter is king to all alike; the fates will find their way

Virgil, The Aeneid (via The Fates Will Find Their Way)

Books, like all art, breed in us desire. In times of crisis and fear and misrepresentation we need desire, or else we shut down and hide out in our houses, succumbing to infotainment and the ease of an available latte, turning off our brains and emotions. Books breed desire.

The lovely Lidia Yuknavitch, in a piece she wrote for The Rumpus titled “The Urgent Matter of Books.” Her memoir is one of our favorite books of the year, so far. (via powells)

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it [on Goodreads].

Bertrand Russell (via pulcherrima-est-vitae)

It is the recognition that well-read is not a destination; there is nowhere to get to, and if you assume there is somewhere to get to, you’d have to live a thousand years to even think about getting there, and by the time you got there, there would be a thousand years to catch up on.

Linda Holmes writing for NPR’s Monkey See blog. Her excellent piece is titled “The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We’re All Going to Miss Almost Everything.” Read more. (via powells)

I don’t write because there’s an audience. I write because there is literature.

Susan Sontag (via theparisreview)

It seemed, some days, that life was nothing more than a tally of the people who’d left us behind.

The Fates Will Find Their Way (via pageandoven)

Communicate slowly. Live / a three-dimensioned life

Wendell Berry, How To Be a Poet

The words are making me wonder about the difference reading poetry aloud makes, three-dimensioned, communicated slowly.

Found here communicate slowly – 37days

(via tellingpoems)

I thought of myself as a writer for years before I got around to writing anything.

E. L. Doctorow (via theparisreview)

I can’t imagine writing, without irony, about people who are happy all the time.

Ann Beattie, in our new issue (via theparisreview)

To save money by reducing library services and resources is like trying to save a bleeding man by cutting out his heart. Or — if we could reach it — his soul.

Pico Iyer in the L.A. Times (via nypl)

By honoring one another’s creation we honor something that deeply connects us all, and goes beyond us.

Joyce Carol Oates (via theparisreview)

[Writing is] like standing on the edge of a cliff. This is especially true of the first draft. Every day you’re making up the earth you’re going to stand on.

Peter Carey (via theparisreview)

Every morning, I have woken up knowing that I will never run out of books to read. That has been my life.

Kenzaburo Oe (birthday today)