“Arriving at each new city, the traveler finds again a past of his that he did not know he had: the foreignness of what you no longer are or no longer possess lies in wait for you in foreign, unpossessed places.”
— Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
text and observation from Wolfandfox.
Writing: a field where the consequences of mediocrity are considerably more serious than in banking or the law.
@alaindebotton
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Nervous Breakthrough: Carrie Fisher on Wishful Drinking
The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
George Bernard Shaw (via devilduck)
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Zadie Smith on Changing My Mind, her new collection of essays (NPR)
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it’s what Yeats called the fascination with what’s difficult. I’m only trying to do what I can’t do.
Lucien Freud, to Michael Kimmelman, quoted in a smart essay by writer Samantha Peale, whose novel, The American Painter Emma Dial, I am reading now and thoroughly enjoying. Whew. (via rach)
“This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.”
— Carol Shields, UnlessI disapprove of the book he’s reading in the picture, but entirely agree with this quote. Unrelenting monologue!
Agreed.
last year in Berlin: we had to store the smelly cheese between the windowpanes.
