madness

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by Allen Ginsberg." 

Madness

robert frost | acquainted with the night

 

carl jung | somebody who's tired and needs a rest...

I've realized that somebody who's tired and needs a rest 

and goes on working all the same 

is a fool. 

Carl Jung

I'm pretty sure my own tendency to just push on (and on, and on), working long past the point of feeling tired, has many times led to a kind of exhaustion that's really not good. Still...

"I've realized that somebody who's tired and needs a rest 

and goes on working all the same 

has a job." 

Ron Reed

I understand what Jung's saying. That said, if I hadn't spent a good part of the past thirty years doing the opposite of what Mr Jung prescribes, there might very well be no Pacific Theatre. I would have written no plays. I would have left rehearsal halfway through, many days - and, most other days, I would have had no one to rehearse with, because one or another of my fellow actors would have called it quits, depending on their own levels of energy. No grants would have been written, few budgets balanced. How many appointments would I have cancelled without notice, and how many others would I have walked out on midway through?

Muscles get built when you continue working them once they've tired. Character gets built when you do what needs doing, even though you'd rather do something else (like resting, for example). People get cared for in hospitals, artistic breakthroughs occur, crops get planted or harvested, children get fed and cleaned and loved, when people continue to do what they need to do even when they are absolutely bloody exhausted.

I'm glad I wasn't one of Carl Jung's patients. "Oh, doctor Jung won't be seeing you today. He prefers to have a rest."

jorge luis borges | celestial empire of benevolent knowledge

In its remote pages it is written that the animals are divided into: 
(a) belonging to the emperor, 

(b) embalmed, 

(c) tame, 

(d) sucking pigs, 

(e) sirens, 

(f) fabulous, 

(g) stray dogs, 

(h) included in the present classification, 

(i) frenzied, 

(j) innumerable, 

(k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush, 

(l) et cetera, 

(m) having just broken the water pitcher, 

(n) that from a long way off look like flies.

saul leiter | photos

 

michael pasche | photo, west 10th

 

danny kaye, enthusiast

In his later years, Danny Kaye entertained at home as chef. He specialized in Chinese and Italian cooking. He had a custom-made Chinese restaurant installed at the rear of his house by its alley, then had a kitchen and dining area built around it. The stove that Kaye used for his Chinese dishes was fitted with metal rings for the burners to allow the heat to be highly concentrated, and a trough with circulating ice water cooled the area to keep the intense heat tolerable for those who were cooking. He learned "at Johnny Kan's restaurant in San Francisco and with Cecilia Chang at her Mandarin restaurants in San Francisco and Los Angeles." He taught Chinese cooking classes at a San Francisco Chinese restaurant in the 1970s. Kaye approached kitchen work with enthusiasm, making sausages and other foods needed for his cuisine. His work as a chef earned him the "Les Meilleurs Ouvriers de France" culinary award. Kaye is the only nonprofessional chef to have received this honor. 

Kaye was an aviation enthusiast and pilot. His interest was sparked by his longtime friend, choreographer Michael Kidd, who had recently earned his private pilot's license. Kaye began studying for his own pilot's license in 1959. An enthusiastic and accomplished golfer, he gave up golf in favor of flying. The first plane Kaye owned was a Piper Aztec. Kaye received his first license as a private pilot of multi-engine aircraft, not being certified for operating a single-engine plane until six years later. He was an accomplished pilot, rated for airplanes ranging from single-engine light aircraft to multi-engine jets. Kaye held a commercial pilot's license and had flown every type of aircraft except military planes. Kaye received a type rating in a Learjet, and he was named vice president of the Learjet company by Bill Lear as an honorary title (he had no line responsibility at the company). 

A lifelong fan of the Brooklyn / Los Angeles Dodgers, and a good friend of Leo Durocher, Kaye often traveled with the team. Possessing an encyclopedic knowledge of the game, Kaye and his business partner Lester Smith also led an investment group which was awarded the American League's thirteenth franchise, which became the Seattle Mariners for $6.2 million on February 7, 1976. 

Kaye was also an honorary member of the American College of Surgeons and the American Academy of Pediatrics. 

"Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint you can at it." 

Cinema Shorthand Society

found poem in progress | assembled from the pages of the new yorker, 2021

1

Ordinary things in the world interested Chardin. That doesn’t sound rare, but, oh, it is. 

"Here's a horse accident!"

"Here's a candlestick accident!"

Basically, any time an organization needed someone to go, expenses paid, 

to a country that had crocodiles, he was interested.

He hated the United States, but, outside the United States, that is not a rare sentiment.

He had a vision of God on a croquet lawn around the age of seventeen, but he let this pass until four years later, when he fell in love with Vivien, a Catholic who wasn’t at all sure she wanted to marry him, what with his being a Protestant and also, as he seemed to her, a rather strange person.

She developed a social circle, went out to night clubs, rejected the advances of various male friends - a window washer, a private chef, a bodega worker, a sex worker and Occupy protester, a charming young man who wrote deft jacket copy, and a lice consultant - and came back home afterward to eat toast with Alice in the living room. Her ideal occupation she thought might be "nun farmer" or "nun park ranger." 

Occupations come and go, their life spans following trend and technology.  Town criers, soda jerks, lamplighters, clock winders, pinsetters, and ice cutters give way to air-traffic controllers, genetic counsellors, drone operators, influencers, and social-media managers.

2

In February, 2014, Putin was a very busy autocrat.

He hosted the winter Olympics, in Sochi, 

shipped a new batch of activists to prison colonies,

and seized Crimea.

Trump. They tried to freeze him,

but the scientists say that when they removed his head

there was nothing inside but lint, paper clips, and pennies,

like an old piggy bank in a landfill.

3

She tells me about the giants carrying trees and bushes on what she calls zip lines, which I am able to identify as telephone wires. Beneath the busy giants, she explains, there is a marching band playing familiar tunes by John Philip Sousa. Plays and operas were staged in our back yard, spontaneous parades appeared in the streets.

In the house, nothing held still: objects danced on the mantel, the ideograms on our hanging scroll of Chinese calligraphy flew around like butterflies. At the beginning, many of these transformations had given her pleasure. More and more, however, they annoyed and alarmed her. Three women were hanging in her closet and refused to leave. The Flowery Man roamed the house.

“We certainly can’t stay any longer in this person’s house, in a place where we don’t even speak the language.”

Do the chickens think of warmer times?

They do not.

By the time a snowflake has landed,

snowflakes are all a chicken has ever known.

4

The Museum of Sex, in New York City,

the Museum of Ice Cream, in San Francisco,

The Disgusting Food Museum, in Malö, Sweden,

the Museum of Failure in Helsingborg, Sweden, 

the Museum of Broken Relationships, in Zagreb, Croatia:

   photos of hookup spots,

   a diet book that a woman received from her fiancé,

   three-week-old cheese from the garbage that had also 

      been pissed on by every dog in the neighborhood,

   self-destructing DVDs,

   a collection of Harley Davidson perfumes

      that smelled like socks at the bottom of a gym locker,

      drizzled with paint thinner,

      like taking a bite out of a corpse.

If you know how to pick up a roadkill and eat it

   (Are its eyes clear, or are they clouded over?) 

and tan its hide and wear it, 

   (Are the guts blown? How many insects are on it?)

you don't have to work that forty-hour-a-week office job that you hate.

5

Old people in advertisements smile with a certain optimism.

Young people laugh and laugh, opening their mouths wide

and showing their gums and tongues.

One contestant entered the show

in the hope of hiring a carpenter to patch

the bullet holes above her bed left

by her husband's suicide.

Another, a Holocaust survivor,

wanted funds to have her tattoo from Auschwitz removed.

They have trouble maintaining eye contact with the host,

and nervously wrap their handkerchiefs around their fingers.

"I had two handicapped sons. I lost them,

and then I took care of an elderly lady

in a wheelchair. She passed away,

along with my mother and my father, 

and then my husband passed away. 

I feel that I would like to have a vacation."

Many requests had been fulfilled

(airships, telegraph, harvest)

some hadn't

(Hop o' my thumb, bootblack in the act, Alex the Gt. cutting the Gordian knot)

“Haunted Ouija doll - Blinks, Noisy, demonic spirit portal” 

ships for free anywhere in the United States;

a horror fantasy in which 

a woman with a titanium plate in her head

is impregnated by a car.

This ugly, ugly America,

all machine, it is excruciating!

6

There hadn't been much time for sightseeing in Rome

so our young driver circled past the Colosseum,

shouting out fun facts

     "Five hundred years before Christ was built 

      the first sewer system!"

as Strong, trying to describe a scene from "Succession,"

quoted passages from "The Wasteland":

     “Thank You! Can’t wait to start experiencing things!!

     Going from doing my homework 

     to putting on my rawhide sandals that I made and

     going out in the woods.

     But it's good to get off TikTok and go out and make cedar-bark cordage."

johanna shopenhauer | letter from mom

 

tom hennen | sheep in the winter night

Inside the barn the sheep were standing, pushed close to one

another. Some were dozing, some had eyes wide open listening

in the dark. Some had no doubt heard of wolves. They looked

weary with all the burdens they had to carry, like being thought

of as stupid and cowardly, disliked by cowboys for the way they

eat grass about an inch into the dirt, the silly look they have

just after shearing, of being one of the symbols of the Christian

religion. In the darkness of the barn their woolly backs were

full of light gathered on summer pastures. Above them their

white breath was suspended, while far off in the pine woods,

night was deep in silence. The owl and rabbit were wondering,

along with the trees, if the air would soon fill with snowflakes,

but the power that moves through the world and makes our

hair stand on end was keeping the answer to itself.

this message seems dangerous

"Who said anything about safe? Course he isn't safe. But he's good."

jeffrey overstreet | critical thinking & the film critic

This will make a great new example for Week One of my class on critical thinking. We take a film and then we spend about 20 minutes scrolling through "Audience Reviews." I ask the students to pay close attention to what each "reviewer" claims about the movie, and then to make a list of the useful *evidence* that each "reviewer" provides to back up their claims. They quickly start realizing the problem: Most "Audience Reviews" are not reviews at all — they're reactions. "I loved it." "It was first-rate." "It was one of the best movies I've ever seen." Evidence is slight or non-existent.

Then we start looking at reviews published in actual journals where writers are *working,* and where editors are often involved. Professional reviews, they quickly realize, demonstrate some level of expertise and are designed to represent critical thinking. They make claims *and* they have evidence — some drawn directly from the film, some drawing from the context of the film's release, some making comparisons and connections with other films, some going into detail about aspects of the film's making. We find that some critics are better at this than others. We find that some critics with whom we disagree are actually very impressive in the substance of their arguments, and we might even be persuaded to change our minds. We find that other critics are better at making noise rather than making strong arguments. But altogether, we realize that the critics, rather than just being snobs, are, 9 out of 10 times or better, actually and obviously *in love with movies* — so much so that they invest in thinking carefully and building persuasive arguments. 

Their writing starts changing quickly after that. They realize that adding exclamation points to their words does not make their words more persuasive. They realize that piling up claims about how much they loved it doesn't really do anything to advance their claim. 

They also begin to realize that, while they have assumed that film critics are "snobs," they themselves actually really enjoy taking part in detailed, critical, complex conversations about other subjects that they're experts in. There will usually be a student in the room who loves soccer, and who can throw around soccer terminology, and who has a favorite player. I ask the class: "Is he a snob? Or does he clearly love soccer?" Then I ask, "If you wanted somebody to help you understand soccer, would you ask somebody who says 'SOCCER IS THE BEST!!!', or would you ask somebody who can describe for you the strengths and weaknesses of every team competing this year?

By the end of the class, they've become moviegoers who are far less likely to see the "Audience Score" as a fair representation of the quality of the movie. They'll see it instead as a record of knee-jerk emotional responses from people who probably won't have substantive conversations about the film. They'll realize that looking at the Critics' Score is more like looking at a Consumer Reports assessment: This represents a rough measure of how impressed were the moviegoers who see 300–400 movies a year from all over the world, who love movies so much they have studied them for decades, who know the technical terminology in order to think and communicate with specificity and eloquence. 

It's interesting, then, to see what happens when we turn the corner from this analysis of critical thinking on film to critical thinking on politics, or social issues, or faith.

Now... if this 'Comment' is too long for you, and thus looks 'snobbish,' well, you have plenty of one-line Comments here to choose from that will take less of your time and attention. I'm sure they're compelling. 

Comment on Mark Shea Facebook post 12/27/2021 5:54pm

Original post about this Wall Street Journal article

pep talk generator

 

obituary | renay mandel corren

Obituary

Renay Mandel Corren 

El Paso, TX

A plus-sized Jewish lady redneck died in El Paso on Saturday.

 

Of itself hardly news, or good news if you're the type that subscribes to the notion that anybody not named you dying in El Paso, Texas is good news. In which case have I got news for you: the bawdy, fertile, redheaded matriarch of a sprawling Jewish-Mexican-Redneck American family has kicked it. This was not good news to Renay Mandel Corren's many surviving children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, many of whom she even knew and, in her own way, loved. There will be much mourning in the many glamorous locales she went bankrupt in: McKeesport, PA, Renay's birthplace and where she first fell in love with ham, and atheism; Fayetteville and Kill Devil Hills, NC, where Renay's dreams, credit rating and marriage are all buried; and of course Miami, FL, where Renay's parents, uncles, aunts, and eternal hopes of all Miami Dolphins fans everywhere, are all buried pretty deep. Renay was preceded in death by Don Shula.

 

Because she was my mother, the death of zaftig good-time gal Renay Corren at the impossible old age of 84 is newsworthy to me, and I treat it with the same respect and reverence she had for, well, nothing. A more disrespectful, trash-reading, talking and watching woman in NC, FL or TX was not to be found. Hers was an itinerant, much-lived life, a Yankee Florida liberal Jewish Tough Gal who bowled 'em in Japan, rolled 'em in North Carolina and was a singularly unique parent. Often frustrated by the stifling, conservative culture of the South, Renay turned her voracious mind to the home front, becoming a model stay at home parent, a supermom, really, just the perfect PTA lady, volunteer, amateur baker and-AHHAHAA HA! HA! HA! Just kidding, y'all! Renay - Rosie to her friends, and this was a broad who never met a stranger - worked double shifts with Doreen, ate a ton of carbs with Bernie, and could occasionally be stirred to stew some stuffed cabbage for the kids. She played cards like a shark, bowled and played cribbage like a pro, and laughed with the boys until the wee hours, long after the last pin dropped. At one point in the 1980's, Renay was the 11th or 12th-ranked woman in cribbage in America, and while that could be a lie, it sounds great in print. She also told us she came up with the name for Sunoco, and I choose to believe this, too. Yes, Renay lied a lot. But on the plus side, Renay didn't cook, she didn't clean, and she was lousy with money, too. Here's what Renay was great at: dyeing her red roots, weekly manicures, dirty jokes, pier fishing, rolling joints and buying dirty magazines. She said she read them for the articles, but filthy free speech was really Renay's thing. Hers was a bawdy, rowdy life lived large, broke and loud. We thought Renay could not be killed. God knows, people tried. A lot. Renay has been toying with death for a decades, but always beating it and running off in her silver Chevy Nova. Covid couldn't kill Renay. Neither could pneumonia twice, infections, blood clots, bad feet, breast cancer twice, two mastectomies, two recessions, multiple bankruptcies, marriage to a philandering Sergeant Major, divorce in the 70's, six kids, one cesarean, a few abortions from the Quietly Famous Abortionist of Spring Lake, NC or an affair with Larry King in the 60's. Renay was preceded in death by her ex-boyfriend, Larry King. Renay was also sadly preceded in death by her beloved daughter, Cathy Sue Corren Lester Trammel Webster, of Kill Devil Hills, NC, who herself was preceded in death by two marriages, a fudge shop and one eyeball lost in a near-fatal Pepsi bottle incident that will absolutely be explored in future obituaries. Losing her 1-eyed badass b**** of a daughter in 2007 devastated Renay, but it also made her quite homeless, since Cathy pretty much picked up the tab. A talented and gregarious grifter, Renay M. Corren eked out her final years of luxury (she literally retired at 62) under the care, compassion, checking accounts and, evidently, unlimited patience of her favorite son and daughter-in-law, Michael and Lourdes Corren, of world-famous cow sanctuary El Paso, TX. Renay is also survived by her son Jeffrey Corren and his endlessly tolerant wife Shirley, of Powell's Point, NC; Scott Corren, and what's left of his colon, of Hampton, VA; Marc and Laura Corren, the loveliest dirt farmers of Vernon, TX (seriously, where is that); and her favorite son, the gay one who writes catty obituaries in his spare time, Andy Corren, of - obviously - New York City. Plus two beloved granddogs, Mia and Hudson. Renay was particularly close to and grateful for the lavish attentions of her grandaughter Perla and her great-grandchildren Elijah and Leroy, as well as her constant cruise companions Sam Trammell of Greenville, NC, and Adam Corren of El Paso, TX. Renay took tremendous pride in making 1 gay son and 2 gay grandchildren, Sam Trammell and Adam Corren.

 

There will be a very disrespectful and totally non-denominational memorial on May 10, 2022, most likely at a bowling alley in Fayetteville, NC. The family requests absolutely zero privacy or propriety, none what so ever, and in fact encourages you to spend some government money today on a 1-armed bandit, at the blackjack table or on a cheap cruise to find our inheritance. She spent it all, folks. She left me nothing but these lousy memories. Which I, and my family of 5 brothers and my sister-in-laws, nephews, friends, nieces, neighbors, ex-boyfriends, Larry King's children, who I guess I might be one of, the total strangers who all, to a person, loved and will cherish her. Forever. Please think of the brightly-frocked, frivolous, funny and smart Jewish redhead who is about to grift you, tell you a filthy joke, and for Larry King's sake: LAUGH. Bye, Mommy. We loved you to bits.

 

RIP RENAY MANDEL CORREN 10 MAY 1937 - 11 DEC 2021

 

Posted online on December 15, 2021

https://www.fayobserver.com/obituaries/m0028451

Published in The Fayetteville Observer, Funerals Today

truffaut | fahrenheit 451 shooting diary

 

apr 13 1950 | ridge theatre grand opening!

     It is not too much to say that the new Ridge theatre, 16th and Arbutus, is the result of a half century of research and inventiveness by the world's foremost designers and architects in cinema art. 

     Situated in the Arbutus Village, a name coined by newspapermen when David and Walter Macfarlane set out to provide a "civic centre" for the new Arbutus Ridge home development, the Ridge has 842 comfortable seats, beautiful design and decoration, a "crying room" for mothers with difficult babies, and a projection room with every conceivable device for for showing good pictures well.

PARKING AREAS

     People who attend will appreciate the extensive arrangements made for parking, and shoppers in the group of modern stores of the Village will make good use of these facilities. Three paved lots, each a block long, are provided, and wide sidewalks, bright lights and attractive stores make this area an attractive adjunct to the Arbutus district of all new homes. 

     Hundreds of imported plants beautify the shopping area and the theatre foyer. The Ridge theatre itself, in the opinion of the owners, has no counterpart in any of Canada's suburban areas.

GIGANTIC MURAL

     Hundreds of feed of mirror, exotic lighted plant arbors, most spacious deep foam-rubber seats and luxurious carpets, a gigantic mural of an arbutus tree, are included.

     Pastel soft leather powder room with mirrors and lunges . . . the new babies' and children's crying room on the colorful mezzanine floor. All the foyer and concourse and theatre interior scintillates with orchid white indirect lighting, and cunningly hidden spots.

     The smooth white stairway in chrome and bleached mahogany set off with entire wall towering sparkling mirror.

     In the brilliantly designed auditorium the very best in newest equipment is installed. The Riddge has had the new Gaumont-Kalee "President" projection equipment installed. These projectors, two of them, are a masterpiece of theatre development. The sensationally new "activated nylon" screen is the only one of its kind in Canada, and is only now being installed in some of the leading showhouses in America. 

     Many hours were spent by the engineers perfecting the sound equipment, and the acoustics are perfect. 

     A handsomely appointed candy bar is located on the foyer, done in mirror, leather, chrome, and gold tinted cedar and mahogany woods.

Feature published in the Vancouver Sun Wednesday, April 12, 1950

Grand opening Thursday, April 13, 1950

photo | kevin clark | medicine hat

 

thomas merton | the hope of results, the fallacy of success

Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

The logic of worldly success rests on a fallacy: the strange error that our perfection depends on the thoughts and opinions and applause of other men! A weird life it is, indeed, to be living always in somebody else's imagination, as if that were the only place in which one could at last become real!

pictured: Thomas Merton's hermitage

imperative | scott cairns

The thing to remember is how 

Tentative all of this really is. 

You could wake up dead. 

Or the woman you love 

Could decide you’re ugly. 

Maybe she’ll finally give up 

Trying to ignore the way 

You floss your teeth as you 

Watch television. 

All I’m saying Is that there are no sure things here. 

I mean, you’ll probably wake up alive, 

And she’ll probably keep putting off 

Any actual decision about your looks. 

Could be she’ll be glad your teeth are so clean. 

The morning could be full of all the love and kindness you need. 

Just don’t go thinking you deserve any of it.

tom waits | don't plant your bad days

"Don't plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it, you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me - choke those little bad days. Choke 'em down to nothing." 

Tom Waits

"and where there's doubt..." | the prayer of somebody who's not st. francis

"The anonymous text that is usually called the Prayer of Saint Francis is often associated with the Italian Saint Francis of Assisi (c. 1182 – 1226), but entirely absent from his writings. The prayer in its present form has not been traced back further than 1912. Its first known occurrence was in French, in a small spiritual magazine called La Clochette (The Little Bell), published by a Catholic Church organization in Paris named La Ligue de la Sainte-Messe (The League of the Holy Mass). The author's name was not given, although it may have been the founder of La Ligue, Father Esther Bouquerel." 

slightly paraphrased from wikipedia

jeanne murray walker | flight

The angel speeding down the runway pulls up
her wing flaps, and, wouldn't you know it, wobbles, 
then dribbles to a stop. She stands on the windy 
tarmac, embarrassed, brushing her blond hair 
from her eyes, trying to remember how to elevate 
herself, wishing she'd worn jeans instead of 
the girly skirt that looks good when she's flying.   
It's gravity's old malice, showing up in the strangest 
places, now at the corner, where the fortune cookie truck 
forgets how to turn, tipping gracefully, sliding on 
its side as cookies spill into the summer night. 

Then mercy stalls in every precinct of the city 

and we're just bodies, only protoplasm for a wasp 
to sting. Even love is a sad mechanical business then, 
and prayer an accumulation of words I would kill 
to believe in. There's no happy end to a poem
that lacks faith, no way to get out. I could go on, 
mentioning that doubt, no doubt, is a testing. But
meanwhile the bedraggled angel glances towards 
the higher power, wondering how much help she'll get, 
not a manual, for sure, but a pause in entropy perhaps, 
until she can get her wings scissoring. Call it cooperation 
that helps a fledgling rise to build, sustain itself, and 
lift her past the tree line. And then she knows she won't 
fall, oh holy night, can't fall. Anything but. 

shakespeare + st paul | image and imagination

"Christ is the visible image of the invisible God." Colossians 1:15

“And as imagination bodies forth 

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen 

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing 

A local habitation and a name” 

A Midsummer Night's Dream William Shakespeare

william least heat moon | when you start feeling good

"You never feel better than when you start feeling good after you've been feeling bad."

Blue Highways, pg 51 

photo | redemption center

 

naples, usa

amor towles | the difference between everybody and nobody

   "So," said the Count, "are you looking forward to your visit home?"
   "Yes, it will be nice to see everyone," said Nina. "But when we return to Moscow in January, I shall be starting school."

   "You don't seem very excited by the prospect."

   "I fear it will be dreadfully dull," she admitted, "and positively overrun with children."

   The Count nodded gravely to acknowledge the indisputable likelihood of children in the schoolhouse; then, as he dipped his own spoon into the scoop of strawberry, he noted that he had enjoyed school very much.

   "Everybody tells me that."

   "I loved reading the Odyssey and the Aeneid; and I made some of the finest friends of my life..."

   "Yes, yes," she said with a roll of her eyes. "Everybody tells me that too."

   "Well, sometimes everybody tells you something because it is true."

   "Sometimes," Nina clarified, "everybody tells you something because they are everybody. But why should one listen to everybody? Did everybody write the Odyssey? Did everybody write the Aeneid?" She shook her head then concluded definitively: "The only difference between everybody and nobody is all the shoes."

Amor Towles

from A Gentleman in Moscow

thornton wilder | every good and excellent thing

"Every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for."

the nancy drew mystery game

 

f.h. varley | self-portrait

 

dietrich bonhoeffer | music, friendship, games, happiness

Who is there for instance, in our times, who can devote himself with an easy mind to music, friendship, games, or happiness? Surely not the 'ethical' man, but only the Christian.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

Letters and Papers from Prison (192/193)