February 2012
4 posts
“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of...”
– / Jim Morrison (via girlinlondon)
“5. THE MOVEMENTS OF THE ARM
At this point, I should just go ahead and admit...”
– / Rachel Gontijo Araujo, “all the parts of the body below the head” (Evening Will Come, February 2012)
“Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.”
– / Ben Marcus, The Flame Alphabet (via mythologyofblue)
I felt a tremendous distance between me and everything real.
/ Hunter S. Thompson
January 2012
1 post
2 tags
“I tried the key in all the doors, even though he said he didn’t recognize it....”
– / Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer (via howtheheartbends)
November 2011
4 posts
2 tags
/ The law – for what, for whom?
“…It is not surprising that a society so deeply steeped in personality dynamics will occasionally, or frequently, find itself in situations that reveals the hypocrisy of our political and justice system. After all, adopting democracy as the form of our government does not mean that our leaders found the wisdom and integrity to maintain such a value system. Neither does it mean that the...
4 tags
/ Leila de Lima is only using her common sense
“…Already, the justice secretary suspects that GMA may seek political asylum in some other country and not come back to face the very serious charges against her, why should she be allowed to leave the Philippines? Who would be blamed if De Lima allowed the former president to leave and GMA leaves for good? Coming in the wake of the escape of Ramona Bautista, a suspect in the murder of...
4 tags
“…The legal and constitutional issues are complex enough. The key question appears to be: Whether Department of Justice Circular No. 41, issued by then acting Justice Secretary Alberto C. Agra in the last remaining weeks of the Arroyo administration, violates the right to travel enshrined in the Constitution. The circular bears the title: ‘Consolidated rules and regulations...
4 tags
/ Arroyo’s pleas political, not human rights issue
“It would be the supreme irony to allow GMA (Gloria Macapagal-Aroyo) to invoke our most sacred human rights protections to escape justice. That would be her supreme, final perversion of our democratic institutions. While countless voices have correctly quoted human rights law, our democracy must recognize GMA’s pleas as a political, not human rights, issue. “…Gloria...
October 2011
3 posts
3 tags
A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs by Mona Simpson →
6 tags
/ 6-word short stories →
For sale: baby shoes, never worn. — Ernest Hemingway
Machine. Unexpectedly, I’d invented a time — Alan Moore
The baby’s blood type? Human, mostly. — Orson Scott Card
Longed for him. Got him. Shit. — Margaret Atwood
7 tags
“It is a very dismal business when a great personality dies and the world scrabbles about for comment, appraisal and judgment. I have been asked in the last 24 hours to appear and to write and to call in to join in the chorus of voices assessing the life and career of this remarkable man. But what was Steve Jobs? He wasn’t a brilliant and innovative electronics engineer like his partner and...
September 2011
2 posts
3 tags
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us...”
– / Ira Glass (via nefffy)
2 tags
“…In this era of Nora Jones, Diana Krall, Jane Monheit. In this era of Kenny G. In this era of racial division. In this era of marketing hype. In this era of eroding CD sales. Label support. Radio support. Audience support. Where is the black audience? Where are the students, the Gen-exers? Where is the next Trane, Duke, Miles? What can we, how can we, when will we? Young...
August 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Bonsai Edith Tiempo
All that I love I fold over once And once again And keep in a box Or a slit in a hollow post Or in my shoe.
All that I love? Why, yes, but for the moment- And for all time, both. Something that folds and keeps easy, Son’s note or Dad’s one gaudy tie, A roto picture of a queen, A blue Indian shawl, even A money bill.
It’s utter sublimation, A feat, this heart’s control Moment...
3 tags
“Filipinos are bewildered about their identity. They are an Asian people not...”
– / Benigno S. Aquino, Jr., What’s Wrong with the Philippines? (•)
2 tags
“Today…editors are paying real money for poetry; publishers are making a profit on books of verse; and many a young man who, had he been born earlier, would have sustained life on a crust of bread, is now sending for the manager to find out how the restaurant dares try to sell a fellow champagne like this as genuine Pommery Brut. Naturally this is having a marked effect on the life of...
2 tags
“Enjoyment comes from a balance of Recognition and Surprise — we enjoy things that we can relate to and have seen before, but we also like to be surprised. Total recognition is cliché; total surprise is alienating.”
/ TV Tropes Will Ruin Your Life
July 2011
10 posts
1 tag
/ Reading retreats: Paradise for book lovers →
2 tags
“I was lucky to spend time with someone who cared so much, and who worked so...”
– / Sue Tilley, model for Lucian Freud’s Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (•)
/ “British painter Lucian Freud was known for his penetrating gaze and uncompromising nudes.” (•)
7 tags
“Did the artist, by turning her own life into material, give the audience her tacit permission to judge her personal life? Or would the audience have judged her even if she’d kept her private life secret? — “Does drug use enhance creativity? Samuel Coleridge and Baudelaire were on drugs, as were Edgar Allan Poe, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, everyone in the 27 Club, we could go on...
3 tags
“I prayed, prayed, prayed. I hope that God saw me. I called Mom and said that it was not safe we would meet again, but that I would do anything to clear me. I said several times that I loved her. I heard fear in her voice. She cried. It hurt. — People jumped into the water, started swimming…I decided that if he did, I would play dead. I would not run or swim. I can not describe the...
3 tags
“We ran and ran. The worst was when we found out: he that shot, he was disguised as a policeman. Damn. Who should we trust then? If we call the police - it’s the guy who comes and checks or money? But we tried to call the police! They used the damn time. So I gave my phone to Munir and asked him to update the facebook for anyone with a boat in the fjord must help us. We ran back and...
2 tags
“We cannot protect ourselves entirely. But we can be vigilant, particularly on...”
– / Michael Morpurgo, For the People of Norway
2 tags
“Anybody who’s made it will tell you, you can make it. Anyone who hasn’t made it...”
– / John Mayer (•)
2 tags
“Forget about right time right place – it doesn’t exist! You create your place...”
– / John Mayer, on the idea of “Right Time, Right Place” (John Mayer 2011 Clinic at Berklee College of Music)
1 tag
“Artists today think of everything they do as a work of art. It is important to...”
– / Andrew Wyeth (via 23rd-block)
3 tags
/ Philip Glass - Morning Passages ♪ →
May 2011
49 posts
2 tags
“I think there’s a kind of desperate hope built into poetry that one really...”
– / W.S. Merwin (via lesmotsjustes)
2 tags
“If you can explain the work, then you don’t have to make the work…The art...”
– / Yoko Ono (•)
2 tags
“Hammershøi’s most compelling works are his quiet, haunting interiors, their emptiness disturbed only occasionally by the presence of a solitary, graceful figure, often the artist’s wife. Painted within a small tonal range of implied greys, these sparsely-furnished rooms exude an almost hypnotic quietude and sense of melancholic introspection.”
/ Vilhelm Hammershøi: The...
2 tags
“I was at a Kurt Vonnegut talk in New York a few years ago. Talking about writing, life, and everything. “He explained why people have such a need for drama in their life. “He said, ‘People have been hearing fantastic stories since time began. The problem is, they think life is supposed to be like the stories…’ “…But the problem is, life is really...
2 tags
“The only interesting answers are those which destroy the questions.”
– / Susan Sontag (•)
2 tags
“The man that cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.”
– / André Breton (•)
1 tag
“Art and writing at the end of the 1960s had expanded into new kinds of experience. Almost anything could suddenly be labeled ‘art’—a pile of tires, a conversation, the sound of rain outside a window. Turning away from the heroics associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement—the grand gesture—artists and writers suddenly understood the actions of an ordinary life as a type...
2 tags
“I like provocations, but I like provocations for a reason and there was no...”
– Lars von Trier apologizing for his ‘Nazi gaffe’ “…As far as I’m concerned, this is a mature response. Von Trier takes responsibility for the ‘stupid’ things he said, explains that he was ‘panicking’ when he made the comments, and proves that he has...
Anonymous asked: Could you please recommend some tumblrs to follow?
3 tags
/ Pulp Fiction, directed by Quentin Tarantino
Jules: What does Marcellus Wallace look like?
Brett: What?
Jules: What country you from?
Brett: What?
Jules: What ain't no country I ever heard of! They speak English in What?
Brett: What?
Jules: ENGLISH, MOTHERFUCKER! DO-YOU-SPEAK-IT?
Brett: Yes!
Jules: Then you know what I'm saying!
Brett: Yes!
Jules: Describe what Marcellus Wallace looks like!
Brett: What, I-?
Jules: [pointing his gun] Say what again. SAY WHAT AGAIN. I dare you, I double dare you, motherfucker. Say what one more goddamn time.
Brett: He's b-b-black...
Jules: Go on.
Brett: He's bald...
Jules: Does he look like a bitch?
Brett: What?
[Jules shoots Brett in shoulder]
Jules: DOES HE LOOK LIKE A BITCH?
Brett: No!
Jules: Then why you try to fuck him like a bitch, Brett?
Brett: I didn't.
Jules: Yes you did. Yes you did, Brett. You tried to fuck him. And Marcellus Wallace don't like to be fucked by anybody, except Mrs. Wallace.
3 tags
/ Why I Love Black and White by Roger Ebert →
“There are few issues in the area of film preservatin that arouse more anger than the issue of colorization. That is because it is an issue involving taste, and, to put it bluntly, anyone who can accept the idea of the colorization of black-and-white films has bad taste. The issue involved is so clear, and the artistic sin of colorization is so fundamentally wrong, that colorization provides...
3 tags
/ Designers & Books →
“Designers & Books is devoted to publishing lists of books that esteemed members of the design community identify as personally important, meaningful, and formative—books that have shaped their values, their worldview, and their ideas about design.”
2 tags
“Turns out that Soderbergh is a voracious reader, devouring tomes by Jonathan Franzen, Barbara Kingsolver, and David Foster Wallace in what appears to be mere days. And while his grueling work schedule might be part of the reason he soon plans to retire, he carved out time to work on his other creative love, painting.
“Of course, he also logged many hours in front of film, working on...
2 tags
“You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, ‘No, I don’t want to watch TV!’ Raise your voice—they won’t hear you...
4 tags
“Assuming Leslie Knope is real, what lessons have you learned from her?
“Protect your friends. You only have one hometown. If you think you’ve had a bad date, remember, it can always get worse. And it’s okay to eat breakfast for dinner.”
/ Amy Poehler, New York Magazine interview by Kera Bolonik, published May 15, 2011 (•)
2 tags
“For authors, choosing a book cover is the fraught moment their very private creation starts putting on its game face and getting ready to enter the market. For cover designers, it can also be the beginning of their own struggle on behalf of their favorite ideas.
“A proposed cover can be killed for any number of reasons. It’s too dark. It’s too light. (White covers don’t look good on...
2 tags
“…Once compelled to the bookstore, I experience additional compulsions, such as
Offering unsolicited help to confused-looking customers: Most of the time these are high school or college students, searching for assigned reading, usually in the wrong section (Contemporary Authors when they should be in Classics). Not only do I feel compelled to point them to the opposite side of the...
2 tags
“I do philosophy now like an old woman who is always misplacing something and...”
– / Ludwig Wittgenstein, “On Certainty”
3 tags
“I heard some politician say recently that closing libraries is no big deal, since the kids now have the Internet to do their reading and school work. It’s not the same thing. As any teacher who recalls the time when students still went to libraries and read books could tell him, study and reflection come more naturally to someone bent over a book. Seeing others, too, absorbed in their...
3 tags
“I don’t know of anything more disheartening than the sight of a shut down library. No matter how modest its building or its holdings, in many parts of this country a municipal library is often the only place where books in large number on every imaginable subject can be found, where both grownups and children are welcome to sit and read in peace, free of whatever distractions and...
2 tags
“If you’re looking for sympathy you’ll find it between shit and syphilis in the...”
– / David Sedaris (via maekae)
3 tags
LARRY: Hello, stranger. ANNA: Hello. LARRY: Intense conversation? ANNA: His father died. Were you spying? LARRY: Lovingly observing, with a telescope. LARRY: He’s taller than his photo. ANNA: His photo’s a headshot. LARRY: Yeah, I know, but his head implied a short body, but in fact his head is deceptive. ANNA: Deceptive. LARRY: Yeah, he’s actually got a long body....