Malouf

“But the war for me had a private and more sinister dimension. Though I knew with one half of me that it belonged to the world of daylight reality, the world of newspaper headlines and apocalyptic announcements from the bottom of the stairs, I also knew, in some other part of my being, that this was only half the truth; there was more to the war than the wavering voices told us, more even than my Aunt Vera knew. When I crawled into bed at night and my father came to put out the light the war took on its real form. Giant staghorns leapt through the papered glare of my bedroom window, and our fernery beyond, with its mossy fish-pond and slatted frames hung with baskets of hare’s foot and maidenhair, sprang up in a shadow around me, an insubstantial jungle there was no way through. I choked Hitler and Mussolini, those historical bogeymen that even adults believed in, burst in upon me bearing their terrible paraphernalia of barbed wire, bayonets, tin helmets, hand grenades; their purpose now having nothing to do with the wall-map and its pins in our spare room, but being, quite simply, to reach up over the foot of my bed or down over the pillow and drag me into the pallid, black-and-white world of newspaper photographs and newsreels—a world without color, like the night itself, in which everyone was a victim, pale, luminous, with flesh already frazzled round the edge, and where being a child with curly hair and apple cheeks that everyone wondered at was no protection at all. The war wasn’t one of those activities that were strictly for grown-ups. The newsreels were full of children no older than myself climbing up gangplanks or being herded into trains. And how else did they get into the war (I couldn’t imagine their parents allowing them to go) unless they had been dragged there, over the pillow and down into the furballed, spider-crawling darkness under their beds?”


June 13, 2000

Baum

“Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children. For, aside from my evident inability to do anything “great,” I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one’s heart and brings its own reward.”
Frank Baum
August 17, 2000

Fitzgerald

“At any rate, let us love for awhile, for a year or so, you and me. That’s a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion. Well, I have that last and I will make the usual nothing of it.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Diamond As Big As The Ritz”
August 16, 2000

Buchan

“I believe everything out of the common. The only thing to distrust is the normal.”


August 15, 2000

Friedman

“People may surprise you with unexpected kindness. Dogs have a depth of loyalty that often we seem unworthy of. But the love of a cat is a blessing, a privilege in this world.”
Kinky Friedman
July 30, 2000

Morris

“In similar context, I was spending some time in Virginia with the writer Edwin M. Yoder, Jr., whom I had known for more than thirty years and who had always seemed level-headed enough to me. Ed had a Siamese cat he considered to be directly descended from the royal cays in the nineteenth-century court of King Mongkut of Siam. As with James Jones’s stuck-up Parisian cat, this one would vault onto Yoder’s shoulder and then drape himself, in the manner of a fox fur, around his neck. I thought this degrading. This can’t name was Pharaoh, and he communicated with Yoder in low, emphatic, guttered syllables – just sat there in front of his patron and talked. I was actually witness one evening to the owner’s pitting a slice of cantaloupe on the creature’s dish, which he forthwith devoured, then turned to us and, I swear to God, said “Yum! Yum! Yum! Yum!” Yoder replied, “Yum! Yum! Yum! Yum!” right back; then the two of them began conversing in deep, throaty syllables reminiscent of the dialogue in the old B movie Invasion of the Cat Monsters, emphasizing these exchanges by histrionic movements of both their heads. Now, if you see a Pulitzer prize – winning editorialist whom you have known for Lord knows how long standing nostril to nostril with a garrulous cat and talking in the cat’s language, that cannot help but give you pause about the man, and for that matter the cat.”


July 30, 2000

Gass

“Every day, from the library, books are borrowed and taken away like tubs of chicken to be consumed, though many are also devoured on the premises, in the Reading Room, where traditionally the librarian, wearing her clichés, shushes an already silent multitude and glares at the offending air. Yet there, or in someone’s rented room, or even by a sunny pool—who can predict the places where the encounter will occur?—the discovery will be made. And a finger will find the place and mark it before the books’ covers come closed; or its reader will rise and bear her prize out of the library into the kitchen, back to her dorm room, or, along with flowers and candy, to a bedside, in a tote bag onto the beach; or perhaps a homeless scruffy, who has been huddling near a radiator, will leave the volume behind him when he finally goes, as if what his book said has no hold on his heart, because he cannot afford a card. Yet, like Columbus first espying land, each will have discovered what he or she cares about, will know at last what it is to love – a commonplace occurrence – for, in the library, such epiphanies, such enrichments of mind and changes of heart, are the stuff of every day.”
William H. Gass, “In Defense of the Book, On the enduring pleasures of paper, type, page and ink”
July 14, 2000

Sedaris

“Test eye shadow on all the rabbits you want. Strap electrodes to the skulls of rhesus moneys and shock them into a stupor, but it is inhuman to place a nudist on horseback the day after a chili cook-off. (Was he always an Appaloosa?)”


July 13, 2000

Sedaris

“In terms of emotional comfort, it was our belief that no amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well-made cocktail.”


July 13, 2000

Sedaris

“My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions who hate you fro what you are and you’re likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks. I haven’t got the slightest idea how to change people, but still I keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.”


July 13, 2000

Sedaris

“Following a brief period of hard-won independence she came to appreciate the fact that people aren’t foolish as much as they are kind.”


July 13, 2000

Gass

“Unlike the love we’ve made or meals we’ve eaten, books congregate to form a record around us of what they’ve fed our stomachs or our brains. These are not a hunter’s trophies but the living animals themselves.”
William H. Gass, “In Defense of the Book, On the enduring pleasures of paper, type, page and ink”
July 12, 2000

Gass

“We shall understand what a book is, and why a book has the value many persons have, and is even less replaceable than a person, if we forget how important to it is its body, the building that has been built to hold its lines of language safely together through many adventures and a long time. Words on a screen have visual qualities, to be sure, and these darkly limn their shape, but they have no materiality, they are only shadows, and when the light shifts they’ll be gone. Off the screen they do not exist as words. They do not wait to be reseen, reread; they only wait to be remade, relit. I cannot carry them beneath a tree or onto a side porch; I cannot argue in their margins; I cannot enjoy the memory of my dismay when, perhaps after years, I return to my treasured copy of Treasure Island to find the jam I inadvertently smeared there still spotting a page precisely at the place where Billy Bones chases Black Dog out of the Admiral Benbow with a volley of oaths and where his cutlass misses its mark to notch the inn’s wide sign instead.”

William H. Gass, “In Defense of the Book, On the enduring pleasures of paper, type, page and ink”
July 12, 2000

Gass

“When Ben Johnson was a small boy, his tutor, William Camden, persuaded him of the virtue of keeping a commonplace book: pages where an ardent reader might copy down passages that especially pleased him, preserving sentences that seemed particularly apt or wise or rightly formed and that would, because they were written afresh in a new place, and in a context of favor, be better remembered, as if they were being set down at the same time in the memory of the mind. Here were more than turns of phrase that could brighten an otherwise gloomy page. Here were statements that seemed so directly truthful they might straighten a warped soul on seeing them again, inscribed, as they were, in a child’s wide round trusting hand, to be read and reread like the propositions of a primer, they were so bottomed and basic.”

William H. Gass, “In Defense of the Book, On the enduring pleasures of paper, type, page and ink”
July 11, 2000

Malouf

“Maybe in the end, even the lies we tell define us. And better, some of them, than our most earnest attempts at the truth.”


June 13, 2000

Ghosts of Mississippi

"When you hate, the only person who suffers is you; because most of the people you hate don't know and the others don't care."


June 6, 2000

Morris

"Southerners hate to be strangers to each other. That's why Atlanta is so traumatic for Southerners to visit. Southerners like to see you and say, "Hi, how are you?" And the Yankees in Atlanta just don't respond to that. As for the native Atlantans, there's a city they remember that no longer really exists. But the Delta! It's still here. I've never seen a place where people talk so much to each other, and not just whites and whites, blacks and blacks. Damned if the whites and blacks don't carry on a conversation all day long."


June 6, 2000

Morris

"The systematic organization necessary to get significant images of celluloid is vast. The perpetual waiting around on the set, the moods, the anxieties, the personalities, the ennui, the flippant and cynical Hollywood humor and extravagant one-liners provide their own histrionics. "Once a movie starts shooting," John Gregory Dunne has written, "it resembles a freight train without breaks; it gathers speed and goes, and it is best to keep out of the way... Tension is the given of a movie, and it has less to do with ego than with the intensity of short-term relationships, a life time lived in a seventy-day shoot.""


June 6, 2000

Morris

"The set was not only a communal phenomenon but also an acutely hierarchical one. Everyone had a fucntion, and the chain of command, even given the banter and boisterousness of frivolous moments, began at the top with the director, producers, and stars, moving on down through the entire assemblage to the most obscure grips and gaffers. The Hollywood phraseology could not be more specific: "Above the line" meant "talent"- directors, producers, actors, screenwriters; "Below the line" meant the technicians. This hierarchy was most tangible than any I had ever observed, even in Washington D.C., a caste town if ever there was one, and it dutifiully extended even to the specific dimensions of the private trailers always parked near the shooting area: forty feet in length, or thirty, or twenty, two-room or one-room, the director and the stars with the larger and best-appointed down to the actors of lesser stature with the more diminutive ones. A few dine privately in these air-conditioned trailers with kitchenette and bathroom and bedroom and television, while the members of the crew are outside, under a tent, serving themselves buffet. And everyone is eating well."


June 5, 2000

Morris

"The whole vicinity is a luminous burst of light- lights everywhere in the middle of the woods. To the side is a big rig, several vans and smaller trucks, a Lincoln Town Car for the star, Alec Baldwin, steel trunks filled with esoteric equipment, portable generators, a great welter of cable, nets, sandbags, grip stands, opaqhe boards, trucks loaded with ladders, tools, tripods, reflectors, ropes. Between the massive columns of the ruins a camera arches upward and dollies back. Paraphenalia dangles from the belts of these bustling people; many of them carry walkie talkies and wear headsets. Everyone seems to be rushing somewhere. Almost everyone has a stainless steel necklace with a laminated card attached. The cards display a blown-up Mississippi road map tinted red in the background with, The Mississippi Project Cast And Crew written across it. Muscular figures bearing tattoos shout, "Coming through! Watch your feet!" They are carrying boxes, two-by-fours, axes, sawes, crates, odd items of all descriptions. Many are wearing bandannas, which they often take off to wipe away the sweat. These, I learn, are the grips, the equivalent of stagehands, and they seem heedless to the filming itself, even to the anarchy they themselves are helping to create. They move forward to whatever destination with an almost rank and churlish resolve.

The sense of frantic motion is notable: what appears to be chaos, tension, and confusion interspersed with swift movements of utter stillness and quiet, then noise and movement again. For the maiden visitor, such as I, to an important Hollywood set, the mood appears enigmatic, almost demented. On this evening I feel like an intruder in an ant colony, the worker ants everywhere hurrying along, each with a task to do, the security men who enforce lockup being the guardian ants of the colony, protecting accesses to the heart of the compound, and in the middle of this ceaseless motion the monarch, stationary in front of the monitor, the center of attention, everyone scurrying around this personage desiring only to please: the director."


May 29, 2000

Morris

"There are not many prospects in America so beautiful as a field of white cotton in the early fall; and if you stand in the right spot in late afternoon in the Delta, you catch the golden glow of autumn's setting sun, the verdant green of the trees along the rivers, the bright red mechanical cotton pickers, the panoply of white in the undulating gloaming. It makes you feel big and important in such a moment-- at least those who never worked these fields-- to know that the ancient Egyptians grew this same cotton, and that it has been with us since hierogpyphics. There are not many American places where you can see so far, thirty miles away, it seems, under the copious sweep of the horizons. You can stand up there in Kansas or Nebraska and do that, but there is nothing to see except more of Kansas and Nebraska. Yet, in this glutinous and devouring soil cotton has forever pertained to blood and guilt, as it must have too with the Egyptians."


May 29, 2000

The Dalai Lama

"I think in many ways narrow-minded attitudes lead to extreme thinking. And this creates problems. For instance, Tibet was a Buddhist nation for many centuries. Naturally, that resulted in Tibetans feeling that Buddhism was the best religion, and a tendency to feel that it would be a good thing if all of humanity became Buddhist. The idea that everyone should be a Buddhist is quite extreme. And that kind of extreme thinking just causes problems. But now that we've left Tibet, we've had a chance to come into contact with other religious traditions and learn about them. This has resulted in coming closer to reality-- realizing that among humanity there are so many different mental dispositions. Even if we tried to make the whole world Buddhist it would be impractical. Through closer contact with other traditions you realize the positive things about them. Now, when confronted with another religion, initially a positive feeling, a comfortable feeling, will arise. We'll feel if that person finds a different tradition more suitable, more effective, then that's good! Then it's like going to a restaurant we can all sit down at one table and order different dishes according to one's taste. We might eat different dishes, but nobody argues about it."


May 27, 2000

The Dalai Lama

"So, let us reflect on what is truly of value in life, what gives meaning to our lives, and set our priorities on the basis of that. The purpose of our lives needs to be positive. We weren't born with the purpose of causing trouble, harming others. For our life to be a value, I think we must develop basic good human qualities- warmth, kindness, compassion. Then our life becomes meaningful and more peaceful- happier."


May 27, 2000

The Dalai Lama

"We can also see that our emotional health is enhanced by feelings of affection. To understand this, we need only to reflect on how we feel when others show us warmth and affection. Or, observe how our own affectionate feelings or attitude automatically and naturally affect us from within, how they make us feel. These gentler emotions and the positive behaviors that go with them lead to a happier family and community life.

So, I think that we can infer that our fundamental human nature is one of gentleness. And if this is the case, then it makes all the more sense to try to live a way of life that is more in accordance with this basic gentle nature of our being...

Of course we can't ignore the fact that conflicts and tensions do exist, not only within an individual mind but also within the family, when we interact with other people, and at the soceital levels, the national level, and the global level. So, looking at this, some people conclude that human nature is basically aggressive. They may point to human history, suggesting that compared to other mammals', human behavior is much more aggressive. Or, they may claim, "Yes, compassion is a part of our mind. But anger is also a part of our mind. They are equally a part of our nature, both are more or less and the same level." Nonetheless... it is still my firm conviction that human nature is essentially compassionate, gentle. That is the predominate feature of human nature. Anger, violence, and aggression may certainly arise, but I think it's on a secondary or more superficial level, in a sense, they arise when we are frustrated in our efforts to achieve love and affection. They are not part of our most basic, underlying nature."


May 27, 2000

Dostoyevsky

"You know... photographs are only very rarely good likenesses, and one knows why. It's because the original, I mean each one of us, is only very rarely a good likeness of himself. Only at rare moments does a human face express its chief feature, its most characteristic idea. An artist can study a face and gauge its main idea, though at the moment he copies it, it might not be on the face at all."


May 26, 2000

Dostoyevsky

"Still, maybe it's better just to insult people. At least it eliminates the misfortune of loving them."


April 29, 2000

Dostoyevsky

"He's a very proud man, as yourself have just said, and many very proud people like to believe in God, particularly if they like to look down on other people. I think many strong people have a sort of natural compulsion to find someone or something to worship. A strong man often finds it very difficult to endure his own strength."


April 29, 2000

Styron

"If the Lord giveth, which I heard you say at a funeral not too long ago, and if the Lord taketh away, which I also heard you proclaim with such sturdy acceptance, is not the Lord accountable for what happens in the time between the giving and the taking?"


April 19, 2000

Cather

"Men travel faster now but I do not know if they go to better things."


April 17, 2000

Cather

"Setting is accident. Either a building is a part of a place, or it is not. Once that kinship is there, time will only make it stronger."


April 17, 2000

Cather

"The sky was as full of motion and change as the desert beneath it was monotonous and still -- and there was so much sky, more than at sea, more than anywhere else in the world. The plain was there, under one's feet, but what one saw when one looked about was that brilliant blue world of stinging air and moving cloud. Even the mountains were mere ant-hills under it. Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was far away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!"


April 17, 2000

Rushdie

"Who knows what makes people friends? Something in the way they move. The way they sing off-key."


March 13, 2000

Rushdie

"When Fate sends a gift, one receives good fortune."


March 10, 2000

Haden-Guest

"Note: Artists are frequently the least reliable persons to ask about the springs of their own work."


March 3, 2000

Judd

"Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its content were meant to be. Otherwise art is only show and monkey business."
Donald Judd
March 3, 2000

Schjeldahl

"There's a very understandable tendency to deny the new. It seems to me that when things are moving at their fastest, a certain melancholy, an ennui, is at its maximum. But people get over their depression and discover that the present moment has the unique property of being the only present moment. Things push forward, backward, sideways. They change."
Peter Schjeldahl
March 3, 2000

Naylor

"A person is made up of much more than the "now.""


February 22, 2000

Naylor

"Now I'm gonna tell you about cool. It comes with the cultural territory: the beating of the bush drum, the rocking of the slave ship, the rhythm of the hand going from cotton to sack to cotton row and back again. It went on to settle into the belly of the blues, the arms of Jackie Robinson, and the head of every ghetto kid who lives to a ripe old age. You can keep it, you can hide it, you can blow it-- but even when your ass is in the tightest crack, you must never, ever, LOSE it."


February 22, 2000

Naylor

"Nothing I had met in that world had prepared me for your possibility."


February 22, 2000

Naylor

"She begins to learn even at this age: there is more to be known behind what the eyes can see."


February 22, 2000

Naylor

"It only takes time for a man to grow older, but how many of them grow up?"


February 22, 2000