"So many books, so little time."“When you read a short story, you come out a little more aware and a little more in love with the world around you.” – George SaundersWhy read short stories? As the late, great literary critic Harold Bloom so elegantly put it: “Short stories favor the tacit; they comp
"I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."— WhitmanText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThere is infinite treasure— oh! inestimable riches... And the secret of it all is, to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment— to put things down w
The poet-philosopher is doomed to speak, to struggle, to suffer alone.THE TRAGEDY of Friedrich Nietzsche’s life was that it happened to be a one-man show, a monodrama wherein no other actor entered upon the stage…For it was voluntarily, in full lucidity of mind, that he renounced a secure existence
By: Bertrand Russell“A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.”― Bertrand RussellThe Conquest of Happiness, published in 1930, is Bertrand Russell’s honest and deeply practical attempt to help us live fuller, more joyful liv
By: Erik RittenberryPhoto: Erik RittenberrySuppose that we said yes to a single moment, then we have not only said yes to ourselves, but to the whole of existence. For nothing stands alone, either in ourselves or in things; and if our soul did but once vibrate and resound with a chord of happiness,
By: Jack Gilbert“I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can.” ~Jack GilbertJack Gilbert lived a life of fierce tenderness, writing about love and loss with such raw clarity that it felt like he had truly lived a thousand lives in one.Gilbert's poems are not showy.
Photo: Henri Cartier-Bresson“People wonder why the novel is the most popular form of literature; people wonder why it is read more than books of science or books of metaphysics. The reason is very simple; it is merely that the novel is more true than they are.”― G.K. ChestertonWhat is a quiet novel?
By: Robinson JeffersText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedHow many turn back toward dreams and magic, how many children Run home to Mother Church, Father State, To find in their arms the delicious warmth and folding of souls. The age weakens and settles home toward
By: Terence MckennaArt: Nicolas RosenfeldUnexamined cultural values and limitations of language have made us unwitting prisoners of our own assumptions.— Terence McKennaWe have gone sick by following a path of untrammeled rationalism… we have gone very, very sick. And the body politic, like any body
9 brief poems by the Portuguese master.Give me more wine, because life is nothing. — Fernando PessoaAh, Pessoa... what’s not to love? This quietly brilliant, melancholic soul who spent his days in a dull office job, then slipping away into the night to write poetry that cracks open your mind and hea
By: Jim HarrisonText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThe cost of flight is landing. On this warm winter day in the southwest, down here on the edge of the border I want to go to France where we all came from where the Occident was born near the ancient caves near L
By: Erik Rittenberry“Read day and night, devour books… Through books you can retrace your way back to the origins of spleen, discarding history and its illusions.”—Emil CioranOver the past few months, I’ve been immersed in a handful of books that've left my mind in a perpetual state of contemplation
By: Mark StrandClaude Monet – Jardin a Sainte-Adresse – 1867Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedNot every man knows what he shall sing at the end, Watching the pier as the ship sails away, or what it will seem like When he’s held by the sea’s roar, motionless, the
By: Carl Jung“Every creative person is a duality or a synthesis of contradictory aptitudes. On the one side he is a human being with a personal life, while on the other side he is an impersonal, creative process… Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.”
By: Charles Bukowski"We've both been through fire, dear friend, and there's more to come.” — BukowskiText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedif we take what we can see— the engines driving us mad, lovers finally hating; this fish in the market staring upward into our
The swiftest things are the softest things. A bird is active, because a bird is soft. A stone is helpless, because a stone is hard. The stone must by its own nature go downwards, because hardness is weakness. The bird can of its nature go upwards, because fragility is force. Read more
"It's a folk singer's job to comfort disturbed people and to disturb comfortable people."— Woody GuthrieThe great Woody Guthrie was born on this day in 1912 in a small town somewhere in Oklahoma. Anyone familiar with his songs knows that he was a poetically raw songwriter, a troubadour for the troub
By: Ray Bradbury“There is only one type of story in the world. Your story.” — Ray BradburyWhat, you ask, does writing teach us?First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards
By: Jiddu KrishnamurtiJean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, the Forest of Fontainebleau, 1834“The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.”― J. KrishnamurtiMost of us are so unconcerned with this extraordinary universe about us; we never even see the waving of the leaf in th
By: Erik RittenberryPhoto: Erik RittenberryI know always that I am an outsider; a stranger in this century and among those who are still men.—H.P. LovecraftText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedHappiness has never been my aim. I'm not too interested in the anesthe
