Remember that writing is not typing. Thinking, researching, contemplating, outlining, composing in your head and in sketches, maybe some typing, with revisions as you go, and then more revisions, deletions, emendations, additions, reflections, setting aside and returning afresh, because a good writer is always a good editor of his or her own work. Typing is this little transaction in the middle of two vast thoughtful processes.
How to Be a Writer: 10 Tips from Rebecca Solnit | Literary Hub 8:57am on September 15, 2016There could not be two substances in the universe, Spinoza argued, one physical and the other divine, since this involved a logical contradiction. If God and Nature were distinct, then it must be the case that Nature had some qualities that God lacked, and the idea of a supreme being lacking anything was incoherent. It follows that God and Nature are just two names for the same thing, the Being that comprises everything that ever existed or ever will exist.
Are We Really So Modern? – The New Yorker 4:49pm on September 2, 2016Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing.
Gene Wilder Was Right: Gilda Radner Didn’t Have To Die, And We Need To Talk About Why She Did – Medium 4:41pm on September 1, 2016This is why, Gottlieb observes, people complain that philosophy never seems to be making progress: “Any corner of it that comes generally to be regarded as useful soon ceases to be called philosophy.”
Are We Really So Modern? – The New Yorker 4:33pm on September 1, 2016Modernity cannot be identified with any particular technological or social breakthrough. Rather, it is a subjective condition, a feeling or an intuition that we are in some profound sense different from the people who lived before us.
Are We Really So Modern? – The New Yorker 4:05pm on September 1, 2016The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests. The library was open, unending, free.
Between the World and Me — Ta-Nehisi Coates 10:42pm on August 31, 2016That said, when I am actually procrastinating, it’s usually because at some level I don’t fully believe in (or agree with) whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing. Or maybe it’s because I’m afraid I will fail once I do get to work.
Saeed Jones on Twitter 2:12pm on August 26, 2016
Part of that is knowing when not to work. There is a time for output but also a time for rest, for intake, for seeing what else the world has to offer.
Austin Kleon — Jessa Crispin, The Creative Tarot I knew nothing… 7:37pm on August 24, 2016If your everyday life seems poor, don’t blame it; blame yourself; admit to yourself that you are not enough of a poet to call forth its riches; because for the creator there is not poverty and no poor, indifferent place.
RILKE’S LETTERS TO A YOUNG POET 10:03pm on August 16, 2016In art, Rilke had started to realize, there was never anything waiting on the other side: There was no god, no secret revealed, and in most cases no reward. There was only the doing.
Austin Kleon — Rachel Corbett, You Must Change Your Life: The… 9:58pm on August 16, 2016Rilke wrote “in a tone of authority that only an amateur would dare.”
Austin Kleon — Rachel Corbett, You Must Change Your Life: The… 9:51pm on August 16, 2016Watch a child when she is drawing or painting. You will see a worried look on her face — a look of intense concentration. Is she working or playing?
Sister Corita Kent and Jan Steward — Learning by Heart 12:06am on August 14, 2016
We are imperfect lenses trying to resolve our influences onto a new screen, and the mistakes we make in copying we call originality.
Clayton Cubitt on Twitter: “We are imperfect lenses trying to resolve our influences onto a new screen, and the mistakes we make in copying we call originality.” 12:02am on August 14, 2016The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
Quote by Rainer Maria Rilke: “The purpose of life is to be defeated by greate…” 9:20pm on August 13, 2016Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest people infinite distances exist, a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them, if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, which gives them the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole and before an immense sky.
Quote by Rainer Maria Rilke: “The point of marriage is not to create a quick …” 9:18pm on August 13, 2016Song itself cannot happen without time, without the voice rising and falling away.
For is not impermanence the very fragrance of our days?
The paradoxical virtue of reading: it takes us out of the world so we might find meaning in it.
Austin Kleon — Daniel Pennac, The Rights of the Reader This is… 6:58pm on August 10, 2016