But just because you can’t have opinions about all things doesn’t mean you can’t have opinions about any things. There are some things we know for sure. These might be minor—how to treat your parents, how to grow tomatoes, how to build a house. We each have a few such things. Start there with your feet firmly planted and see how it feels. Then take a few small steps until you reach a place that still feels firm, but where nobody else is standing. Then try to make something beautiful with what you see.
Jonathan Harris — World Building 5:16pm on January 30, 2016It reminds me that story is the atomic unit of magic. […] It proves to me that life is about noticing and deeming the mundane as special, and that if you do that, just maybe you can wring the last bits of beauty out of this life while you’re here.
Frank Chimero – Text Playlist 4:48pm on January 30, 2016Readers want our pages to look very much like pages they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.
Vonnegut: How To Write With Style – Novelr 3:55pm on January 30, 2016Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.
Vonnegut: How To Write With Style – Novelr 3:51pm on January 30, 2016I have no plan to stop making dick jokes or to swear off ragging people who clearly have it coming to them. It’s just that it’s important to me to make world-class dick jokes and to rag the worthy in a way that no one is expecting. I want to become an evangelist for hard work and editing, and I want to get to a place where it shows in everything that I do, make, and share. Yes, even if it makes me sound like a fancy guy who just doesn’t get it.
Better – Merlin Mann 3:49pm on January 30, 2016I think one of the best things you can do for an artist is to trust them. Especially when they change.
Frank Chimero – Kid A 12:04pm on January 27, 2016We come to other people’s creative work out of a secret desire and hope that someone understands us better than we understand ourselves. We come to Austen and Kubrick and Basquiat and Aretha under the hopes that they have the same acute feelings, but more able hands and voices that can some how capture that fleeting emotion and crystalize it. We quote, because someone said it better than we can.
Frank Chimero – There is No Catching Up 11:19am on January 27, 2016As a rule, with me an unfinished thing is a thing that might as well be rubbed out. It’s better, if there’s something good in it that I might make use of elsewhere, to leave it at the back of my mind than on paper in a drawer. If I leave it in a drawer it remains the same thing but if it’s in the memory it becomes transformed into something else.
Paris Review – The Art of Poetry No. 1, T. S. Eliot 11:58pm on January 26, 2016I don’t think good poetry can be produced in a kind of political attempt to overthrow some existing form. I think it just supersedes. People find a way in which they can say something. “I can’t say it that way, what way can I find that will do?” One didn’t really bother about the existing modes.
Paris Review – The Art of Poetry No. 1, T. S. Eliot 11:56pm on January 26, 2016He was a marvelous critic because he didn’t try to turn you into an imitation of himself. He tried to see what you were trying to do.
Paris Review – The Art of Poetry No. 1, T. S. Eliot 11:52pm on January 26, 2016I believe if there’s any kind of God it wouldn’t be in any of us, not you or me but just this little space in between. If there’s any kind of magic in this world it must be in the attempt of understanding someone sharing something. I know, it’s almost impossible to succeed but who cares really? The answer must be in the attempt.
Quote by Richard Linklater: “I believe if there’s any kind of God it wouldn’…” 12:44pm on January 23, 2016Your heart goes tick tock. Listen to it. Put your hand on it and feel it. Count the beats: one, two, three, four….When you have counted sixty beats a minute will have passed. After sixty minutes an hour will have passed. In one hour a plant grows a hundredth of an inch. In twelve hours the sun rises and sets. Twenty-four hours make one whole day and one whole night. After this the clock is no good to us any more. We must look at the calendar: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday make one week. Four weeks make one month: January. After January come February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December. Now twelve months have passed, and your heart is still going tick tock. A whole year of seconds and minutes have passed. In a year we have spring, summer, autumn and winter. Time never stops: the clocks show us the hours, calendars show us the days, and time goes on and on and eats up everything. It makes even iron fall to dust and it draws the lines on old people’s faces. After a hundred years, in a second, one man dies and another is born.
Design as Art — Bruno Munari 11:29am on January 23, 2016It depends on the person looking, because each of us sees only what he knows.
Design as Art — Bruno Munari 11:21am on January 23, 2016Communication must be instant and it must be exact.
Design as Art — Bruno Munari 11:19am on January 23, 2016A leaf is beautiful not because it is stylish but because it is natural, created in its exact form by its exact function. A designer tries to make an object as naturally as a tree puts forth a leaf.
Design as Art — Bruno Munari 11:16am on January 23, 2016My library is an archive of longings.
Quote by Susan Sontag: “My library is an archive of longings.” 4:34pm on January 22, 2016Draw a monster. Now tell me: why is it a monster?
Quote by Janice Lee: “Draw a monster. Why is it a monster?” 9:54am on January 12, 2016But, the things that we make are more than just objects. They’re the way we paint pictures of what’s to come. […] They come from the friction between the world we live in and the one we want to live in by building on top of our longings and exemplifying our capabilities.
The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero 11:58pm on January 11, 2016Projects that seem cold or excessively composed are more indicative of a lack of understanding than a mark of professionalism. One can speak naturally and personally when they know someone well, and a friendly, affectionate, and hospitable tone is essential to cater to audiences, encourage dialogue with platforms, and produce the utility and resonance that great design seeks to achieve.
The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero 11:57pm on January 11, 2016One human life, closely observed, is everyone’s life. In the particular is the universal.
The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero 11:56pm on January 11, 2016