February 2009
34 posts
“but because truly being here is so much; because everything here apparently needs us, this fleeting world, which in some strange way keeps calling to us. us, the most fleeting of all.”
ninth duino elegy, rainer maria rilke
“memoir isn’t a summary of a life; it’s a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition.”
william zinsser, on writing well, 2004
“in fact a book, printed or written, has a tendency to be a beautiful object, and that we of this age should generally produce ugly books, shows, i fear, something like malice prepense-a determination to put our eyes in our pockets whenever we can.”
“well, i lay it down, first, that a book quite un-ornamented can look actually and positively beautiful, and not merely un-ugly, if...
“his first thought on getting out of bed—if he had any thought at all–was to get back in again.”
maira kalman
“i say collecting books is an addiction with few harmful consequences compared to most other addictions.” anonymous, nytimes
15 page spread on one of my very favorite authors.
the new yorker, the background hum; ian mcewan’s art of unease, 2/23
“it isn’t angels necessarily who are going to save us.”
“if we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.”
george eliot
the be good tanyas, littlest birds →
leanne shapton, nytimes →
here's looking at you kid, the gaslight anthem →
“every event is, in a sense, optional, and the inhabitant is in the happy position of being able to choose his spectacle and so conserve his soul.”
e.b. white, here is new york, 1948
“she said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad, but...”
