Asad Chishti

"I’ve been all over the world and I’ve never seen a statue of a critic."

Tue, 21 May 2013 01:22:47 -0400

“I’ve been all over the world and I’ve never seen a statue of a critic.”

- +Leonard Bernstein

"Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you’ve learned, but in the questions..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 12:50:27 -0400

“Your preparation for the real world is not in the answers you’ve learned, but in the questions you’ve learned how to ask yourself.”

- +Bill Watterson

explore-blog: May 20, 1990: Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill...

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:11:02 -0400

explore-blog:

May 20, 1990: Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson’s remarkable Kenyon College commencement address on creative integrity.

nevver: Calvin and Hobbes

Mon, 20 May 2013 10:02:58 -0400

nevver:

Calvin and Hobbes

"A good life is still a life. It must involve a full share of suffering, loneliness, disappointment..."

Sun, 19 May 2013 21:29:14 -0400

“A good life is still a life. It must involve a full share of suffering, loneliness, disappointment and coming to terms with one’s own mortality and the deaths of those one loves. To live a life that is good as a life involves all this.”

- Truth. (via explore-blog)

D: "The pirate had a hook for a hand, wooden stump for a leg, and an eyepad." A: "Eyepatch, Dad?"

Sun, 19 May 2013 21:18:15 -0400

D: "The pirate had a hook for a hand, wooden stump for a leg, and an eyepad." A: "Eyepatch, Dad?"
D: "Hmm?"
A: "Eyepatch not iPad, right?"
D: "Yes.."

"There is no great genius without some touch of madness."

Sun, 19 May 2013 20:41:21 -0400

“There is no great genius without some touch of madness.”

- +Seneca via JCR

Hilo there. How are you this fine morning? I hope this missive...

Sat, 18 May 2013 15:46:26 -0400

Hilo there. How are you this fine morning? I hope this missive finds you well wherever it is that you may dwell. What is it that you truly desire to tell? C’mon along now, we do not dwell.

How the lion realizes his dream. (for the twins who read, write...

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:53:00 -0400

How the lion realizes his dream.

(for the twins who read, write and listen)

"The Greek word for ‘return’ is nostos. Algos means ‘suffering.’ So nostalgia is the suffering caused..."

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:50:15 -0400

“The Greek word for ‘return’ is nostos. Algos means ‘suffering.’ So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.”

- Milan Kundera (via tattoolit)

“Orange you glad?” (An ongoing project.)

Fri, 17 May 2013 10:40:57 -0400

“Orange you glad?” (An ongoing project.)

indianajosh: thenoobyorker: By way of synecdoche and...

Tue, 14 May 2013 01:01:18 -0400

indianajosh:

thenoobyorker:

By way of synecdoche and mexistentialist.

I sympathize, I mispronounce every other word. Navid can vouch for me.

Incessant and perhaps even obsessive independent reading was a primary source of my education growing up and always provided me with a very large vocabulary that I was never quite sure how to pronounce properly, because I was discovering all of these new words entirely on my own as mute and static text on a page.

It still happens today, and I’ve had people in my life (recently, actually) who have tried correcting my pronunciation of certain words, perhaps even just jokingly, and I’ve quietly always felt really sorry for them because they’re drawing attention to what’s really one of the least important or useful aspects of these words and treating it as something critical and necessary. I’ve never understood it; it’s always sort of struck me as some form of insecure shaming or something.

Agreed.

literaryjukebox: I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a...

Sat, 11 May 2013 14:17:59 -0400

literaryjukebox:

I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wandering awed about on a splintered wreck I’ve come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty beats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them, under the wind-rent clouds, upstream and down.

Annie Dillard in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Song: “Ageless Beauty” by Stars

"Fantasies have to be unrealistic because the moment, the second that you get what you seek, you..."

Fri, 10 May 2013 08:16:10 -0400

“Fantasies have to be unrealistic because the moment, the second that you get what you seek, you don’t, you can’t want it anymore. In order to continue to exist, desire must have its objects perpetually absent. It’s not the “it” that you want, it’s the fantasy of “it.” So, desire supports crazy fantasies. This is what Pascal means when he says that we are only truly happy when daydreaming about future happiness. Or why we say the hunt is sweeter than the kill. Or be careful what you wish for. Not because you’ll get it, but because you’re doomed not to want it once you do. So the lesson of Lacan is, living by your wants will never make you happy. What it means to be fully human is to strive to live by ideas and ideals and not to measure your life by what you’ve attained in terms of your desires but those small moments of integrity, compassion, rationality, even self-sacrifice. Because in the end, the only way that we can measure the significance of our own lives is by valuing the lives of others.”

- +The Life of David Gale via W.A.

"It’s the little indignities that slowly devastate your soul. The ones where your guard is..."

Wed, 08 May 2013 12:49:00 -0400

“It’s the little indignities that slowly devastate your soul. The ones where your guard is down, and you just expect to dress up, look pretty, and enjoy an evening as a newlywed, or at the Oscars, but instead end up humiliated and snubbed. The ubiquitous racist slap in the face is thinly veiled just beneath the carefully crafted façade. This filthy, highly infectious plague is transforming our nation into one of unwarranted suspicion and anguish inflicted on disenfranchised, voiceless people of color. And now, it is no longer my job to enlighten you. To quote what you so often tell ethnic communities, “It’s time for you to step up to the plate, take responsibility, and stop taking what I have earned,” my integrity, my dignity.”

- +Seema Jilani, My Racist Encounter at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

"In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:40:20 -0400

“In old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.”

- +Oscar Wilde

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure,..."

Mon, 06 May 2013 00:12:52 -0400

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

- +Theodore Roosevelt

"A wild dedication of yourselves/ To undiscovered waters, undreamed shores."

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:24:06 -0400

“A wild dedication of yourselves/
To undiscovered waters, undreamed shores.”

- +William Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale

"I feel a power within me … a fire that I may not quench, but I must keep ablaze."

Sun, 05 May 2013 00:21:40 -0400

“I feel a power within me … a fire that I may not quench, but I must keep ablaze.”

- +Van Gogh

npr: nprfreshair: hwentworth: Internet’s over, people....

Sat, 04 May 2013 19:58:07 -0400

npr:

nprfreshair:

hwentworth:

Internet’s over, people. Maurice Sendak just won.

Fresh Air remembers Maurice Sendak

Higher praise there could not be. —Wright