Easy December 1, 2009

Easy is the descent to Hell. —Virgil

a contradiction in our belief November 30, 2009

To extend our memories by monuments whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope, without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our belief. —Sir Thomas Browne

Mississippi begins November 29, 2009

Mississippi begins in a lobby of a Memphis, Tennessee hotel and extends south to the Gulf of Mexico.   —William Faulkner

10 years willingly November 25, 2009

A mule will labor ten years willingly and patiently for you, for the privilege of kicking you once. —William Faulkner And we never got the mule, let alone the forty acres. —Charles Evers

the hidden side of a leaf November 25, 2009

Birth, life, and death—each took place on the hidden side of a leaf. —Toni Morrison

the taste for quotations November 23, 2009

The taste for quotations (and for the juxtaposition of incongruous quotations) is a Surrealist taste. —Susan Sontag

like a forgotten fire November 15, 2009

So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us. —Gaston Bachelard  

an hourly assimilation goes forward November 14, 2009

      Not only is distance annihilated, but when, as now, the locomotive and the steamboat, like enormous shuttles, shoot every day across the thousand various threads of national descent and employment and bind them fast in one web, an hourly assimilation goes forward, and there is no danger that local peculiarities and hostilities [...]

I lordly had the trees and leaves November 13, 2009

And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves Trail with daisies and barley Down the rivers of the windfall light. —Dylan Thomas

Inventory November 10, 2009

I stroll along serenely, with my eyes, my shoes my rage, forgetting everything. ~Pablo Neruda When you have worn out your shoes, the strength of the shoe leather has passed into the fiber of your body.  I measure your health by the number of shoes and hats and clothes you have worn out. ~Ralph Waldo [...]