"There are naïve questions, tedious questions, ill-phrased questions, questions put after inadequate self-criticism. But every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question."
–– Carl Sagan (1934-1996), American scientist and author
via Book of Commonplace 2017-2020, p. 114
"What you have chosen is a profound vocation of healing, and your stories and poems are as sacraments, as visible blessings. Be at the heart and soul of your time, not resigned to what is safe or peripheral. Try to free yourself from attachment to results, to awards, publications, praise, to indifference, rejection, and misunderstanding. Immerse yourself in the common ground of the universe so that your true voice –– not the egotistic voice that clamors vainly for power (for it will ruin you if you listen to it) –– your authentic voice, supported by sacred reality, may be heard."
–– Melissa Pritchard (b. 1948), American author and journalist
Source: Melissa Pritchard. A Solemn Pleasure: To Imagine, Witness, and Write. New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2015; p. 28.
via Book of Commonplace 2017-2020, p.79.
"The great composer does not set out to work because he is inspired, but becomes inspired because he is working. Beethoven, Wagner, Bach, and Mozart settled down day after day to the job in hand. They didn't waste time waiting for inspiration."
–– Ernest Newman (1868-1959), English music critic and musicologist
Source: Free Will Astrology, February 4, 2010.
via Book of Commonplace 2017-2020, p. 66.
"You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary."
–– Frederick Buechner (b. 1926), American author and Presbyterian minister
Source: Free Will Astrology, December 6, 2018
via: Book of Commonplace 2017-2020, p.66.
Re: Excerpts from speeches by Canadian arts figures who are honorary graduates
"So the only genuine advice that I can give you collectively is this: Follow your nose. Find something that interests you. And then, find out everything you can about it. Become passionate about the subject. [...]
"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity. That from Dorothy Parker, God bless her."
–– Terry Mosher (A.K.A. Aislin) (b. 1942), Canadian political cartoonist for the Montreal Gazette. Speech given at Concordia University, 2018.
Source: 'Artists dish out some wisdom' The Globe and Mail, Saturday June 30, 2018, p. R2.
via Book of Commonplace 2017-2020 p. 65
"Stories are medicine. They have the power to heal individuals, communities and the nation."
–– Kevin Loring (b. 1974), Canadian playwright & actor from the Nlaka'pamux, Lytton First Nation, British Columbia
Source: National Arts Centre ad, The Globe and Mail, Saturday August 18, 2018.
via Book of Commonplace 2017-2020, p. 64
""Pay attention," Susan Sontag once advised a young audience; she was speaking of the creative process, but also of living. "It's all about paying attention. It's all about taking in as much of what's out there as you can, and not letting the excuses and the dreariness of some of the obligations you'll soon be incurring narrow your lives. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager."
–– Susan Sontag (1933-2004), American writer, philosopher, filmmaker
Source: Rob Walker. The Art of Noticing: 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2019; p.viii.
"Poldi sighed, 'Where there's a will, there's always a way, but life can only give you back what you've really and truly let go of. And the first things to relinquish are your expectations."
–– Mario Giordano (b. 1963), German author
Source: Mario Giordano. Auntie Poldi and the Handsome Antonio. London, UK: John Murray (Publishers), 2020 (translated by John Brownjohn, 2020); p. 243.
Re: advice given in art school about becoming an artist:
"[I]f you can do something besides art, you should."
"They meant do any other job. They meant if your soul wouldn't die from not making art, don't make art."
–– Kelly Harms, American author
Source: Kelly Harms. The Matchmakers of Minnow Bay. New York: Thomas Dunne Books (St. Martin's Press), 2016; p.4-5.
"Art is one of the prime ways we have of opening ourselves and going beyond ourselves. That's what art is, it's the product of the human being in the world and imagination all coming together."
–– Ali Smith (b. 1962), Scottish academic, author, journalist, and playwright
Source: Olivia Laing. Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2020, p. 244-5
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
–– Ira Glass (b. 1959), American Public Radio Personality
Source: Orangette
"Silence, the running water tells you, is no more the absence of noise than health is mere freedom from sickness, or stillness an absence of movement. The richest part of life lies in the space between absence and presence."
–– Pico Iyer (b. 1957) British-born novelist and essayist
Source: Pico Iyer. A Beginner's Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2019, p. 124.
"Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer."
–– Simone Weil (1909-1943), French activist, mystic, and philosopher
"Teachings come from everywhere when you open yourself to them. That's the trick of it, really. Open yourself to everything, and everything opens itself to you."
–– Richard Wagamese (1955-2017), Canadian Ojibway author
Source: Richard Wagamese. Embers: One Ojibway's Meditations. Madeira Park, British Columbia: Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd., 2016, p. 58.
I read this book five times during the spring and summer of pandemic lockdown 2020 and I am grateful for Wagamese's wisdom to accompany me during a bewildering time.
"When the pattern of your attention has changed, you render your reality differently. You begin to move and act in a different kind of world."
–– Jenny Odell, American artist, writer and educator
Source: Jenny Odell. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Brooklyn, NY: Melville House Publishing, 2019, p. 122.
I read Odell's How to Do Nothing in early summer of 2020 during Covid-19 lockdown and it comforted me. I often wondered what Odell was making of this "period of removal" from ordinary life.
"Something is always happening, even on the quietest days and deep into the night, if you stand a while and look."
–– Don DeLillo (b. 1936), American author
"Exile is more than a geographical concept. You can be in exile in your homeland, in your own house, in a room."
–– Mahmoud Darwish (1941-2008), Palestinian poet and author
"Try something new each day. After all, we're given life to find it out. It doesn't last forever."
–– Maude, from the film Harold and Maude, 1971
"Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."
–– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German novelist, poet, playwright, critic
"Be stubborn on vision and flexible on journey."
–– Noramay Cadena, co-founder of Make it in LA
via Elle Decoration UK, March 2017, p. 122
"When a thorn pierces the foot, the whole body must bend over to pull it out." –– Zulu proverb
"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."
–– Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), French philosopher, writer, mathematician, physicist
"Life is a balance of holding on and letting go."
–– Rumi (1207-1273), Persian poet, theologian and Sufi mystic
"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look at fear in the face. ... You must do the thing you think you cannot do."
–– Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), American author, activist, diplomat, political figure, and First Lady. Quote from: You Learn by Living.
"People seldom hit what they do not aim at."
–– Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), American essayist, philosopher, and poet
"True life is lived when tiny changes occur."
–– Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian writer
"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult."
–– Seneca (4 BC - AD 65), Roman Stoic philosopher, dramatist, statesman
"To find new things, take the path you took yesterday."
–– John Burroughs (1837-1921), American essayist and naturalist
