Quotes: Claire McMillan

"I've been thinking about ritual," I said, handing her a book by Gurdjeff, who we'd recently discovered was a shared favourite. "That's all any ritual or ceremony is trying to do, to make manifest in the material world an intangible shift in spirit. So I've been thinking that anything can become ritual, painting, or writing, or cooking or making a bed. All of it transforms, makes clean. Making dinner, alchemizes disparate things into a whole. I feel like I am always transmuting things. Always changing them. All day long."

–– Claire McMillan, American author 

Source: Claire McMillan. Alchemy of a Blackbird. Toronto: Atria Books (Simon and Schuster), 2023; p. 165. 

via: Commonplace Book 2024, 2025, p. 35. 

Quotes: Brian Gable

"The editorial cartoonist's task is to emerge from [a] blizzard of information with a coherent and (it is hoped) amusing idea, one that addresses some aspect of the day's events. That good idea requires coaxing, coddling, cajoling. ...

In my case, that coaxing process is based entirely on doodling, which I've done my entire life. ...

At the beginning of each workday, one scribble has led to another, when suddenly, out of the muddled swirl of pencil strokes, the artist's twisted subconscious recognizes the germ of a cartoon idea. It's much closer to alchemy than it is to science."

 –– Brian Gable (b. 1949), Canadian editorial cartoonist*

Source: Brian Gable. 'Adieu.' The Globe and Mail, Saturday September 9, 2023, p. O9.  *Brian Gable was The Globe and Mail's editorial cartoonist for 35 years. He retired in September 2023.