If all the houses on the street were gray, you would never know if gray was a better color than lavender.
—Rick Moody
Then he tells me how you get a date if you are a teenage girl in Saudi Arabia:
Go to the mall, wearing your required abaya. When a group of young guys walks by, if you see one you like, quickly find a secluded corner of the mall, take out your cell phone, lift your abaya, snap a picture of your face. Write your cell number on a piece of paper. When the boys walk by, drop the scrap at the feet of the one you like. When he calls, send him your photo. If he likes the photo, he will call again. Arrange a secret meeting.
The world must be peopled.
—George Saunders, The New Mecca
If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Setting up schools in abandoned supermarkets and churches.
—Zadie Smith, NW
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
—Gustave Flaubert
SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM
“There was in the sixties a man named Fritz Perls who was a gestalt therapist. Gestalt therapy derives from art history, it proposes you must understand the ‘whole’ before you can understand the details. What you have to look at is the entire culture, the entire family and community and so on. Perls proposed that in all relationships people could be either toxic or nourishing towards one another. It is not necessarily true that the same person will be toxic or nourishing in every relationship, but the combination of any two people in a relationship produces toxic or nourishing consequences. And the important thing that I can tell you is that there is a test to determine whether someone is toxic or nourishing in your relationship with them. Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energised or less energised. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life.”
-Milton Glaser
The only mofos in my circle are people that I can learn from.
—?uestlove
All of old.
Nothing else ever.
Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.
—Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho
all that fake laughin’ fer nothin’
I’d rather die enormous than live dormant.
—HOVA
