Joined June 2019
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βThe first sentence of every novel should be:
Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.β
~ Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion
Charlie Mackesy
BOOKSHELVES ππππββ¬ retweeted
βAnyway β because we are readers, we donβt have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next β and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything β at any time of day or night.β
~ Kurt Vonnegut, Palm Sunday
BOOKSHELVES ππππββ¬ retweeted
βBut At other times, I sit here reading in the afternoon, a myrtle in my buttonhole, and there are such beautiful passages in the book that I think I have become beautiful myself.β
~ Lydia Davis, Varieties of Disturbance
Ned Axthelm
BOOKSHELVES ππππββ¬ retweeted
βThese days itβs easy to feel that weβve fallen out of connection with one another, and with the earth and with reason and with love.
I mean: we have.
But to read, to write, is to say that we still believe in, at least, the possibility of connection.β
~ George Saunders
BOOKSHELVES ππππββ¬ retweeted
βThereβs a vast underground network for goodness at work in this world β a web of people whoβve put reading at the center of their lives because they know from experience that reading makes them more expensive, generous peopleβ¦β
~ George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain
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βAt the end of our lives it is our loves that we remember most, because they are what shaped us.
We have grown to be who we are around them, as around a stake.β
~ Anna Funder, All that I am
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The master said you must write what you see / But what I see does not move me / The master answered Change what you see.
~ Louise GlΓΌck ~ VΔ±ta Nova
BOOKSHELVES ππππββ¬ retweeted
"But I really am a writer,
and a writer is deeply conflicted.
And it's in his work that
he reconciles those deep conflicts.
And it doesn't set the world in order.
It doesn't really change anything.
It just is a kind of harbor."
Leonard Cohen
Michael Putland, Getty Images
BOOKSHELVES ππππββ¬ retweeted
"Everyone should have
their own little world
to protect them from the big world."
Erich Maria Remarque
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"Literature is humanity talking to itself."
Norman Rush
Photo by Gertrude KΓ€sebier
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"The universe is in myselfβ
it shall pass through me as a procession."
Walt Whitman
b. 31 May 1819
Starling Murmuration by Elin Manon
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"Craftsmanship is the physical expression of devotion."
Joel Uili
"Proud Artisan" by Nur Tucker
BOOKSHELVES ππππββ¬ retweeted
"What is imagination? A swarm of living things.
What is the task of the imagination? To stare at things it does not fully understand.
What is the miracle of the imagination? To see what is not already there."
Albert Read
Art by Sharon Marie Winter
BOOKSHELVES ππππββ¬ retweeted
"The psychological and moral comfort of a presence at once humble and understanding-this is the greatest benefit that the dog has bestowed upon man."
Percy Bysshe Shelley
4 Aug 1792
Photo by Ferdinando Scianna
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There's a particular kind of loneliness that comes from reading a book that changes you and having no one to talk to about it.
BOOKSHELVES ππππββ¬ retweeted
Nabokov reread every book he loved. He said there's no such thing as reading a book , only rereading it. The first time is just meeting a stranger.
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π¨ New podcast episode just dropped!
How to Read Homerβs The Odyssey?
What if the greatest adventure story ever written isnβt just about a heroβs journey homeβ¦ but about how to read it right?
Why does it open with a son whoβs never met his father?
What do the gods, the monsters, and Penelopeβs quiet power actually reveal about us? And why does this 3,000-year-old poem feel more urgent today than ever?
Iβm thrilled to welcome the brilliant Professor Emily Katz Anhalt (Sarah Lawrence College, author of Enraged, Embattled, and Ancient Wisdom for Polarized Times) for a masterclass in seeing The Odyssey like never before.
We go deep on the hidden psychology, the moral genius, and the ancient wisdom Homer still has for our chaotic world.
π§ Listen now β youβll never read (or think about) The Odyssey the same way again.
substack.com/home/post/p-197β¦
BOOKSHELVES ππππββ¬ retweeted
The poetic imagination, as Blake now began to understand it . . . can discern the spiritual outline of all created things because it contains them; with the spirit reborn, the poet may see with the eyes of eternity into himself and thus into the universe.
#SundaySentence
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The opening of a famous poem by William Wordsworth, which oft can resonate when one is not feeling altogether chipper. (But, as he says further on...
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be.)
