The Squeaky Wheel
The squeaky wheel doesn’t always get the grease. Sometimes it gets replaced.
— Vic Gold
I’m just sayin’
— John Kenneth Galbraith, economist
There are two major products to come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don’t believe this to be a coincidence.
— Unknown
My hosannahs have all be forged in the crucible of doubt.
Sometimes in a man or a woman an awareness takes place — not very often and always inexplainable. There are no words for it because there is no one ever to tell. This is a secret not kept a secret, but locked in wordlessness. The craft or art of writing is the clumsy attempt to find symbols for the wordlessness. In utter loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplainable. And sometimes if he is very fortunate and if the time is right, a very little of what he is trying to do trickles through.
— John Steinbeck, Journals of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters
This is another installment from Steinbeck’s journals written as he was giving birth to East of Eden. It has echos from my Julian Schnabel quote when he said “That is true about all art. The conflict is to try and take what is inside of you and put it inside somebody else.”
A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
— Sir Francis Bacon