Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead.
— Clay Shirky
Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self.
Cyril Conolly died three decades before Twitter was conceived. And yet, I can’t help but think that he would have echoed the same sentiments today.
The South is a place. East, west, and north are nothing but directions.
— Letter to the editor, Richmond Times Dispatch, 1995
I am reading the delightful book Confederates in the Attic. The quote above opens the second chapter.
When I lived in Colorado I took every opportunity to explore the magnificent hiking trails and striking mountain vistas offered by the Rocky Mountains. When I lived in Albuquerque I breathed deep to absorb the Native American spirit still alive in The Land of Enchantment. And when I lived in Princeton, NJ, I savored Washington’s Crossing and then immersed myself in the local history surrounding the Revolutionary War.
A skeptic is not one who doubts, but one who examines.
— Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve, French literary critic and historian
We have to see, I think, that questioning the value of old rules is different from simply breaking them.
— Elizabeth Janeway, Between Myth & Morning: Women Awakening
My hosannahs have all be forged in the crucible of doubt.