It does not require a majority to prevail
It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.
— Samuel Adams
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More Steinbeck on Writing
ByHeatherSometimes 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.”
Questioning the Value of Old Rules
ByHeatherWe 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
The Whole World is an Enigma
ByHeatherI have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
Sometimes I find myself agreeing with Umberto.
Other times I want to say, “Chill dude . . . Life is a Cabaret, old chum!”
Own What Makes You Different
ByHeatherWhen we can celebrate and truly own what it is that makes us different, we are able to find the source of our greatest creative power.
— Aimee MullinsAimee is a double below-the-knee amputee who lost her legs before her first birthday. She is talented and beautiful and doesn’t take “no” for an answer. Learn more about her story on You Tube.
Drowning Your Sorrows
ByHeatherPeople who drink to drown their sorrows should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.
— Ann Landers.
To Be Is To Do . . . Be Do Be Do
ByHeatherTo be is to do — Socrates
To do is to be — Jean Paul Sartre
Do be do be do — Frank SinatraI posted this quote for the sole reason that it always makes me smile. But as I looked at the list of names, and their sequence, I realized that, in a simplistic way, these simple words also reflect our evolution of philosophy and thought. Socrates lived more than 2,400 years ago and his influence on thought is legendary. Jean Paul Sartre was a prominent French philosopher at the peak of the twentieth century. Frank Sinatra was born only ten years after Sartre but has come to embody a later generation.