“If I made a list and worked on the list, a big goal–even a huge goal–seemed feasible.” p.24
The Grapes of Canaan (c. 1896-1902) by James Tissot. Although the spies brought back a cluster of grapes so large that it took two men to carry it (Numbers 13:23), only two of the twelve brought back a good report of the land.
Story in the Torah about the 12 spies investigating the land of Canaan. p. 39 (from the Book of Numbers)
“When a person is really happy they don’t have to tell people about it. It just shows.” p. 45
“In an interview for Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan was asked about the word calling…
“Mine, Not any different than anybody else’s. Some people are called to be a good sailor. Some people have a calling to be a good tiller of the land. Some people are called to be a good friend. You have to be the best at whatever you are called at. Whatever you do. You ought to be the best at it–highly skilled. It’s about confidence, not arrogance. You have to know that you’re the best whether you anybody else tells you that or not.”” p. 47
Amelia Earhart might have put it best: “When a great adventure is offered, you don’t refuse it.”” p. 49
“In the words of a great Bob Dylan song, “He not busy being born is busy dying,” and perhaps some of us are busier than others.” p. 58
“As much as it sounds trite to “live like you’re ying” or “live every day as if it were your last,” that’s exactly what many people obsessed with a quest do.” p. 58
“John wrote in his journal: “How interesting it is that men seldom find the true value of life until they are faced with death.”” p. 59
Laura Dekker (youngest sailor to circumvent the globe)
Dekker’s solo circumnavigation route 2010-2012. Via wikimedia.
“learn to become comfortable with failure… ” p. 74
“become more bold in making requests.” p. 75
“You must believe that your quest can be successful, even if no one else does.” p. 80
“I didn’t want to mention I was a writer. (In many countries, “writer” means “journalist,” and journalists are treated with suspicion in places without a free press.” p. 83
“What people say about an adventure or quest that involves perceived risk:
Succesful Outcome: brave, courageous, confident
Failed Outcome: stupid, risky, naive, arrogant” p. 84
Chris McCandless’ letter published in Into The Wild “The basic core og a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from out encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.” p. 85
“Do one thing every day that scares you.” (Eleanor Roosevelt) p. 87
Book: The Flinch by Julien Smith “breaking your programming requires a single moment of strength.” p. 97
“Documenting Your Quest… Keeping a scrapbook (either a traditional one or a digital one)” p. 99
“If you want to prioritize adventure but can’t find the time, something’s got to give.” p. 100
“I spent the better part of a week every December reviewing the year that had just passed and planning ahead for the next one. The quest to visit every country came about only after I spent a lot of time thinking through the logistics… The quest was successful because I’d thought it through–not in spite of it.” p. 108
Travel to every country in the world “I guessed that it would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $30,000, and that it would take approximately five to seven years to complete.” p. 108
“How much time? How much money? What might those other variables be? Let’s figure it out.” p. 109
“Visit every country in Africa (the most challenging continent, containing more than 50 countries).” p. 110
“Since it would be a ten-year journey, I couldn’t stay excited on a daily basis by thinking about the finish line. That’s when subgoals proved helpful.” p.110
costs
“Goal:___
Time: __
Money: __
Other Costs:__
Unknown:__” p. 111
“Scott Young, who taught himself the four-year MIT computer science curriculum in one year, didn’t just jump into the project at first thought. “I spent nearly two months preparing the curriculum before starting my challenge,” he told me, “including a one-week pilot study with a single class… He considered the rest of the curriculum and visualized which parts would be more challenging. By the end og the pilot study, he felt his head was in the game and that he was ready to strike out on the full, yearlong commitment.” p. 112
“Always keep Ithaca on your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.” p. 115
“The review begins with a set of journaling exercises, focused on two questions:
What went well this year?
What did not go well this year?” p. 115
“I then set a number of goals based on specific categories. Your own categories may vary, but some of mine include:
Writing
Business
Friends and Family
Service
Travel
Spiritual
Health
Learning
Financial (Earning)
Financial (Giving)
Financial (Saving)” p. 116
outcome statement p. 117
“built a new small business that supports my primary writing goals.” p. 117
“If you’re predisposed to overthink, the answer is simple: Just do it.” p. 119
“His best advice has now been simplified: “Pick a departure date. Start saving. Get a bike, tent, and sleeping bad. And go.”” p. 119
“All students sign a pledge to speak only the new language they are learning for the entire time they are there, including evenings and weekends.” p. 119
To pursue your goal: “Get specific. Be sure to clearly understand the time, money, and other costs before you begin.” p. 121
The Personal Annual Reports of Nicholas Felton “This project is more about recording than influencing behavior. As Nicholas explained, when he started compiling the information each year, he felt inspired to “say yes” to activities he might normally decline.” p. 125
“If your primary goal is to write a book, produce a documentary, or otherwise publicize your quest, maybe it’s more of a career move. There’s nothing wrong with doing something for your career–but it’s not really a quest, since a quest requires sacrifice and uncertainty.” p. 128 [contradictions by the author? his own personal definition of quest]
“If you set specific goals, you’ll know exactly when you’ve accomplished them.” p. 133
“As much as possible, you should also ignore fear when you write your life list. Fear of failure, and even the fear of success, holds us back from attempting many of the things we secretly wish for.” p. 133
“Goal:
Deadline:
Next Step: ” p. 135
“Experience produces confidence, and confidence produces success.” p. 140
Martin Parnell: biked Cairo to Cape Town p. 144
MIT course work online p. 147
“These people are all about making things and sharing them with the world, over and over.” p. 151
Seth Godin: “The lesson, as he explains it: “If I fail more than you do, I win. Built into this notion is the ability to keep playing. If you get to keep playing, sooner or later you’re gonna make it succeed.” p. 155
Elise Blaha “She clearly defines her projects, and she breaks them down into multiple parts. When she has success with one project she applies the same format to others. The medium doesn’t need to be the same, she told me, but the process for working on them can still be…One autumn she baked forty different kinds of bread.” p. 158
Seinfeld told the New York Times. “I read an article a few years ago that said when you practice a sport a lot, you literally become a broadband: the nerve pathway in your brain contains a lot more information. As soon as you stop practicing, the pathway begins shrinking back down.” p. 162
“When I woke up in the morning I immediately thought about what I’d work on for the next few hours. At night I’d go to bed thinking about how I could improve the next day.” p. 163
John and Nancy Vogel and their twin boys: Alaska to Argentina on a bike “They were especially motivated by the goal of becoming the youngest travelers to cross the America’s by bicycle. An improvised rule specifying “twenty miles per cookie” didn’t hurt, either.” p. 172
****Steven Pressfield: “The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.” p. 196
“Even the most expensive parts of the world can be reached for $2,500 or less. If that sum seems exorbitant, just think of it as $2 a day for three and a half years, or a bit less than $7 a day over one year.” p. 198-199
“Juno Kim… originally took her savings with her and planned to live off that money as long as it lasted. But four years and twenty-four countries later, she’s actually increased her savings, thanks to her work as freelance writer and photographer.” p. 200
Ron Avitzur (graphing calculator) “I wasn’t a big spender… But it also helped that we worked all the time.” p. 200
“If you’re going to do something outlandish, there are a probably a lot of people who would like to do it, too, but don’t for various reasons.” p. 201
Costs of several quests featured in the book (p. 202-203)
“How long will it take me to save this amount of money?
Is there any other way to get the money (crowdfunding, selling something, extra work…?
Do I need to wait to start until I have all the money?
If getting the money will be difficult, is there a wat to reduce the cost?” p. 204
“John Lasseter, one of the founders of Pixar, says that “Every one of our films was the worst motion picture ever made at one time or another.” … As soon as they identify the mistakes, they’re able to fix them–but the point is to not shy away from the initial failure.” p. 213
“some people are simply obsessed with failure–or at least they have a general expectation that a new project will more likely meet with failure than success.” p. 214
“Nothing worth doing is ever easy.” p. 214
“Short-term relief and long-term happiness can be very different things. ” p. 215
“Regret is what you should fear the most. If something is going to keep you awake at night, let it be the fear of not following your dream. Be afraid of setting.” p. 220
“If you’re going to worry about something, worry about the cost of not pursuing your dream.” p. 222
Nate Damm “I’m definitely not motivated by achievement. I just do what I like every day, and good things seem to happen as a result.” p. 228
John Stuart Mill and the “fleeting sense of happiness” “Suppose that all your objects in life were realized… the whole foundation on which my life was constructed fell down. All my happiness was to have been found in the continual pursuit of this end. The end had ceased to charm, and how could there ever again be any interest in the means? I seemed to have nothing left to live for.” p. 249-250
Shannin O’Donnell “At that moment I blamed the very idea of my aimless wandering for my illness, but as I healed I realized that the illness was a setback, not a sign that I was on the wrong path.” p. 253
From the poem Ithaca “To arrive there is your ultimate goal, but do not hurry.” p. 259
Phoebe Snetsinger “It has become ever more clear to me that if I had spent my life avoiding any and all potential risks, I would have missed doing most of the things that have comprised the best years of my life.” p. 263
“The support and understanding of others will vary. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks about your quest, but if you don’t have sufficient motivation to see it through, it will be tough going.” p. 268
“If you measure success by the opinions of others, you’re effectively set yourself up for failure.” p. 269
****** About the Author: “Someone who will work twenty-four hours a day for themselves to avoid working one hour a day for someone else.” p. 293
“Script #4: Everyone should work 35 to 40 hours a week, mostly in the office, usually on the same days and times (even though research shows that this is largely and unproductive schedule for most people).” p. 306
“Richard Branson put it best: “Business opportunities are like buses. There’s always another one coming.” p. 307
“The depot itself, with its peeling sulphur colored paint, is equally melancholy; the Chief, the Super Chief, the El Capitan go by every day, but these celebrated expresses never pause there. No passenger trains do–only an occasional freight. p. 14
AT&SF “Drumhead” logos from the El Capitan passenger trains. Via wikimedia.
This reproduction of a cabinet card tacked to corkboard shows a map of the Grand Canyon Route of the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway. The map title reads: “Through car lines between Chicago, Kansas City and Pacific Coast. Grand Canon Line.” Other notes read: “2731. Poole Bros. Chicago.” Between 1900 and 1905? Via Wikimedia.
“ACAPULCO connoted deep-sea fishing, casinos, anxious rich women; and SIERRA MADRE meant gold, meant Treasure of the Sierra Madre, a movie he had seen eight times.” p. 25
“Since childhood, for more than half his thirty-one years, he had been sending off for literature (“FORTUNES IN DIVING! Train at Home in Your Spare Time. Make Big Money Fast in Skin and Lung Diving. FREE BOOKLETS…”), answering advertisements (“SUNKEN TREASURE! Fifty Genuine Maps! Amazing Offer…”) that stoked a longing to realize an adventure his imagination swiftly and over and over enabled him to experience: the dream of drifting downward through strange waters, of plunging toward a green sea-dusk, sliding past the scaly, savage-eyed protectors of a ship’s hulk that loomed ahead, a Spanish galleon –a drowned cargo of diamonds and pearls, heaping casket of gold.
A car horn honked. At last–Dick.” p. 27-28
“”Anybody wearing the fraternity pin,” he added, and touched a blue dot tattooed under his left eye–an insigne, a visible password, by which certain former prison inmates could identify him.” p. 35
“she had taken an apartment, then found a job–as a file clerk at the Y.W.C.A. Her husband, entirely sympathetic, had encouraged the adventure, but she had liked it too well, so much that it seemed to her unchristian, and the sense of guilt she i consequence developed ultimately outweighed the experiment’s therapeutic value.” p. 39
“A bookmark lay between its pages, a stiff piece of watered silk upon which an admonition had been embroidered: “Take ye heed, watch and pray: for ye know not when the time is.”” p. 42
Dick “The tattooed face of a cat, blue and grinning, covered his right hand; on one shoulder a blue rose blossomed. More markings, self-designed and self-executed, ornamented his arms and torso: the head of a dragon with a human skull between its open jaws; bosomy nudes; a gremlin brandishing a pitchfork; the word PEACE accompanied by a cross radiating, in the form of crude strokes, rays of holy light; and two sentimental concoctions–one a bouquet of flowers dedicated to MOTHER-DAD, the other a heart that celebrated the romance of DICK and CAROL,” p. 42
Dick “his eyes not only situated at uneven levels but of uneven size, the left eye being truly serpentine, with a venomous, sickly-blue squint that although it was involuntarily acquired, seemed nevertheless to warn of bitter sediment at the bottom of his nature.” p. 43
Perry “Blue-furred, orange-eyed, red-fanged, a tiger snarled upon his left biceps; a spitting snake, coiled around a dagger, slithered down his arm; and elsewhere skulls gleamed, a tombstone loomed, a chrysanthemum flourished.” p. 44
“A hundred miles west and one would be out of the “Bible Belt,” that gospel-haunted strip of American territory in which a man must, if only for business reasons, take his religion with the straightest of faces, but in Finney County one is still within the Bible Belt borders, and therefore a person’s church affiliation is the most important factor influencing his class status.” p. 46
Mr. Clutter “he had no use for card games, golf, cocktails, or buffet suppers served at ten–or, indeed, for any pastime that he felt did not “accomplish something.” p. 47
“Not far from River Valley Farm there is a mysterious stretch of countryside known as the Sand Hills; it is like a beach without an ocean, and at night coyotes slink among the dunes, assembling in hordes to howl. On moonlit evening the boys would descend upon them, set them running, and try to outrace them in the wagon; they seldom did, for the scrawniest coyote can hit fifty miles an hour, whereas the wagon’s tip speed was thirty-five, but it was a wild and beautiful kind of fun, the wagon skidding across the sand, the fleeing coyotes framed against the moon–as Bob said, it sure made your heart hurry.” p. 51-52
“nuns, and anything pertaining to them, were bad luck, and Perry was most respectful of his superstitions. (Some other were the number 15, red hair, white flowers, priests crossing a road, snakes appearing in a dream.)” p. 55
“You are strong, but there is a flaw in your strength, and unless you learn to control it the flaw will prove stronger than your strength and defeat you.” p. 57
“Moreover, unlike Willie-Jay, he was not critical of Perry’s exotic aspirations; he was willing to listen, catch fire, share with him those visions of “guaranteed treasure” lurking in Mexican seas, Brazilian jungles.” p. 58
“A full moon was forming at the edge of the sky.” p. 63
****Susan “But when we got there–I didn’t want to do it. Go inside the house. I was frightened, and I don’t know why, because it never occurred to me…We walked in, and I saw right away that the Clutters hadn’t eaten breakfast; there were no dishes, nothing on the stove. Then I noticed something funny: Nancy’s purse. It was lying on the floor, sort of open. We passed on through the dining room, and stopped at the bottom of the stairs. Nancy’s room is just at the top. I called her name, and started up the stairs, and Nancy Ewalt followed. The sound of our footsteps frightened me more than anything, they were so loud and everything else was so silent. Nancy’s door was open. The curtains hadn’t been drawn, and the room was full of sunlight. I don’t remember screaming. Nancy Ewalt says I did–screamed and screamed. I only remember Nancy’s Teddy bear staring at me. And Nancy. And running…”” p. 75
“There’s been some kind of accident.’ Then we went in the house, the three of us. Went through the kitchen and saw a lady’s purse laying on the floor, and the phone to Nancy’s room, I noticed he kept his hand on it, ready to draw.” p. 78
***”We stepped back into the hall, and looked around. All the other doors were closed. We opened, and that turned out to be a bathroom. Something about it seemed wrong. I decided it was because of the chair–a sort of dining-room chair, that looked out of place in a bathroom.” p. 78
“I remember the sheriff searched around to see if he could find the discharged cartridge. But whoever had done it was much too smart and cool to have left behind any clues like that.” p. 79
“‘Where the devil can Herb be?’ About then we heard footsteps Coming up the stairs from the basement. ‘Who’s that?’ said the sheriff, like he was ready to shoot. And a voice said, ‘It’s me. Wendle.’ Turned out to be Wendle Meier, the undersheriff. Seems he had come to the house and hadn’t seen us, so he’d gone investigating down in the basement.” p. 79-80
“Well, I took one look at Mr. Clutter, and it was hard to look again. I knew plain shooting couldn’t account for that much blood. And I wasn’t wrong.” p. 80
“What he was pointing at was a bloodstained footprint. On the mattress box. A half-sole footprint with circles–two holes in the center like a pair of eyes.” p. 81
“A stocky, weathered widow who wears babushka bandannas and cowboy boots (“Most comfortable things you can put on your feet, soft as a loon feather”), Mother Truitt is the oldest native-born Holcombite.” p. 82
“For, feeling it their duty, a Christian task, these men had volunteered to clean certain of the fourteen rooms in the main house at River Valley Farm: rooms in which four members of the Clutter family have been murdered by, as their death certificates declared, “a person or persons unknown.”” p. 93
“not the slightest echo of gun thunder” p. 94
****”But the diary notation that most tantalized Dewey was unrelated to the Clutter-Rupp, Methodist-Catholic impasse. Rather, it concerned a cat, the mysterious demise of Nancy’s favorite pet, Boobs, whom, according to an entry dated two weeks prior to her own death, she’d found “lying in the barn,” the victim, or so she suspected (without saying why), of a poisoner: “Poor Boobs. I buried him in a special place.” On reading this… He determined to find the “special place” where Nancy had buried her pet, even though it meant combing the vast whole of River Valley Farm.” p. 101
“Outside, Dick said, “So you’re getting married next week? Well, you’ll need a ring.” … Perry was sorry to see them go. He’d began to half credit the make-believe bride, though in his conception of her, as opposed to Dick’s, she was not rich, nor beautiful; rather, she was nicely groomed, gently spoken, was conceivably “a college graduate,” in any event “a very intellectual type.”–a sort of girl he’d always wanted to meet but in fact never had.” p. 116
Perry “had lost his mother as well, learned to “despise” her; liquor had blurred the face, swollen the figure of the once sinewy, limber Cherokee girl, had “soured her soul,” honed her tongue to the wickedest point,” 153-154
“In Alaska, Tex taught his son to dream of gold, to hunt for it in the sandy beds of snow-water streams, and there, too, Perry learned to use a gun, skin a bear, track wolves and deer.” p. 155
“It would have been O.K. if only I hadn’t grown up; the older I got, the less I was able to appreciate Dad.” p. 155
“I had this great natural musical ability. Which Dad didn’t recognized. Or care about. I liked to read, too. Improve my vocabulary. Make up songs. And I could draw. but I never got any encouragement–from him or anybody else.” p. 155
“Well, while I was still in the Army, stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, I’d bought a motorcycle (murdercycle, they ought to call them), and as soon as I got discharged I headed for Alaska. Got as far as Bellingham. Up there on the border. It was raining. My bike went into a skid.” p. 156
Letter from Perry’s sister Barbara “”Now, first, & most important–Dad is not responsible for your wrong doings or your good deeds. What you have done, whether right or wrong, is your own doing… Your letter implies that the blame of all your problems is that of someone else, but never you.” p. 163
Courthouse Pete “Pete, a tiger-striped tom weighing fifteen pounds, is a well-known character around Garden City, famous for his pugnacity, which was the cause of his current hospitalization; a battle lost to a boxer dog had left him with wounds necessitating both stitches and antibiotics.” p. 172
***”During this visit Dewey paused at an upstairs window, his attention caught by something seen in the near distance–a scarecrow amid the wheat stubble. The scarecrow wore a man’s hunting cap and a dress of weather-faded flowered calico. (Surely an old dress of Bonnie Clutter’s?) Wind frolicked the skirt and made the scarecrow sway–make it seem a creature forlornly dancing in the cold December field.” p. 177
“And listening to Dick’s conceited chatter, hearing him start to describe his Mexican “amorous conquests,” he thought how “queer” it was, “egomaniacal.” Imagine going all out to impress a man you were going to kill, a man who wouldn’t be alive ten minutes from now” p. 198
Found the Cinema Library at BIFF hill. shhhhh. no backpacks.
Stanley Kubrick Interviews by Gene D. Phillips.
“Kubrick is fiercely concerned with the accuracy of the small details that make up the background of his films, because he feels that helps the audience to believe what they see on screen.” viii
“Kubrick sometimes nursed ideas over long periods before he was able to bring them to fruition.” viii
“directing a film can be like trying to write War and Peace in a bumper car at an amusement park, when you finally get it right, there are not many joys in life that can equal that feeling.” p. xii
“‘Words are like leaves and where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.'” Alexander Pope. p. 106
“Read a few lines and off you go over the cliff. Bangm you’re ready to blow up the world, chop off heads, knock down women and children, destroy authority.” Beatty p. 106
“‘The Devil can cite scripture for his purpose.'” (William Shakespeare | The Merchant of Venice) p. 106
****”Beatty never drove, but he was driving tonight, slamming the Salamander around corners, leaning forward high on the driver’s throne, his massive black slicker flapping out behind so that he seemed a great black bat flying above the engine, over the brass numbers, taking the full wind.” p. 109
“He turned and the Mechanical Hound was there.
It was half across the lawn, coming from the shadows, moving with such drifting ease that it was like a single solid cloud of black-gray smoke blown at him in silence.” p. 120
“lost in pocket of a man who was now nothing but a frame skeleton strung with asphalt tendons.” p. 123
“A great whirling whisper made him look to the sky.
The police helicopters were rising so far away that it seemed someone had blown the gray head off a dry dandelion flower.” p. 125
“He stopped for breath, on his way to the river, to peer through dimly lit windows of wakened houses, and saw the silhouettes of people inside watching their parlor walls and there on the walls the Mechanical Hound, a breath of neon vapor, spidered along, here and gone, here and gone!” p. 137
“He saw many hands held to its warmth, hands without arms, hidden in darkness. Above the hands, motionless faces that were only moved and tossed and flickered with firelight. He hadn’t known fire could look this way. He had never thought in his life that it could give as well as take.” p. 145-146
“But that’s the wonderful thing about man; he never gets so discouraged or disgusted that he gives up doing it all over again, because he knows very well it is important and worth the doing.” p. 153
“‘Stuff you eyes with wonder,’ he said, ‘live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal.” p. 157
“Perhaps the bombs were there, and the jets, ten miles, five miles, one mile up, for the merest instant, like grain thrown over the heavens by a great sowing hand, and the bombs drifting with dreadful swiftness, yet sudden slowness, down upon the morning city they had left behind.” p. 158
“The concussion knocked the air across and down the river, turned the men over like dominos in a line, blew the water in lifting sprays, and blew the dust and made the trees above them mourn with great wind passing away south.” p. 160
Afterword
“I didn’t know it, but I was literally writing a dime novel. In the spring of 1950 it cost me nine dollars and eighty cents in dimes to write and finish the first draft of The Fire Man which later because Fahrenheit 451.” p. 167
“Father had to choose between finishing a story or playing with the girls. I chose to play, of course, which endangered the family income. An office had to be found. We couldn’t afford one.” p. 167
“Thus I was twice drive; by children to leave home, and by a typewriter timing device to be a maniac at the keys. Time was indeed money. I finished the first draft in roughly nine days. At 25,000 words, it was half the novel it eventually would become.” p. 168
“I have scribbled poems about librarians, taken night trains with my favorite authors across the continental wilderness, staying up all night gabbling and drinking, drinking and chatting. I warned Melville, in one poem, to stay away from land (it never was his stuff!) and turned Bernard Shaw into a robot, so as to conveniently stow him aboard a rocket and wake him on the long journey to Alpha Centuri to hear his Prefaces piped off his tongue and into my delighted ear.” p. 168-169
“”It’s not owning books that’s a crime, Montag, it’s reading them!” p. 169-170.
“A last discovery. I write all of my novels and stories, as you have seen, in a great surge of delightful passion.” p. 173
Coda
On censoship and simplicity: “Every story, slenderized, starved, bluepenciled, leeched and bled white, resembled every other story. Twain read like Poe read like Shakespeare read like Dostoevsky read like–in the finale–Edgar Guest. Every word of more than three syllables had been razored.” p. 176
“The point is obvious. There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.” p. 176
“If teachers and grammar school editors find my jawbreaker sentences shatter their mushmilk teeth, let them eat stale cake dunked in weak tea of their own ungodly manufacture.” p. 178
“Take philosophic asides away from Dante, Milton or Hamlet’s father’s ghost and what stays is dry bones. Laurence Stern said it once: Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading!” p. 178-179
“At sunset I’ve won or lost. At sunrise, I’m out again, giving it the old try.
And no one can help me. Not even you.” p. 179
A Conversation with Ray Bradbury
“Then, sometime in the late summer of 1953, Playboy came to me. They had no money; they were just starting out, and they asked me if I had something I would sell them for four hundred dollars, so they could get started. So I sold them Fahrenheit 451 for four hundred dollars, and they published it in the second, third, and fourth issues of the magazine.” p. 181
*****”I wrote for years, and I wasn’t paid. My live carried me through all those years. I sold newspapers on the street corner… you’re either in love with what you do, or you’re not in love.” p. 183
“Reading is at the center of our lives. The library is our brain. Without the library, you have no civilization.” p. 184
“It’s not substance; it’s style. The whole problem of TV and movies today is summed up for meby the film Moulin Rouge. It came out a few years ago and won a lot of awards. It has 4,560 half-second clips in it. The camera never stops and hold still. So it clicks off your thinking; you can’t think when you have things bombarding you like that… We bombard people with sensation. That substitutes for thinking.” p. 184
“I wrote the book because I love writing. All my stories are written in bursts of passion.” p. 185
“DR: Do you plot your stories in advance?
RB: NO, no, no. I live my stories.” p. 185
Are you the boss of your characters (tell them what to do)?
“You can’t do that. That’s bad writing. They must write you. They must control you. They plot me. I never control them. I let them have their lives.” p. 185
“I believe that if you do your work everyday, at the end of the week or at the end of the month or at the end of the year, you feel good about all the things you did. It’s based on reality, not a false concept of optimism. So if you behave well, if you write well every day, and act well, at the end of the year you’ll feel good about yourself.” p. 188
“I’ve been influenced by all kinds of Irish writers: George Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, William Butler Yeats, Oscar Wilde… or in England, Charles Dickens. Yes, I was influenced by the nineteenth century American writers who wrote metaphors: Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe.” p. 188
On Federico Fellini “he lived with the following saying: “Don’t tell me what I’m doing; I don’t want to know.” He never looked at his films when he was making them. Never saw the dailies. Only when he finished shooting the film would he sit down with the projector and look at what he had done. I’m the same way. I don’t believe in watching myself.” p. 189
“DR: What books did you fall in love with as a boy?
RB: The Oz books. Tarzan and John Carter, Warlord of Mars, by Burroughs. Jules Verne, at a certain age. Edgar Allan Poe when I was nine. And H. G. Wells, who was very negative but very exciting, because when you’re sixteen years old, you’re paranoid, and H. G. Wells is a very paranoid writer. And a very necessary one.” p. 190
About the Author
“published some 500 short stories, novels, plays, and poems since his first story appeared in Weird Tales… For several years he wrote for Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone and in 1953 did the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick… collaborated on an animated film, Icarus Montgolfer Wright… When one of the Apollo astronaut teams landed on the moon, they named Dandelion Crater there to honor Bradbury’s novel Dandelion Wine. His novel Something Wicked This Way Comes was made into a major release feature film” p. About the Author
On Edward Hopper by Mark Strand from The New York Review of Books | Article
“something that is not there at the outset but reveals itself slowly, and then completely, having traveled an arduous route during which vision and image come together,”
“By the time the gas station appears on canvas in its final form it has ceased being just a gas station. It has become Hopperized. It possesses something it never had before Hopper saw it as a possible subject for his painting. And for the artist, the painting exists, in part, as a mode of encountering himself.”
“With the uncertainty under which the painter labors, extended periods of doubt, it is a wonder that he can ever be free of anxiety or finish a work. Even the prodigiously talented Picasso needed constant reassurance. ¶ One of the ways Hopper dealt with his lack of certainty was to make many preparatory drawings for each painting;”
“It was not that he needed to be sure how to paint a sugar dispenser of salt shaker as in Nighthawks (1942), but that they should become his. ¶ This absorption of the outer world into his inner world could only be accomplished through a protracted ritual of drawing and redrawing, slight adjustments here and there adding up to imaginative ownership and psychic freedom.”
“Again and again, words like “loneliness” or “alienation” are used to describe the emotional character of his paintings.”
“It was thrilling to suddenly go underground, travel in the dark, and be delivered to the masses of people milling about in the cavernous terminal.”
Read: Mark W. Turner essay comparing “the wall in Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener and Hopper’s walls.
