Slowly we unfurl
As lotus flowers
— Radiohead – _Lotus Flower_
Category: Commonplace
Live the questions
bq. …I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
–Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903 in Letters to a Young Poet
“Via”:http://elise.com/quotes/quotes/rilke.htm
Problem Solving
bq. A foundation principle of creative thinking & problem solving is this: _unless we are able to hold two contradictory positions simultaneously, solutions will escape us_.
— “Robert Fripp”:http://www.dgmlive.com/diaries.htm?artist=&show=&member=3&entry=18743
Hiding
Love, grief and money cannot be concealed.
— Patrick O’Brian, in _H.M.S. Surprise_
Awareness
bq. Awareness is a more powerful tool than effort.
— Hannah Byrum
Reality
bq. Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
— Philip K. Dick (unverified)
A couple of Frank Herbert quotes
I went to re-read _Dune_, and ended up re-reading _Dune: Messiah_ as well, and picked up a couple of quotes I wanted to hold onto:
bq. It was mostly sweet, and you were the sweetest of all.
bq. We’re all in this beauty together!
James Wolcott on Kirstie Alley
bq. What’s amazing is that Alley can look and behave so slovenly and yet remain so stylized, like a Pedro Almadovar diva demento written with the late Divine in mind.
It never would have occured to me to link Almadovar and Divine, but it’s just so *right*.
Ah, the glory of otherwise-unemployable english majors
Seen on “Sci-Fi Wire”:http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005:
bq. “Is Bosworth Superman’s Lois?”:http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire2005/index.php?category=0&id=30025
Jon Carroll on Kinsey, 2004-11-19
“You can see the whole thing here”:http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=%2Fchronicle%2Farchive%2F2004%2F11%2F19%2FDDGAB9AB991.DTL
bq. It is interesting that a film about Alfred Kinsey is coming out today. Half a century ago, he released a book that seemed to prove that human beings act like human beings. “Who, us?” said the human beings, and got all huffy. All of a sudden, we’re back in a pre-Kinsey world.
William Gibson on Ronald Reagan
“You can go see the whole thing if you want to:”:http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/2004_10_01_archive.asp#109830395050849655
bq. If I were to put together a truly essential thank-you list for the people who most made it possible for me to write my first six novels, I’d certainly owe as much to Ronald Reagan as to Bill Gates or Lou Reed. Reagan’s presidency put the grit in my dystopia. His presidency was the fresh kitty litter I spread for utterly crucial traction on the icey driveway of uncharted futurity. His smile was the nightmare in my back pocket.
Andrew Suffield, 2004-08-25
bq.. For the past five years, Sun have been doing their determined level best to go out of business.
I think they’re disappointed every morning when they get into the office and it’s still there.
Tim Bailey, 2004-08-25
bq. Let’s just say my days of testing limits have come to an end, the result of age, exhaustion, and possibly wisdom.
Neal Stephenson, The Confusion
bq.The dream was interrupted by the raucous vehement on-rush of the carriage of the Marquis d’Ozoir, which was about as fitting and about as welcome in this scene as musketry at a seduction.