I really liked the descriptions of cat personality in this book...
"And look at him too. We don't normally take pets. John, John's my husband, he doesn't like animals, but it's not like we can send you back out there tonight, is it?"
The last part wasn't addressed to me.
"Thanks. He's very grateful, " I said, looking down at the cat-carrier. "Aren't you?"
From her laugh I knew the cat was still glaring our of his carry case, a big fat fuck off expression all over his face. "Well, anyway," I said. "I'm grateful enough for both of us." (p. 100)
"Ian pattered down the corridor ahead of us, ears back, tail low, running in that way cats run when they don't like it that people are coming up fast behind them." (p. 241)
...and then some other fluff:
"I think there's still a small block of original quiet that exists in the world. 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. -- a last natural wilderness, time's shrinking little Antarctica." (p. 109)
"There's no way to really preserve a person when they've gone and that's because whatever you write down it's not the truth, it's just a story. Stories are all we're ever left with in our head or on paper: clever narratives put together from selected facts, legends, well edited tall tales with us in the starring roles." (p. 413)
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
The Tao of Wu — The RZA w/ Chris Norris
"Chili-Wop became an ally, a protector in a violent world. Finally, after I'd lived there for nearly two years, he told me something. 'When y'all first moved in, I robbed your house, maaan. I never knew you was gonna be a cool family.' ... That's just one hood lesson: Your allies can arrive as enemies, blessings as a curse." (p. 3)
"How can you defame mud when such a beautiful flower grows from it?" (p. 4)
"Just as you must come through a woman's womb to attain physical birth, so must you come through Wisdom to achieve mental birth. And like childbirth, Wisdom often comes with pain." (p. 7)
"I advise everyone to find an island in this life. Find a place where this culture can't take energy away from you, sap your will and originality. Since anything physical can be mental, that island can be your home. Turn off the electromagnetic waves being forced upon you, the countless invisible forces coming at you all the time." (p. 18)
[RZA traveled to a small village in West Africa to visit Ghostface Killah there. To get there, he had to fly into the city of Cotonou, Benin. People there saw that he was dressed like a rap star, so...] "In the city, just about everyone I met had his hand out — either asking for something or trying to sell me something. When we got to the village, everyone had his hand out in offering — either something to eat, or directions, or some kind of help. They had less but they were offering more." (p. 28)
"The personal characteristics of great messengers are usually irrelevant. For instance, they say that Martin Luther King Jr. was a fornicator. Does it matter? Do you believe the messenger or his message? I believe in the message. That's why when I read certain books or see certain films, I skip over the names: Forget who said it if it's truth." (p. 33)
"I ask people what piece they are on the chessboard. And some people say 'I'm the king' or 'I'm the knight.' And then they ask me what piece I am, and I say, 'I'm no piece. I take the position of God.'" (p. 33)
"I think most of my approach to life has been like that, to find order in chaos, to be in the middle of a bunch of things happening at the same time, but find focus. I strive to be like the sun sitting in the middle of the solar system with all the planets spinning around it — millions of things going on. It's just sitting there being the sun, but exerting gravitational effect on everything. I think man should look at himself that way." (p. 48)
"An enlightened man sees that there actually are no numbers. It's all a circle. On a number line, the numbers left of zero head off to negative infinity and the ones right of zero head off to positive infinity. But it's infinity either way." (p. 62)
"They say there's a dark spot in your heart, a tiny black vacuum, that's the size of the tip of a needle. I believe that tiny space is where God is located inside you. That tiny dark spot is a piece of space trapped in our body, something that connects us to the universe and one another." (p. 68)
"Our culture is programming its children to join the 85 percent, to be robots, to have no knowledge of self. Today, being one of the 85 percent might mean being married in the suburbs with 2.5 kids and 3 cars, spending your days eating prepackaged food, and talking about ten-year-old sitcoms. It might mean chasing Escalades, Rolexes, and power in a corporation that will betray you. It might mean simply accepting everything you see without question. Today, we need some form of the Five Percent." (p. 94)
"You are a 64-track recording — the tracks are always there, they're always with you. Sometimes the harsh tracks are cranked up and the rest are rolled down to zero. Other times the sweet tracks are high and the darkness is low. But it's all you." (p. 117)
"How can you defame mud when such a beautiful flower grows from it?" (p. 4)
"Just as you must come through a woman's womb to attain physical birth, so must you come through Wisdom to achieve mental birth. And like childbirth, Wisdom often comes with pain." (p. 7)
"I advise everyone to find an island in this life. Find a place where this culture can't take energy away from you, sap your will and originality. Since anything physical can be mental, that island can be your home. Turn off the electromagnetic waves being forced upon you, the countless invisible forces coming at you all the time." (p. 18)
[RZA traveled to a small village in West Africa to visit Ghostface Killah there. To get there, he had to fly into the city of Cotonou, Benin. People there saw that he was dressed like a rap star, so...] "In the city, just about everyone I met had his hand out — either asking for something or trying to sell me something. When we got to the village, everyone had his hand out in offering — either something to eat, or directions, or some kind of help. They had less but they were offering more." (p. 28)
"The personal characteristics of great messengers are usually irrelevant. For instance, they say that Martin Luther King Jr. was a fornicator. Does it matter? Do you believe the messenger or his message? I believe in the message. That's why when I read certain books or see certain films, I skip over the names: Forget who said it if it's truth." (p. 33)
"I ask people what piece they are on the chessboard. And some people say 'I'm the king' or 'I'm the knight.' And then they ask me what piece I am, and I say, 'I'm no piece. I take the position of God.'" (p. 33)
"I think most of my approach to life has been like that, to find order in chaos, to be in the middle of a bunch of things happening at the same time, but find focus. I strive to be like the sun sitting in the middle of the solar system with all the planets spinning around it — millions of things going on. It's just sitting there being the sun, but exerting gravitational effect on everything. I think man should look at himself that way." (p. 48)
"An enlightened man sees that there actually are no numbers. It's all a circle. On a number line, the numbers left of zero head off to negative infinity and the ones right of zero head off to positive infinity. But it's infinity either way." (p. 62)
"They say there's a dark spot in your heart, a tiny black vacuum, that's the size of the tip of a needle. I believe that tiny space is where God is located inside you. That tiny dark spot is a piece of space trapped in our body, something that connects us to the universe and one another." (p. 68)
"Our culture is programming its children to join the 85 percent, to be robots, to have no knowledge of self. Today, being one of the 85 percent might mean being married in the suburbs with 2.5 kids and 3 cars, spending your days eating prepackaged food, and talking about ten-year-old sitcoms. It might mean chasing Escalades, Rolexes, and power in a corporation that will betray you. It might mean simply accepting everything you see without question. Today, we need some form of the Five Percent." (p. 94)
"You are a 64-track recording — the tracks are always there, they're always with you. Sometimes the harsh tracks are cranked up and the rest are rolled down to zero. Other times the sweet tracks are high and the darkness is low. But it's all you." (p. 117)
Thursday, January 20, 2011
Philip Marlowe is Funny as Hell
ie: Chapter 29 pg 191
It was a gray morning with high fog, not yet warm but likely to be. I heaved up off the bed and rubbed the pit of my stomach where it was sore from vomiting. My left foot felt fine. It didn’t have an ache in it. So I had to kick the corner of the bed with it.
Lolz
and also:
Chapter 8 pg 48
...The door opened silently, and I was looking at a tall blond man in a white flannel suit with a violet satin scarf around his neck.
There was a cornflower in the lapel of his white coat and his pale eyes looked faded out by comparison. The violet scarf was loose enough to show that he wore no tie and that he had a thick, soft brown neck, like the neck of a strong woman. His features were a little on the heavy side, but handsome, he had an inch more of height than I had, which made him six feet one. His blond hair was arranged, by art or nature, in three precise blond ledges which reminded me of steps, so that I didn't like them. I wouldn't have liked them anyway. Apart from all this he had the general appearance of a lad who would wear a white flannel suit with a violet scarf around his neck and a cornflower in his lapel.
OMG ROFLCOPTER
In all seriousness though, Marlowe has such a fast wit and easy going nature, it was impossible for me NOT to like him. Even if the book is rife with sexism, racism, classism, chauvinism and all sorts of other delightful byproducts of the nineteen thirties and forties. ( Some of that stuff is kind of endearing. Like how he always drinks before he drives and sometimes while he drives. ) In general the whole thing made me want to read another one of Chandler's Marlowe stories. That or watch
The Happiness Project — Gretchen Rubin
[Subtitle: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun]
"A sense of growth is so important to happiness that it's often preferable to be progressing to the summit rather than to be at the summit. Neither a scientist nor a philosopher but a novelist, Lisa Grunwald, came up with the most brilliant summation of this happiness principle: 'Best is good, better is best.'" (p. 178)
"We expect heroic virtue to look flashy — moving to Uganda to work with AIDS victims, perhaps, or documenting the plight of homeless people in Detroit. Thérèse's [Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, the author's chosen "Spiritual Master"] example shows that ordinary life, too, is full of opportunities for worthy, if inconspicuous, virtue." (p. 212)
[On the subject of "the most serious criticism of happiness: it's not right to be happy when there is so much suffering in the world"] "Refusing to be happy because someone else is unhappy, though, is a bit like cleaning your plate because babies are starving in India." (p. 216)
"One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself." (p. 216)
"It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted." (p. 217)
[Under the section labeled "FORGET ABOUT RESULTS."] "An atmosphere of growth brings great happiness, but at the same time, happiness sometimes also comes when you're free from the pressure to see much growth. That's not surprising; often, the opposite of a great truth is also true." (p. 231)
"A sense of growth is so important to happiness that it's often preferable to be progressing to the summit rather than to be at the summit. Neither a scientist nor a philosopher but a novelist, Lisa Grunwald, came up with the most brilliant summation of this happiness principle: 'Best is good, better is best.'" (p. 178)
"We expect heroic virtue to look flashy — moving to Uganda to work with AIDS victims, perhaps, or documenting the plight of homeless people in Detroit. Thérèse's [Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, the author's chosen "Spiritual Master"] example shows that ordinary life, too, is full of opportunities for worthy, if inconspicuous, virtue." (p. 212)
[On the subject of "the most serious criticism of happiness: it's not right to be happy when there is so much suffering in the world"] "Refusing to be happy because someone else is unhappy, though, is a bit like cleaning your plate because babies are starving in India." (p. 216)
"One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy. One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself." (p. 216)
"It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted." (p. 217)
[Under the section labeled "FORGET ABOUT RESULTS."] "An atmosphere of growth brings great happiness, but at the same time, happiness sometimes also comes when you're free from the pressure to see much growth. That's not surprising; often, the opposite of a great truth is also true." (p. 231)
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft--Stephen King
"Language does not always have to wear a tie and lace-up shoes. The object of fiction isn't grammatical correctness but to make the reader welcome and then tell a story . . . to make him/her forget, whenever possible, that he/she is reading a story at all."
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