Herman Hesse, from Stages

…Since life may summon us at every age
Be ready, heart, for parting, new endeavor,
Be ready bravely and without remorse
To find new light that old ties cannot give…

Walter Benjamin, “Post No Bills” from Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings

THE WRITER'S TECHNIQUE IN THIRTEEN THESES

1.     Anyone intending to embark on a major work should be lenient with himself and, having completed a stint, deny himself nothing that will not prejudice the next.

2.     Talk about what you have written, by all means, but do not read from it while the work is in progress. Every gratification procured in this way will slacken your tempo. If this regime is followed, the growing desire to communicate will become in the end a motor for completion.

3.     In your working conditions avoid everyday mediocrity. Semi-relaxation, to a background of insipid sounds, is degrading. On the other hand, accompaniment by an etude or a cacophony of voices can become as significant for work as the perceptible silence of the night. If the latter sharpens the inner ear, the former acts as a touchstone for a diction ample enough to bury even the most wayward sounds.

4.     Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these utensils is indispensable. 

5.     Let no thought pass incognito, and keep your notebook as strictly as the authorities keep their register of aliens.

6.     Keep your pen aloof from inspiration, which it will then attract with magnetic power. The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself. Speech conquers thought, but writing commands it.

7.     Never stop writing because you have run out of ideas. Literary honour requires that one break off only at an appointed moment (a mealtime, a meeting) or at the end of the work.

8.     Fill the lacunae of inspiration by tidily copying out what is already written. Intuition will awaken in the process.

9.     Nulla dies sine linea ['No day without a line'] — but there may well be weeks.

10.   Consider no work perfect over which you have not once sat from evening to broad daylight.

11.   Do not write the conclusion of a work in your familiar study. You would not find the necessary courage there.

12.   Stages of composition: idea — style — writing. The value of the fair copy is that in producing it you confine attention to calligraphy. The idea kills inspiration, style fetters the idea, writing pays off style.

13.   The work is the death mask of its conception.

Orson Welles

The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.

Robert Ardrey to AJ Jacobs

We were born of risen apes, not fallen angels. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles, and our irreconcilable regiments? Or our treaties whatever they may be worth; our symphonies however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen.

Alex Trebek to A.J.Jacobs

I'm curious about everything—even things that don't interest me.

Shakespeare, King John

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then, have I reason to be fond of grief?

- Constance, ACT III, Sc IV

 

Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art"

…
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
...

Noah Davis (painter)

I'd rather fail at painting than be successful at anything else.

Semi Chellas, "Fugue" (1986)

I think about the word "drunk". It is almost onomatopoeic: "drunk" is the sound you make, falling down from being drunk. 

Robert Hayden, Those Winter Sundays

     Sundays too my father got up early

     and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,

     then with cracked hands that ached

     from labor in the weekday weather made

     banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

     I'd wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.

     When the rooms were warm, he'd call,

     and slowly I would rise and dress,

     fearing the chronic angers of that house,

     Speaking indifferently to him,

     who had driven out the cold

     and polished my good shoes as well.

     What did I know, what did I know

     of love's austere and lonely offices?

Galway Kinnell, “Wait”

Wait, for now.

Distrust everything if you have to.

But trust the hours. Haven't they

carried you everywhere, up to now?

Helene Cixous quoting Kafka in The Gagosian

HANS ULRICH OBRISTAre there any quotes you live by?

HÉLÈNE CIXOUSNo, but what comes to mind is "Man kann doch nicht nicht-leben" [One cannot not-live]. That's Kafka.

Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed, their rules for living from an interview with her

OK, so the first one is: Don't be afraid of anyone. If you can imagine: living your life, you're not afraid of anyone. That's number one.

Number two is you get a really good bullshit detector, and you learn how to use it. You know, just: "Is that really happening or not?"

Third is to be really, really tender. And with those, you're covered.

Marshall McLuhan

• I wouldn't have seen it, if I didn't believe it. 

André Alexis, “Houyhnhnms”

Most great things take time to happen. So do catastrophe.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letter to Franz Xavier Kappus

You are so young, so much before all beginning, and 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.

Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

"Didn't I read in the paper the other day where they finally found out what it was?"

"I missed that," I murmured.

"I saw that," said Sandra. "About two days ago."

"What is the secret of life?" I aksed.

"I forget," said Sandra.

"Protein," the bartender declared. "They found out something about protein."

"Yeah," said Sandra, "that's it."

Edna St Vincent Millay

To what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

[via Austin Kleon]

Mary Oliver, "Don't Hesitate"

If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy,
don't hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty
of lives and whole towns destroyed or about
to be. We are not wise, and not very often
kind. And much can never be redeemed.
Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this
is its way of fighting back, that sometimes
something happens better than all the riches
or power in the world. It could be anything,
but very likely you notice it in the instant
when love begins. Anyway, that's often the
case. Anyway, whatever it is, don't be afraid
of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb.

 

Goethe, Faust

I see my discourse leaves you cold;
Dear kids, I do not take offense;
Recall: the Devil, he is old,
Grow old yourselves, and he'll make sense!

Annie Ernaux, The Years

And one day we'll appear in our children's memories, among their grandchildren, and people not yet born. Like sexual desire, memory never stops. It pairs the dead with the living, real with imaginary beings, dreams with history.