Saturday, November 16, 2024

out of luck

"'[W]hen a man gets a streak of luck,—n---- luck—he don't get tired. The luck gives in first. Luck,' continued the gambler, reflectively, 'is a mighty queer thing. All you know about it for certain is that it's bound to change. And it's finding out when it's going to change that makes you. We've had a streak of bad luck since we left Poker Flat—you come along, and slap you get into it, too. If you can hold your cards right along you're all right.'"

~~ from "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" by Bret Harte

Friday, November 8, 2024

the most pleasant part of life

"Kyoto I thoroughly enjoyed, staying in a Japanese inn, old-style, sleeping on a straw mat and lying on the floors half the day, admiring the little moss garden. Being on the floor was childhood again, and childhood is still the most pleasant part of life. A confession of adult failure."

~~ from Saul Bellow to Frances Gendlin, May 1972

Sunday, November 3, 2024

A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty

"A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security."

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Book Reviews for Fight for Your Long Day

Genealogies of Modernity " Fight for Your Long Loud Laughs " by Jeffrey Wald at Genealogies of Modernity (January 2022) The Chron...