Monday, December 21, 2009

seeing what happens

Making art is a lot about just seeing what happens if you put some energy into something.
Kiki Smith, Blue Girl, 1998

Sunday, December 13, 2009

clamoring storm

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible. Vladimir Nabokov
Syoin kajii via gotsalviento via Pour Porter

Saturday, December 12, 2009

mislaid

Make a list of all the lovers you've ever had.

Warren Lasher
Ed "Rubberhead" Catapano
Charles Deats or Keats
Alfonse

Tuck it in your pocket. Leave it lying around, conspicuously. Somehow you lose it. Make "mislaid" jokes to yourself. Make another list.
- Lorrie Moore, from "Self Help"
Illustration by Wendy MacNaughton

Sunday, December 6, 2009

novels do not get easier to write

Miss Mazure's face was wildly askew. Every feature went its own way, and her nose was a large distraction

Saturday, December 5, 2009

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

you forget what you want to remember

"When I grasped that some of the most complex, almost otherworldly fiction of the postwar era was composed on such a simple, functional, frail-looking machine, it conferred a sort of talismanic quality to Cormac's typewriter," Glenn Horowitz told the New York Times. "It's as if Mount Rushmore was carved with a Swiss army knife." NYT via Guardian.