Real and unreal
Further entries in an online commonplace book
“The good or ill accidents of life are very little at our disposal; but we are pretty much masters what books we shall read, what diversions we shall partake of, and what company we shall keep.” —David Hume, “Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion”
“He moves like he’s being yelled at by invisible people whom he hates but whom he basically agrees with.” —Mary Gaitskill, Veronica
Social media for thee but not for me.
“I wanted to hide so that I could get busy at my real work, which was a sort of wooing of distant parts of myself.” —Alice Munro, “Miles City, Montana”
“It is said that Balzac on his deathbed inquired anxiously after the health and prosperity of characters he had created.” —John Le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
“I believe one reason why Americans look so careworn is because they all feel so intensely the responsibility of governing the country.” —Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, journal, 27 December 1857
“A sort of alter-egotism in the book was unavoidable.” —F. L. Olmsted, A Journey through Texas
“It is pleasant to embark on a voyage, if only for a short river excursion, the boat to be your home for the day, especially if it is neat and dry. A sort of moving studio it becomes, you can carry so many things with you. It is almost as if you put oars out at your windows and moved your house along.” —Henry D. Thoreau, journal, 31 August 1852
“What person, for example, could possibly be so comforting as one’s bed?” —Barbara Pym, Crampton Hodnet
“And you know how it is with charm—the more you distrust it the more it excites you.” —Thom Gunn to Douglas Chambers, 18 May 2001
“History was mysterious, the remembrance of things unknown, in a way burdensome, in a way a sensuous experience. It uplifted and depressed, why he did not know, except that it excited his thoughts more than he thought good for him. This kind of excitement was all right up to a point, perfect maybe for a creative artist, but less so for a critic. A critic, he thought, should live on beans.” —Bernard Malamud, “The Last Mohican”
One of the very few advantages of having a brain like mine is that when you’re listening to the Allegro of the Divertimento #3 in F major, you notice that Mozart is borrowing a melody from Cheap Trick.
“One never knows, Craft, whether what happens to one is, in the final analysis, good or bad.”
“Usually it’s bad,” replied the other coldly as he went up to the looking-glass and adjusted the knot of his white tie.
—Eça de Queiroz, The Maias
“The body grows weaker, but gazing at the mountains remains the same.” —Eliot Weinberger, The Life of Tu Fu
“In film, tricks win over truth. They provide the variations, the dimension and depth.” —Jean Cocteau, Diary of a Film
“After talking with Uncle Charles the other night about the worthies of the country, Webster and the rest, as usual, considering who were geniuses and who not, I showed him up to bed, and when I had got into bed myself, I heard his chamber door opened, after eleven o’clock, and he called out, in an earnest, stentorian voice, loud enough to wake the whole house, ‘Henry! was John Quincy Adams a genius?’ ‘No, I think not,’ was my reply. ‘Well, I didn’t think he was,’ answered he.” —Thoreau, journal, 1 January 1853 (N.B.: Uncle Charles had found the vein of graphite that became the basis for the family’s pencil-making business)