Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) If America is the culmination of Western white civilization, as everyone from the Left to the Right declares, then there must be something terribly wrong with Western white civilization. This is a painful truth; few of us want to go that far.... The truth is that …
Teresita Fernández On Art
Teresita Fernández (May 12, 1968 -) Being an artist is not just about what happens when you are in the studio. The way you live, the people you choose to love and the way you love them, the way you vote, the words that come out of your mouth... will also become the raw material for …
Victor Hugo On Thanksgiving
Victor Hugo (February 26, 1802 – May 22, 1885) To give thanks in solitude is enough. Thanksgiving has wings and goes where it must go. Your prayer knows much more about it than you do.
May Sarton On Being A Poet
May Sarton (May 3, 1912 – July 16, 1995) I am, I think, more of a poet..., if to be a poet means allowing life to flow through one rather than forcing it into a mold the will has shaped: if it means learning to let the day shape the work, not the work, the …
Jane Ebihara On The Last Kiss
A Kiss is still…an osculatory apposition of the orbicularis oris and levator labii muscles with posterior involvement of the sternocleidomastoids, commonly in a dexterous orientation. — Onur Gunturkun of Ruhr Jane Ebihara First, in your seventies and alone, you read that those who count such things say an average person kisses for a total of …
Maria Popova On Solitude And Loneliness
Maria Popova (July 28, 1984 -) There is, of course, a universe of difference between solitude and loneliness — two radically different interior orientations toward the same exterior circumstance of lacking companionship. We speak of “fertile solitude” as a developmental achievement essential for our creative capacity, but loneliness is barren and destructive; it cottons in …
Oscar Wilde On Triviality
Oscar Fingal Wilde (October 16, 1854 – November 30, 1900) We should treat all the trivial things of life very seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.
