writing is sorrow; having had written is sublime
Who has not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or silly action for no other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgement, to violate that which is Law, merely because we understand it to be such?
— from The Black Cat
MORE LITERARY ZEN
#vote
I don’t know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn’t make sense.
#meditate
There is some wisdom in taking a gloomy view, in looking upon the world as a kind of Hell, and in confining one’s efforts to securing a little room that shall not be exposed to the fire.
*Perhaps a better caption would be, Willem Defoe as Arthur Schopenhauer, which is why I shan’t give up my day job.
Oh yeah, my books will be free from 00:01 (PDST) tonight until 23:59 PDST) Friday.
✌️
Everyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven first found the power thereto in his own hell.
You just have to go on when it is worst and most helpless -there is only one thing to do with a novel [or anything important**] and that is go straight on through to the end of the damn thing.
Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald in a 1929 letter from France, courtesy the New York Times archive
#alonetogetherwiththelostgeneration
*Even though it says Straight On Through and not Break On Through, I wonder how many first thought of the Doors…
**IMO
I would sooner a writer were vulgar than mincing; for life is vulgar,
and it is life he seeks. ~ W. Somerset Maugham
#ofthejournals
