FELLATIO
Fellatio is the nicest thing one human being can do for another.
— John Cheever, speaking to a writer class at the University of Iowa in 1973
Archive for the 'quote of the day' Category
Quote of the day: FELLATIO
January 2, 2013Quote of the day: WEIRD
December 31, 2012WEIRD
In old traditions those who acted as elders were considered to have one foot in daily life and the other foot in the otherworld. Elders acted as a bridge between the visible world and the unseen realms of spirit and soul. A person in touch with the otherworld stands out because something normally invisible can be seen through them. The old word for having a foot in each world is weird. The original sense of weird involved both fate and destiny. Becoming weird enough to be wise requires that a person learn to accommodate the strange way they are shaped within and aimed at the world.
An old idea suggests that those seeking for an elder should look for someone weird enough to be wise. For just as there can be no general wisdom, there are no “normal” elders. Normal bespeaks the “norms” that society uses to regulate people, whereas an awakened destiny always involves connections to the weird and the warp of life. In Norse mythology, as in Shakespeare, the Fates appear as the Weird Sisters who hold time and the timeless together.
Those who would become truly wise must become weird enough to be in touch with timeless things and abnormal enough to follow the guidance of the unseen. Elders are supposed to be weird, not simply “weirdos,” but strange and unusual in meaningful ways. Elders are supposed to be more in touch with the otherworld, but not out of touch with the struggles in this world. Elders have one foot firmly in the ground of survival and another in the realm of great imagination. This double-minded stance serves to help the living community and even helps the species survive.
— Michael Meade, Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul
Quote of the day: DIFFERENT
December 30, 2012DIFFERENT
Elaine May: “What have you learned, Mike?”
Mike Nichols: I’ve learned that many of the worst things lead to the best things, that no great thing is achieved without a couple of bad, bad things on the way to them, and that the bad things that happen to you bring, in some cases, the good things. For instance, if you grow up odd and—what is it when you’re left out? You’re not an extrovert—“
Elaine May; “Introvert?”
Mike Nichols: “No, when you grow up—“
Elaine May: “Peculiar?”
Mike Nichols: Peculiar. Different. The degree to which you’re peculiar and different is the degree to which you must learn to hear people thinking. Just in self-defense you have to learn, where is their kindness? Where is their danger? Where is there generosity? If you survive, because you’ve gotten lucky—and there’s no reason ever to survive except luck—you will find that the ability to hear people thinking is incredibly useful, especially in the theater.”
— Vanity Fair (read the whole thing online here)
Quote of the day: SHAKESPEARE SCHOLARSHIP
December 22, 2012SHAKESPEARE SCHOLARSHIP
Sorting through the pile of scripts in the archive, I found a copy of Ümmiye Koçak’s Hamlet, and opened it at random.
“Alas, poor Yorick!” I read aloud.
“I knew him,” Ümmiye said promptly. “He had a way of joking, of conversation.” Her expression turned serious. “You know,” she said, “there’s something I’d like to ask you about that scene. When Hamlet says, ‘How many times I kissed this one, this Yorick, on the lips.’ Well, Yorick is a man. And Hamlet is also a man.” She asked if I had any explanation, and I confessed that I did not, observing only that Hamlet was a little boy at the time. “Well, of course he was,” Ümmiye said. “But it still seems odd. With us in Turkey, little boys don’t kiss grown men on the lips.”
Everyone agreed that it was odd. “Hamlet was a homosexual,” Seher said quietly, not looking up from the tomato she was dicing, and this theory was debated for some minutes. Ümmiye couldn’t accept it, because wasn’t the whole point that he was in love with his mother?
— Elif Batuman, “Stage Mothers,” in the New Yorker
Ümmiye Koçak (in crown) playing Hamlet with her company, the Arslankoy Women’s Theatre (photo by Carolyn Drake)
Quote of the day: YEAR IN REVIEW
December 9, 2012YEAR IN REVIEW
What was 2012’s defining cultural moment or phenomenon?
Nothing I saw or read approached the Republican-primary debates. I still can’t get over front-runner Michele Bachmann, and then front-runner Rick Perry, and then front-runner Newt Gingrich, and then front-runner Little Ricky Santorum … These stumblebums, along with that dwarf among dwarves, Mitt Romney, nonetheless haunted my dreams.
— David Edelstein, New York
another eye opens 