Archive for the 'quote of the day' Category

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Quote of the day: ADVICE

June 9, 2012

ADVICE

“Never leave in a hurry,” my older brother told me. Whenever he left in a hurry, he explained, he’d always forget something: his gloves, his checkbook.

The notion probably came from family vacations when we were children. Each time we left town, our father would drive slowly around the block while we all thought about what we might have forgotten. As we came back by the house, someone would always run in t grab a swimsuit or let the cat out.

At our family cabin I was usually the first one in the car when it was time to go home on Sunday afternoon. Once, however, when I was ten, I stayed behind to help my mother pack while the others went ahead to the car. The record player was on, and I set the needle down on an Andy Williams album to play my favorite song, “A Fool Never Learns.” I proceeded to dance around the room. To my surprise Mom dropped what she was doing, and we hopped and spun together, just the two of us, laughing and singing, all because I hadn’t been in a hurry to get home.

That advice has proved useful to me as a photojournalist. I make it a practice to linger awhile after an interview and chat about the news of the day. Many times, by staying a few extra minutes, I get that golden quote or clock off a candid shot that ends up being the best.

— Terrell Williams, “Readers Write,” The Sun


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Quote of the day: INITIATION

June 7, 2012

INITIATION

Soul initiation refers to that extraordinary moment in life when we cross over from psychological adolescence to true adulthood, from our first adulthood to our second. At that moment, our everyday life becomes firmly rooted in the purposes of the soul. The embodiment of our soul powers becomes as high a priority in living as any other. But it’s not so much that we choose at that moment to make soul embodiment a top priority; it’s more as if the soul commands us to that task and we assent.
In the Western culture, we need to be careful with the word initiation. Many people associate it with elitism, secret societies, flaky or nefarious cults, and oppressive, hierarchical organizations. For some people, the word evokes, on the one hand, a sense of their own inadequacy (if they have not undergone an initiatory experience and believe they ought to have) and, on the other, suspicions of arrogance or ego inflation on the part of those who participate in initiatory rites. Due to its considerable charge, it may be best to avoid public declarations of being initiated. Soul initiation is not something to be worn like a badge or status symbol; it is to be quietly embodied through a life of soulful service.
Soul initiation transforms our lives by the power of the truth at the center of our soul image. Embracing the truth results in a radical simplification of our lives. Activities and relationships not supportive of our soul purpose begin to fall away. Our former agendas are discarded, half-completed projects abandoned. Many old problems are not solved but outgrown. Old ways of presenting and defending ourselves become less appealing, and less necessary.
At soul initiation, our lives are changed forever, irreversibly.

— Bill Plotkin, Soulcraft

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Quote of the day: WRITING

June 6, 2012

WRITING

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

— Thomas Mann

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Quote of the day: SCIENCE FICTION

June 2, 2012

SCIENCE FICTION

Last month, you humped around a water-stained copy of Pride and Prejudice and nobody said boo to you. In that book, some British sisters vie to get their dance cards punched. In the Shannara books [by Terry Brooks], a nuclear holocaust has wiped out almost every living thing. And “now” — two thousand years in the future — the Ohmsford siblings have rediscovered a burning green magic, germinating under the world, the past waiting to be reborn as future.

The Elfstones is so much better than Pride and Prejudice. Yet it has been made clear to you that the Austen book is a classic, while Terry Brooks is “a hack.” For school, you’ve read Where the Red Fern Grows and On the Banks of Plum Creek, books that start with prepositions and end in cornfields. They, too, are classics, and your class gets frog-marched through them single file, on a path worn smooth by a million schoolkids’ sneakers before you. English class sometimes reminds you of your field trips to Florida’s Historic Sties. “Look at that lovely imagery!” Mrs. Sicius commands, mapping a sentence about dogs on the blackboard. Every step of the way through these books is chaperoned. At the end, you write a report….

Years later, watch a new generation of children beam stories about wizards and eloquent unicorns directly onto their Kindles. They sit on the bus blabbing openly to one another about hippogriffs, pixies. Watch them walking down the sidewalk with their Quidditch brooms knocking and their shadows in the open, their spell books downloaded onto flat gray brains, these magic lovers, these children of the future.

— Karen Russell

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Quote of the day: FEMINISM

May 27, 2012

FEMINISM

[Feminism] has been “abducted,” as [Arlie Russell Hochschild] has put it… by the logic and demands of the marketplace — what she provocatively calls “the religion of capitalism.” Feminism has coincided with a drastic lengthening of work hours and a steep decline in job security, and in America those stressors have not been alleviated by social supports like paid family leave and universal child care, at least not in comparison with most other Western nations. As a result, too many bonds of family and community are left untied by anxious, overworked couples, too many familial functions have to be subcontracted, and too many children perceive themselves as burdens. (One of Hochschild’s finest essays, also published elsewhere, is called “Children as Eavesdroppers”; it describes how children listen closely to their parents’ haggling over child care, and conclude that they are unwanted.) Feminists once dreamed that the work of mothering would be properly valued, maybe even reimbursed, once some portion of it had been redistributed to fathers. Instead, a lot of it is being handed off to strangers.

— Judith Shulevitz, reviewing Hochschild’s The Outsourced Self in the NY Times

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