A Selection of Quotes from Frequently Banned Books, Part One

  • “I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?”-Candide, Voltaire
  • “He look’d a little disorder’d, when he said this, but I did not apprehend anything from it at the time, believing as it us’d to be said, that they who do those things never talk of them; or that they who talk of such things never do them.”-Moll Flanders, Daniel Defoe
  • “There ain’t so sin and their ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do.”-The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

Getting Back on Track with George Bellows

My step-dad’s funeral was two days ago. We have to empty out the contents of his apartment by the end of the month, so there is not a lot of time to spare for work or play. Much like life, we have to grab it whilst we can. Yesterday, my mom and I took a much-needed mental health break at the Columbus Museum of Art. The short walk there and back provided us with a liberal dose of sunshine, which was a partial cure in and of itself to the stress of the last two weeks.

A sculpture and its shadow

A sculpture and its shadow in front of the museum.

I was super excited to see the George Bellows exhibit, and it did not disappoint. Four large rooms are given over to the show, which runs until January 4, 2014. To read more about it, go here. Although his work encompassed so much more than the famous boxing images, standing in front of a few of those legendary canvases was extraordinary. I was also delighted to see a few copies of The Masses, for which Bellows supplied artwork, on display underneath a glass case. What an unexpected highlight!

Then, there was this:

Bathsheba, by Artemisia Gentileschi. Circa 1636.

Bathsheba, by Artemisia Gentileschi. Circa 1636.

Absolutely awe-inspiring in person!

An afternoon at the museum was a great reminder that art is good for the soul, and a further indication that life is slowly returning to normal.

“Try everything that can be done…Learn your own possibilities.”-George Bellows

Quote

“You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I’m creating an imaginary–it’s always imaginary–world in which I would like to live.”-William S. Burroughs, in The Paris Review

[Alternative Muses] Writerly Style: George Bernard Shaw Demonstrates How to Wear a Suit

 George Bernard Shaw wore suits almost as well as he wrote plays. Case in point:

George Bernard Shaw, 1909

George Bernard Shaw, 1909.

The hat is a nice touch.

George Bernard Shaw, 1914

George Bernard Shaw, 1914.

Hmm. This looks familiar.

George Bernard Shaw, 1946

George Bernard Shaw, 1946.

Jaunty at 90.

The Eighth of September by Pablo Neruda

The Eighth of September by Pablo Neruda

This day, Today, was a brimming glass.
This day, Today, was an immense wave.
This day was all the Earth.
This day, the storm-driven ocean
lifted us up in a kiss
so exalted we trembled
at the lightning flash
and bound as one, fell,
and drowned, without being unbound.
This day our bodies grew
stretched out to Earth’s limits,
orbited there, melded there
to one globe of wax, or a meteor’s flame.
A strange door opened, between us,
and someone, with no face as yet,
waited for us there.