“The entire universe is in a glass of wine, if we look at it closely enough.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I
Author: Tetman Callis
“I’m not a candidate for the Old Person’s Hall of Fame. In fact, I plan to be a tattered coat upon a stick, nervously awaiting the second oblivion, which I’m reasonably certain will not have the same outcome as the first. Nonetheless, I like to think that I have some objectivity about what it’s like to grow old. My father lived to be almost a hundred and three, and most of my friends are now in their seventies. It may be risky to impugn the worthiness of old age, but I’ll take my cane to anyone who tries to stop me. At the moment, we seem to be compensating for past transgressions: far from devaluing old age, we assign it value it may not possess. Yes, we should live as long as possible, barring illness and infirmity, but, when it comes to the depredations of age, let’s not lose candor along with muscle tone. The goal, you could say, is to live long enough to think: I’ve lived long enough. One would, of course, like to approach old age with grace and fortitude, but old age makes it difficult. Those who feel that it’s a welcome respite from the passions, anxieties, and troubles of youth or middle age are either very lucky or toweringly reasonable. Why rail against the inevitable—what good will it do? None at all. Complaining is both pointless and unseemly. Existence itself may be pointless and unseemly. No wonder we wonder at the meaning of it all.” – Arthur Krystal, “Why We Can’t Tel the Truth About Aging”
“Not to marry a young Woman.
Not to be peevish or morose, or suspicious.
Not to tell the same story over and over to the same People.
Not to be covetous.
Not to be over severe with young People, but give Allowances for their youthfull follyes and weaknesses.
Not to be too free of advise, nor trouble any but those that desire it.
Not to talk much, nor of my self.
Not to boast of my former beauty, or strength, or favor with Ladyes, etc.
Not to hearken to Flatteryes, nor conceive I can be beloved by a young woman.
Not to be positive or opiniative.
Not to sett up for observing all these Rules; for fear I should observe none.
Desire some good Friends to inform me which of these Resolutions I break, or neglect, & wherein; and reform accordingly.” – Jonathan Swift, “Resolutions When I Come to Be Old”
“What can’t happen is a willingness to take up arms when the process didn’t work out the way you had hoped it would . . . if you believe in democracy, you take the good with the bad. You take the results you don’t like. . . . Go out into the streets and protest peacefully, sure. Hope for a better outcome, of course. But you can’t conspire to undo a result because you and a group of your cohorts believed that process failed you.” – Judge Amit P. Mehta, United States District Court for the District of Columbia, to Edward Vallejo, June 1, 2023, upon Vallejo’s sentencing for participating in the assault on the U.S. Capitol, January 6, 2021
“There are silent conspiracies between people who seem to understand one another without talking, quiet rebellions that take place in the world every minute without being noticed; groups form by chance, unplanned reunions in the middle of the park or on a dark corner, occasionally allowing us to be optimistic about the future of humanity. They join together for a few minutes and then go their separate ways, all enlisting in the hidden fight against moral misery. One day, they will rise up with unheard-of fury and blow everything to bits.” – Enrique Vila-Matas, The Illogic of Kassel (trans. Anne McLean & Anna Milsom)
“When all is said and done, life is governed by all sorts of misunderstandings.” – Enrique Vila-Matas, The Illogic of Kassel (trans. Anne McLean & Anna Milsom)
“Contrary to what so many believe, no one writes to entertain, although literature might be one of the most entertaining things around; no one writes to ‘tell stories,’ although literature is full of brilliant tales. No, one writes to take the reader captive, to possess, seduce, subjugate, to enter into the spirit of another and stay there, to touch, to win the reader’s heart . . .” – Enrique Vila-Matas, The Illogic of Kassel (trans. Anne McLean & Anna Milsom)(emphasis in original)(ellipsis in original)
“Nothing dies of too much love.” – Paul Simon, “The Lord (Part 1)”
“Every story leads to another story, which in turn leads to another story, and so on to infinity.” – Enrique Vila-Matas, The Illogic of Kassel (trans. Anne McLean & Anna Milsom)
“The whole of your life you get only so much of a sky as you can, in the splinter of the moment, smuggle, but then you get a moment, and the whole of heaven is the tip of a twister and it’s you, you’re the twister, you got the power.” – Alan Sincic, “One Shot Beetle”
“You think the body belongs to you, that it will always bend to your will, that with a simple word, size of a mustard seed, you can deploy the finger to find the itch, or—way off yonder there at the far end of the territory—set the toes to tapping or legs to running or, someday all of a sudden, cast that whole mountain of flesh into the sea. But then you find it don’t belong to you, the body, not really, not when the fear settles and the bone in the socket locks. The heart booms. The body wobbles. The—out the lungs it goes, that last little bit of sky.” – Alan Sincic, “One Shot Beetle”
“To live in a world of stones and bones and flesh and blood, you gotta touch and taste and smell, you gotta gather up the flavor of the day.” – Alan Sincic, “One Shot Beetle”
“Where the sea and the land collide they call it the line of the coast, the coastline, as if a line is what it is and not a wreck in the making, a blur where the water breaks and the earth buckles and the spray of the salt obliterates the hand that holds the map. Nobody knows nothing.” – Alan Sincic, “One Shot Beetle”
“Execute true judgment, and show mercy and compassions every man to his brother: and oppress not the widow, nor the fatherless, the stranger, nor the poor; and let none of you imagine evil against his brother in your heart.” – Zechariah, ch.7, vv. 9-10
“Their father had been a learned man, an author; he died, of course, in poverty, but he had managed before he died to give his children an excellent education; he left a lot of books too.” – Ivan S. Turgenev, “The Country Doctor”
“I believed then, as most conceited young people do, that a strong rational argument will carry the day if sufficiently well supported by substantiated facts. This, of course, is nonsense. Once a group of powerful people have made up their minds on something, it develops a life and momentum of its own that is almost impervious to reason or argument. This is particularly true when personal ambition and bravado are involved. In this case even an appeal to fear of ridicule and historical condemnation would not have worked. The decision had been taken at the highest level, and a vast military machine had been set in motion. The opinions of a young intelligence officer were not going to stop it.” – Brian Urquhart, “The Last Disaster of the War” [regarding the fiasco of Operation Market-Garden in the Second World War]
“I don’t think I want to get notified about Armageddon through an email. That would not be my preferred notification.” – Robert J. Contee, III, District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Chief, Select Committee Testimony Transcript, January 11, 2022
“If you have been in a fight for 5 minutes, it is a long time.” – Robert J. Contee, III, District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Chief, Select Committee Testimony Transcript, January 11, 2022
“In all human beings, if only understanding be brought to the business, dignity will be found, and that dignity cannot fail to reveal itself, soon or late, in the words and phrases with which they make known their high hopes and aspirations and cry out against the intolerable meaninglessness of life.” – H.L. Mencken, The American Language
“I think if you sit around waiting for something like inspiration to happen, you could just spend your lifetime sitting there. I think you get excited by actually doing it, you get excited by painting, you get excited by the possibilities of it.” – Richard Butler, a self-described “painter who sings,” His Majesty of Modesty: Richard Butler
“With the change in the type and tactics of a new and different enemy, we have evolved in the direction of total surveillance, unmanned warfare, stand-off weapons, surgical strikes, cyber operations and clandestine operations by elite forces whose battlefield is global.” – Robert H. Latiff, Future War: Preparing for the New Global Battlefield
“The retina is, in fact, the brain: in the development of the embryo, a piece of the brain comes out in front, and long fibers grow back, connecting the eyes to the brain. The retina is organized in just the way the brain is organized and, as someone has beautifully put it, ‘The brain has developed a way to look out upon the world.’ The eye is a piece of brain that is touching light, so to speak, on the outside.” – Richard P. Feynman, The Feynman Lectures on Physics, Vol. I
“It was announced by the Bureau of War Risk Insurance on March 30, 1918, that there were then 15,000 Millers in the United States Army. On the same day there were 262 John J. O’Briens, of whom 50 had wives named Mary.” – H.L. Mencken, The American Language (emphases in original)
“People’s lives today are filled with vice and the trappings of it. Ambition, greed and selfishness all have to do with vice. Sooner or later, you have to see through it or you don’t survive. We don’t see the people that vice destroys. We just see the glamour of it—everywhere we look, from billboard signs to movies, to newspapers, to magazines. We see the destruction of human life.” – Bob Dylan (interviewed by Robert Love in “Bob Dylan His Way,” 2015)
“Talent is one thing, but getting up in the morning and putting on your boots and doing something about it is another.” – Daniel Lanois (interviewed by Rick Beato on The Beato Club, published May 17, 2023)
“Don’t we just love the unusual when it’s good?” – Daniel Lanois (interviewed by Rick Beato on The Beato Club, published May 17, 2023)
“Somebody might study debate for five years in the university. That’s fine, but I’ve studied how to get along with people and how to get things done, in those five years. What would you call that? Is there a department that teaches cooperation, productivity, agreement, working together in such a way that you get to a better place collectively? These are the big lessons for me.” – Daniel Lanois (interviewed by Rick Beato on The Beato Club, published May 17, 2023)
“Imagine life without the ‘Undo’ button.” – Daniel Lanois (interviewed by Rick Beato on The Beato Club, published May 17, 2023)
“English, even in its most formal shapes, is chiefly taught by those who cannot write it decently and who get no aid from those who can.” – H.L. Mencken, The American Language
“The pedant is eternally convinced that pigeon-holing and relabelling are contributions to knowledge.” – H.L. Mencken, The American Language