There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.

George Bernard Shaw

Nothing prevents me from being a writer except laziness. A good writer.

Why is writing important? Mainly, out of egotism, I suppose. Because I want to be that persona, a writer, and not because there is something I must say. Yet why not that too? With a little ego-building — such as the fait accompli this journal provides — I shall win through to the confidence that I (I) have something to say, that should be said.

My “I” is puny, cautious, too sane. Good writers are roaring egotists, even to the point of fatuity. Sane men, critics, correct them — but their sanity is parasitic on the creative fatuity of genius.

Excerpted from the journals of.

The third-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the majority. The second-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking with the minority. The first-rate mind is only happy when it is thinking.

A. A. Milne

I don't want to be a genius - I have enough problems just trying to be a man.

Albert Camus

george

It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them.

P. G. Wodehouse

william carlos williams

William Carlos Williams & baby Billy, 1914. / William Eric Williams, 1930.
wcw collection


Summer Song


Wanderer moon
smiling a
faintly ironical smile
at this
brilliant, dew-moistened
summer morning,—
a detached
sleepily indifferent
smile, a
wanderer's smile,—
if I should
buy a shirt
your color and
put on a necktie
sky-blue
where would they carry me?

Journalist Iris Dexter

‘Journalist Iris Dexter standing under the starboard engine of a Douglas C-47 aircraft’. 1943. Barbara Joan Isaacson.

Writer Russell Finch taking a portable television set to bathroom while smoking cigar and watching during his bath. 1948.

The Original

More than anyone else, [Edward] Carpenter was also responsible for introducing sandals to British life. When his friend Harold Cox went to India, he was given instructions to send back to Millthorpe a pair of sandals from Kashmir. The pair in question featured a thong that curled up from the sole over the toes to an ankle fastening. "I soon found the joy of wearing them," Carpenter wrote. "And after a little time I set about making them." Shoes, he decided, were "leather coffins." He took lessons from a Sheffield bootmaker and "soon succeeded in making a good many pairs for myself and various friends." (Shaw was given some, but they cut his feet and he vowed never to wear them again.)
cabinet // a brief history of cranks