ClimbingSky

Why Baseball, Books, and the Grateful Dead matter


QUOTATIONS

  • Hardboiled Java

    “Right up the street under the el was an all-night hash joint, and what I needed was a couple mugs of good black java to bring me around.” (Spillane, Mickey. My Gun is Quick.) Read more

  • A New Day & A New Year

    Growth is about letting go and forgiveness, forgiving others and especially ourselves. May your days and the year ahead be one of letting go and forgiveness. Happy New Year! “Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.”– Herman Hesse “Finish each day and be done with it. You… Read more

  • Gertrude Stein on Coffee

    “Coffee gives you time to think. It’s a lot more than just a drink; it’s something happening. Not as in hip, but like an event, a place to be, but not like a location, but like somewhere within yourself. It gives you time, but not actual hours or minutes, but a chance to be, like… Read more

  • [Those who complain about the ambiguity or obscurity of modern poetry] “should first examine their consciences and ask themselves with how many people and on how many occasions they have genuinely and profoundly shared some experience with another.” ~ W. H. Auden Read more

  • Some Quotes from Thoreau

    Thoreau is one the our most quotable writers. It is one of the reasons that those of us who are Thoreau fans re-read him so regularly. Reading “Walking” again I have underlined the following lines (there are many, many more I could include): In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. * *… Read more

  • In his famous 1944 essay, “The Simple Art of Murder,” Raymond Chandler openly acknowledged Hammett’s genius. He properly credited him as “the ace performer,” the one writer responsible for the creation and development of the hard-boiled school of literature, the genre’s revolutionary realist. “He took murder out of the Venetian vase and dropped it into… Read more

  • Literary Cat Quotes

    Each morning as I stand at my desk writing, I have a companion, sometimes two. I cannot imagine writing now without having a cat with me. A cat is the perfect companion for a writer. Because the literary relationship between cats and writers is such a natural one, it is not surprising to discover that… Read more

  • “Jitter in a Cup”

    “I don’t even glance at the herbal teas, I go straight for the real, vile coffee. Jitter in a cup. It cheers me up to know I’ll soon be so tense.” — Margaret Atwood Read more

  • Segmenting time, or periodization, is something we have to do if we want to organize the past and give it meaning. But it’s dangerous. By choosing some dominating event and saying that its period starts here and ends there, we run the risk of neglecting other events that don’t fit well into the scheme we’ve… Read more

  • Happy Thanksgiving

    “When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.” — G.K. Chesterton. Happy Thanksgiving! – Mark Read more