Books, music, Theravada Buddhism, Russian culture, Indian tea. Dancing badly. Petting other people's cats.
the future is unwritten
the past no longer exists
The Clash, the Buzzcocks, Sham, DK, the Pixies, Violent Femmes, Wire, the Damned, ska rocksteady and reggae, Tamla Motown, Northern Soul.
When I write I listen to Blonde Redhead, Islands/Unicorns, CYHSY, or the Shins. Just those bands. Over and over. Don't know why.
(not a complete list...)
Fiction writers:
Chinua Achebe , Anita Amirrezvani , Isaac Babel, Pat Barker, Donald Barthelme , David Besmozgis, Peter Carey , Raymond Carver, Jill Ciment, Deborah Eisenberg, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jonathan Safran Foer, Jonathan Franzen, David Gates, Nikolai Gogol, Graham Greene, Sara Gruen , Ishiguro, Amy Hempel, Tara Ison , Denis Johnson, Knut Hamsun, David Leavitt , David Markson, Peter Markus , Garcia Marquez, Ian McEwan, Colum McCann , Leonard Michaels, Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro , Iris Murdoch, Nabokov, Padgett Powell, James Purdy, Salman Rushdie, J.D. Salinger, Sebald, Bruno Schulz , Gary Shteyngart, Patrick Suskind, Tolstoy, William Trevor, Joe Wenderoth .
Poets:
John Berryman , Frank O'Hara, Wilfred Owen, Sylvia Plath, Tom Sleigh, C. K. Williams, Anne Winters. The Cannibal chapbook series, too.
Non-fiction:
Mark Epstein, Malcolm Gladwell, Robert D. Putnam, Wahola Rahula, Mingyur Rinpoche , Eric Schlosser, Andrew Weil .
From the Buddha:
"We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world."
"If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him. "
"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."
"Teach this triple truth to all: A generous heart, kind speech, and a life of service and compassion are the things which renew humanity."
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."
("There is a great deal of difference in believing something still, and believing it again." -- W.H. Auden)
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More:
"There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy" -- Robert Louis Stevenson
"You do not need to leave your room. Remain sitting at
your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait.
Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world
will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked, it has no
choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet." -- Kafka
"People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character." -- Emerson
"A ruffled mind makes a restless pillow." -- Charlotte Bronte
"A mind too active is no mind at all." -- Theodore Roethke
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On writing:
"I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues." -- Duke Ellington
"Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music--the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself. -- Henry Miller
"What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough." -- Eugene Delacroix
"Much unhappiness comes into this world because of things left unsaid." -- Dostoevsky
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More:
"The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves, they find their own order . . . the continuous thread of revelation." -- Eudora Welty
"Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity." -- Gilda Radner
"We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us." -- Bukowski
"Good judgment comes from experience, and experience--well, that comes from poor judgment." -- A.A. Milne
("You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm." -- Colette)
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New collection:
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised." — Marilyn Manson
"Violence among young people is an aspect of their desire to create. They don't know how to use their energy creatively so they do the opposite and destroy." — Anthony Burgess
"Courtesy is the password to safety." — Chinese proverb (Lucky numbers 5, 18, 28, 37, 19, 24)
"You are not superior just because you see the world in an odious light." — Vicomte de Chateaubriand
"Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with, that it's compounding a felony." — Robert Benchley