The French City That Champions Its Trees In scenic Sceaux, a one-of-a-kind Tree Charter protects and nourishes the urban canopy as “a long-term investment.”

 Article

Think before you speak. Read before you think.

 Fran Leibowitz

The opposite of talking isn’t listening. The opposite of talking is waiting.

 Fran Leibowitz

Life is something that happens when you can’t get to sleep.... I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use. Pleasant because one is in the best possible company and safe because sleep is the consummate protection against the unseemliness that is the invariable consequence of being awake. What you don’t know won’t hurt you. Sleep is death without the responsibility.

Fran Leibowitz 

A book is not supposed to be a mirror. It’s supposed to be a door.

 Fran Leibowitz

As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.

 Fran Leibowitz

In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.

 Fran Leibowitz

In the Soviet Union, Capitalism triumphed over Communism. In this country, Capitalism triumphed over Democracy.

 Fran Lebowitz

 It’s always a thrilling risk to say exactly what you mean, to express exactly what you see.

— Patricia Hampl

We do not, after all, simply have experience; we are entrusted with it. We must do something – make something – with it. A story, we sense is the only possible habitation for the burden of our witnessing.

  — Patricia Hampl

Maybe being oneself is an acquired taste. For a writer it's a big deal to bow—or kneel or get knocked down—to the fact that you are going to write your own books and not somebody else's. Not even those books of the somebody else you thought it was your express business to spruce yourself up to be.

Patricia Hampl

To understand yourself is the beginning of wisdom. Jiddu Krishnamurti

There’s a cost to the choice of loving work — and there’s honesty in admitting it can be worth it.

Joan Vennochi 

The zombies stagger up the driveway looking for their fix. Their dealer is holding office hours in a white Toyota Avalon in the neighborhood parking lot. The front fender is on the ground. Over the past three weeks a few emaciated women take turns sleeping in the car overnight pinning up a white sheet to block the morning sun. 

Drowning Doesn't Look Like Drowning

Article

Choosing it Changes Everything

I play and keep playing because I choose to play. Even if it's not your ideal life, you can always choose it. No matter what your life is, choosing it changes everything. Andre Agassi, Open, an autobiography (p359)

you can feel completely despairing and hopeless and in over your head and lost and incompetent in the course of writing a book, but that doesn’t mean all those things are true.

 “I don’t think I could have worked on Fountain City for five years and generated as much material as I did if I didn’t have steady work habits. I think that if I learned anything, it’s that you can feel completely despairing and hopeless and in over your head and lost and incompetent in the course of writing a book, but that doesn’t mean all those things are true. You can fight your way through those periods to a new appreciation of what you’re doing and to a firmer grip on the material. If I had known that with Fountain City, I might have fought just a little longer to try to pull it together.” Michael Chabon

One who believes in himself has no need to convince others. Lao Tzu

Miss Manners, the master of tactful behavior, put it best. “An invitation is not a subpoena.”

article

 Smart Pencils

by Ron Lauderbach

I keep hundreds of pencils I picked up off the ground during my teaching career in a PF Flyer shoebox, under my bed. They wait for a colorful slip-on eraser I attach when I bring one back to life.   My found pencils are not rookies from a yellow Ticonderoga box, but seasoned veterans, bearing bite-marks and other scars—proof of lives lived. Many are surprised by my electric   sharpener, a device that did not exist when they were dropped. Some have art class paint on them and others grease from auto-shop. I have one that says Oscar loves written on its roundness, but the name of Oscar’s lover   has been sharpened away. I like to write with my found pencils. I believe they impart wisdom from their past lives. A lot of pencils advertise businesses and institutions, many of which are   gone forever. I have one pencil with a student’s name I remember on it, in my car, in case I ever see him around town. I have some ink pens too, but dry—unable to reveal secrets.

__________

From Snapshots, Kelsay Books, 2022, RON LAUDERBACH.