We are seven months away from the most consequential midterm election in the history of the United States. Meanwhile, we are fighting a war. These are the structural conditions for a coup attempt in which a president tries to nullify elections and take permanent power as a dictator. If we see this, we can stop it, overcome the movement that brought us to this point, and make a turn towards something better.  Timothy Snyder on Substack

The purpose of being a serious writer is not to express oneself, and it is not to make something beautiful, though one might do those things anyway. Those things are beside the point. The purpose of being a serious writer is to keep people from despair. If you keep that in mind always, the wish to make something beautiful or smart looks slight and vain in comparison. If people read your work and, as a result, choose life, then you are doing your job.

SARAH MANGUSO

So long as you write what you wish to write, that is all that matters; and whether it matters for ages or only for hours, nobody can say. But to sacrifice a hair of the head of your vision, a shade of its color, in deference to some Headmaster with a silver pot in his hand or to some professor with a measuring-rod up his sleeve, is the most abject treachery.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

If you want to write, you can. Fear stops most people from writing, not lack of talent, whatever that is. Who am I? What right have I to speak? Who will listen to me if I do? You’re a human being, with a unique story to tell, and you have every right. If you speak with passion, many of us will listen. We need stories to live, all of us. We live by story. Yours enlarges the circle.

RICHARD RHODES

 

Writer’s block is not the same as getting stuck. Everybody gets stuck. The myth of writer’s block may exist partly because not everybody knows how to get unstuck. Allen: I’ve found over the years that any momentary change stimulates a fresh burst of mental energy. So if I’m in this room and then I go into the other room, it helps me. If I go outside to the street, it’s a huge help. If I go up and take a shower it’s a big help. So I sometimes take extra showers. I’ll be in the living room and at an impasse and what will help me is to go upstairs and take a shower. It breaks up everything and relaxes me. I go out on my terrace a lot. One of the best things about my apartment is that it’s got a long terrace and I’ve paced it a million times writing movies. It’s such a help to change the atmosphere.

WOODY ALLEN

Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. AUGUST WILSON

Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating by them. Yet if I were asked to name the most important items in a writer’s make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road to where he wants to go, I could only warn him to look to his zest, see to his gusto.

RAY BRADBURY

Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it's true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.

JAMES BALDWIN

If you’re writing a piece of fiction, I’d urge you not to try to show anything—instead, try to discover something. There’s no way to write anything powerful unless your unconscious takes charge.

ETHAN CANIN

Over the years, I’ve found one rule. It is the only one I give on those occasions when I talk about writing. A simple rule. If you tell yourself you are going to be at your desk tomorrow, you are by that declaration asking your unconscious to prepare the material. You are, in effect, contracting to pick up such valuables at a given time. Count on me, you are saying to a few forces below: I will be there to write.

NORMAN MAILER

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.

TRUMAN CAPOTE

The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If the stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memory.

BARRY LOPEZ

When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.

JAMES BALDWIN

Names are terribly important. I spend forever coming up with names. Sometimes a character doesn’t work until I change his name. In Bandits, Frank Matusi didn’t work. I changed him to Jack Delaney and suddenly he opened up.

ELMORE LEONARD

 Write every day. Don't ever stop. If you are unpublished, enjoy the act of writing—and if you are published, keep enjoying the act of writing. Don't become self-satisfied, don't stop moving ahead, growing, making it new. The stakes are high. Why else would we write?

RICK BASS

What have we lost, what have we gained?

On my walk I noticed a battery-operated cradle on the sidewalk, meant for the trash. I've been thinking about it for days. It must have been marketed for busy parents who have other things to do than rock their babies. For some reason this idea of a remote-control cradle has been haunting me. What have we lost, what have we gained? Perhaps kitchen faucets felt like a betrayal to harvesting water from a well, and driving a car left the horse and buggy behind. But I think we lose contact with important human connections by farming out certain tasks, like having someone else raise your child or walk or train your dog. Isn't part of the task of parenting about bonding, building a relationship? Even cell phones are replacing opportunities for discussion or bonding, as when driving together in the car. I often see parents on their cell phones scrolling while their child is right in front of them learning to swim. They are missing out! These moments are lost. Are people so afraid of being bored? Or are they too afraid of actually connecting?

Canned Tunafish with a Twist

Today we made tuna sandwiches. We mixed up two cans of tuna with homemade cilantro dressing (olive oil, cilantro, wine-vinegar, fresh garlic and salt buzzed in blender) in place of mayo. We also added chopped pickles and chopped raw onion (red or white), a splash of red wine vinegar, sweetened dried cranberries and salt. We ate this on homemade sourdough multigrain toast and a few raw carrots on the side for snacking and their beautiful color.

It was delicious!

Seva Gunitsky article

The Incel Global Order

modern autocracy as a cult of masculinity

Seva Gunitsky

Apr 01, 2026

Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but also because of the silence in it: without the alternation of sound and silence, there would be no rhythm. If we strive to be happy by filling all the silences of life with sound… we will only succeed in producing a hell on earth.

 ― Thomas Merton

 “It is therefore of supreme importance that we consent to live not for ourselves but for others. When we do this we will be able first of all to face and accept our own limitations. As long as we secretly adore ourselves, our own deficiencies will remain to torture us with an apparent defilement. But if we live for others, we will gradually discover that no one expects us to be 'as gods'. We will see that we are human, like everyone else, that we all have weaknesses and deficiencies, and that these limitations of ours play a most important part in all our lives. It is because of them that we need others and others need us. We are not all weak in the same spots, and so we supplement and complete one another, each one making up in himself for the lack in another.”
― Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island