Intuition

Last week I had an intuition. What ever happened to my step-brother's best friend David M. who gave me a vintage ice cream scoop to draw when I was 15. I googled and got his work address. I sent him a howdy. He wrote back that just last night he found a photo from 1973 of himself with my step-brother. Spooky.

Botero Interview

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/interview-with-fernando-botero_b_6795782

What counsel would you give the younger generations of artists?

F.B: An artist is born like a priest is born. If they are born an artist, I would tell them art is not a game, it is something very serious which completely requires everything you have to give.

E.C: What importance does sketching have in your painting?

F.B: It is of utmost importance. Sketching is almost everything. It is the painter’s identity, his style, his conviction, and then color is just a gift to the drawing.

E.C: The generous donation of more than 200 works from your own collection to the Botero Museum in Bogotá, and almost 20 others to the Antioquía Museum in Medellín is exemplary.

What have your motivation and satisfaction been in this respect?

F.B: The donation I made to Columbia from my collection, and from many of my works, is one of the best ideas I ever had in my life. The public’s enjoyment is the best reward.

Teach

“You can’t let your failures define you. You have to let your failures teach you.”
― Barack Obama

Library

“More than a building that houses books and data, the library has always been a window to a larger world--a place where we've always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward. . . . .

Libraries remind us that truth isn't about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information. Because even as we're the most religious of people, America's innovative genius has always been preserved because we also have a deep faith in facts.

And so the moment we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold into a library, we've changed their lives forever, and for the better. This is an enormous force for good.”
― Barack Obama

Hope

“Hope is not blind optimism. It's not ignoring the enormity of the task ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. It's not sitting on the sidelines or shirking from a fight. Hope is that thing inside us that insists, despite all evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us if we have the courage to reach for it, and to work for it, and to fight for it. Hope is the belief that destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by the men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be.”
― Barack Obama

Persevere

“Making your mark on the world is hard. If it were easy, everybody would do it. But it's not. It takes patience, it takes commitment, and it comes with plenty of failure along the way. The real test is not whether you avoid this failure, because you won't. it's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere.”
― Barack Obama

Heals

“It’s important to make sure that we’re talking with each other in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.”
― Barack Obama

Millions of Voices

“Nothing can stand in the way of the power of millions of voices calling for change.”
― Barack Obama

No You Can't

“No, you can't deny women their basic rights and pretend it's about your 'religious freedom'. If you don't like birth control, don't use it. Religious freedom doesn't mean you can force others to live by your own beliefs.”
― Barack Obama

Poverty of Ambition

“Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. And it will leave you unfulfilled.”
― Barack Obama

A Better World

What I’ve realized is that life doesn’t count for much unless you’re willing to do your small part to leave our children — all of our children — a better world. Any fool can have a child. That doesn’t make you a father. It’s the courage to raise a child that makes you a father.”
― Barack Obama

I Believe

“I believe in evolution, scientific inquiry, and global warming; I believe in free speech, whether politically correct or politically incorrect, and I am suspicious of using government to impose anybody's religious beliefs -including my own- on nonbelievers.”
― Barack Obama, The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream

One Voice

“One voice can change a room, and if one voice can change a room, then it can change a city, and if it can change a city, it can change a state, and if it change a state, it can change a nation, and if it can change a nation, it can change the world. Your voice can change the world.”
― Barack Obama

“If there's a child...

“If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child. If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription, who has to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer - even if it's not my grandparent. If there's an Arab-American or Mexican-American family being rounded up by John Ashcroft without benefit of an attorney or due process, I know that that threatens my civil liberties. And I don't have to be a woman to be concerned that the Supreme Court is trying to take away a woman's right, because I know that my rights are next. It is that fundamental belief - I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper - that makes this country work.”
― Barack Obama

Hope and Change

‘Leaders who feed fear typically are also ones who avoid facts.’
— Obama

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
― Barack Obama

“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.”
― Barack Obama

“A change is brought about because ordinary people do extraordinary things.”
― Barack Obama

We need Downtown Banana's: Produce on Pond and Social Street

Everyone agrees a PRICE RITE/SHOPRITE ANNEX would do well here in downtown Woonsocket, RI. We all hope it can happen.

French Toast

I just read that you can make French Toast in a waffle iron!

Terence

Obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit.

Obsequiousness begets friends, truth hatred.
Terence, Andria (The Lady of Andros)

Sprung

Many a time,… from a bad beginning great friendships have sprung up.
- Terence, Eunuchus

Nothing Human is Alien to Me

Heauton Timorumenos (The Self-Tormentor)

Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto.

Variant:

Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.
I am human, I consider nothing human alien to me.

Love

“Love saves you, as long as there’s a you to be saved.”
― Jade Chang, The Wangs vs. the World

Jade Chang

“The people of the world could be divided into two groups: those who used all of their chances, and those who stood still through opportunity after opportunity, waiting for a moment that would never be perfect.”
― Jade Chang, The Wangs vs. the World

“No one thinks to make the goddess a cup of tea; they just ply her with useless perfumed oils and impotent carved fetishes.”
― Jade Chang, The Wangs vs. the World

“The world destroys itself and we rebuild it. The destroying is as important as the rebuilding. There can be as much joy in the destruction as the rebirth.”
― Jade Chang, The Wangs vs. the World

A Vignette

Keep a diary, but don't just list all the things you did during the day. Pick one incident and write it up as a brief vignette. Give it color, include quotes and dialogue, shape it like a story with a beginning, middle and end—as if it were a short story or an episode in a novel. It's great practice. Do this while figuring out what you want to write a book about. The book may even emerge from within this running diary.

JOHN BERENDT

Anna Smith

I never suffer from writer’s block, because I believe if you just sit and write something, then before you know it a character will speak to you.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

I’m not sure I’ve been given a lot of advice on writing. I write from instinct, maybe even from need.

What’s your advice to new writers?

If you are a new writer, then the message is to keep going, keep writing, never stop believing. And even if you get knocked back from a few publishers or agents, go back to your characters and move the story on.

https://advicetowriter.squarespace.com/interviews/anna-smith

Sorrows Disappear

I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.
ANNE FRANK

Brain Science to Hook Readers

“If I ask you to think about something, you can decide not to. But if I make you feel something? Now I have your attention.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“Each thing you add to your story is a drop of paint falling into clear water; it spreads through and colors everything.”
― Lisa Cron

“Before there were books, we read each other.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“...what draws us into a story and keeps us there is the firing of our dopamine neurons, signaling that intriguing information is on the way.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“Stories are about people who are uncomfortable.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“You cherry-pick events that are relevant to the story question and construct a gauntlet of challenge (read: the plot) that will force the protagonist to put his money where his mouth is. Think baptism by ever-escalating fire.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“We don't turn to story to escape reality. We turn to story to navigate reality.”
― Lisa Cron, Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel

“each scene in your story, ask yourself, If I cut it out, would anything that happens afterward change?”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“Stories not only give us a much needed practice on figuring out what makes people tick, they give us insight into how we tick.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“Story, as it turns out, was crucial to our evolution—more so than opposable thumbs. Opposable thumbs let us hang on; story told us what to hang on to.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“Elmore Leonard famously said that a story is real life with the boring parts left out.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“In short, when we read a story, we really do slip into the protagonist’s skin, feeling what she feels, experiencing what she experiences. And what we feel is based, 100 percent, on one thing: her goal, which then defines how she evaluates everything the other characters do. If we don’t know what she wants, we have no idea how, or why, what she does helps her achieve it. As Pinker is quick to point out, without a goal, everything is meaningless.6 It”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“MYTH: Beautiful Writing Trumps All
REALITY: Storytelling Trumps Beautiful Writing, Every Time”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“Art is fire plus algebra.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“We think in story. It’s hardwired in our brain. It’s how we make strategic sense of the otherwise overwhelming world around us.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“To sum up, when writing in the first person, it helps to keep these things in mind:
• Every word the narrator says must in some way reflect his point of view.
• The narrator never mentions anything that doesn’t affect him in some way.
• The narrator draws a conclusion about everything he mentions.
• The narrator is never neutral; he always has an agenda.
• The narrator can never tell us what anyone else is thinking or feeling.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“When you put together large numbers of pieces and parts, the whole can become something larger than the sum.… The concept of emergent properties means that something new can be introduced that is not inherent in any of the parts.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“Good judgment comes from experience; experience comes from bad judgment.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“You don’t need to know exactly how the story is going to end, but you do need to know what the protagonist will have to learn along the way.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“And the best preparation for writing any story is to know with clarity what your protagonists’ worldview is, and more to the point, where and why it’s off base. Thus you have a clear view of the world as your protagonist sees it and insight into how she therefore interprets, and reacts to, everything that happens to her. It’s what allows you to construct a plot that forces her to reevaluate what she was so damn sure was true when the story began. That is what your story is really about, and what readers stay up long past their bedtime to find out.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“Narrators are often unreliable, and part of the reader’s pleasure is figuring out what’s really true.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“Simply put, we are looking for a reason to care. So for a story to grab us, not only must something be happening, but also there must be a consequence we can anticipate. As neuroscience reveals, what draws us into a story and keeps us there is the firing of our dopamine neurons, signaling that intriguing information is on its way. This means that whether it’s an actual event unfolding or we meet the protagonist in the midst of an internal quandary or there’s merely a hint that something’s slightly “off” on the first page, there has to be a ball already in play. Not the preamble to the ball. Not all the stuff you have to know to really understand the ball. The ball itself.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“1. As we’ll explore in chapter 10, the brain is wired to hunt for meaningful patterns in everything, the better to predict what will happen next based on the repetition or the alteration of the pattern (which means, first and foremost, that there need to be meaningful patterns for the reader to find).8 2. We run the scenario on the page through our own personal experience of similar events, whether real or imagined, to see whether it’s believable (which gives us the ability to infer more information than is on the page—or go mad when there isn’t enough information for us to infer anything at all).9 3. We’re hardwired to love problem solving; when we figure something out, the brain releases an intoxicating rush of neurotransmitters that say, “Good job!”10 The pleasure of story is trying to figure out what’s really going on (which means that stories that ignore the first two facts tend to offer the reader no pleasure at all).”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“Do you know what your protagonist’s external goal is? What specific goal does his desire catapult him toward? Beware of simply shoving him into a generic “bad situation” just to see what he will do. Remember, achieving his goal must fulfill a longstanding need or desire—and force him to face a deep-seated fear in the process. Do you know what your protagonist’s internal goal is? One way of arriving at this is to ask yourself, What does achieving her external goal mean to her? How does she think it will affect how she sees herself? What does she think it will say about her? Is she right? Or is her internal goal at odds with her external goal?”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“Your job is not to judge your characters, no matter how despicable or wonderful they may be. Your job is to lay out what happens, as clearly and dispassionately as possible, show how it affects the protagonist, and then get the hell out of the way. The irony is, the less you tell us how to feel, the more likely we’ll feel exactly what you want us to. We’re putty in your hands as long as you let us think we’re making up our own mind.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“Think of each detail as an egg. The writer keeps tossing them at us, one after another, seemingly unaware of the growing number of precariously balanced eggs we’re being asked to hold. So somewhere around the middle of the description—say, the huge brass lamp—it’s one egg too many. The trouble is, we don’t just drop that particular egg; all the eggs go crashing to the ground. The more details the writer gives us, the fewer we’ll remember, proving, once again, that as with most things in life, less is more.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“What we’re hoping for in that opening sentence is the sense that something is about to change (and not necessarily for the better).”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“They had mistaken the story for what happens in it. But as we’ve learned, the real story is how what happens affects the protagonist, and what she does as a result.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“• What does the story tell us about what it means to be human?
• What does it say about how humans react to circumstances beyond their control?”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

“That’s why in every scene you write, the protagonist must react in a way the reader can see and understand in the moment. This reaction must be specific, personal, and have an effect on whether the protagonist achieves her goal. What it can’t be is dispassionate objective commentary.”
― Lisa Cron, Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence

Finish

The best advice on writing was given to me by my first editor, Michael Korda, of Simon and Schuster, while writing my first book. "Finish your first draft and then we'll talk," he said. It took me a long time to realize how good the advice was. Even if you write it wrong, write and finish your first draft. Only then, when you have a flawed whole, do you know what you have to fix.

DOMINICK DUNNE

A Name

I met a young man on my walk. I have spoken with him several times. He loves my dog Romeo. I saw him again last week. He squatted down and said, "What a good boy he is, so gentle and calm." He was looking Romeo in the eye stroking his head and ears. "I'm moving back to the city," he said, standing back up. "Right now I live in a group home in Lincoln. I'm trying to decide whether to sign up for the YMCA or Planet Fitness."
"The Y is walking distance," I offered.
"You're right and I walk here every day," he said. "Can I give you my number? I know you're married, this is not like that. I just want to stay connected to the people I know in the city."
"Sure," I said, "but my phone is not the best way to reach me. Do you have e-mail?"
"I don't have a computer," he said.
"Okay." I watched him writing his number on a piece of paper. "Rick D," I said out loud. "Do you have a last name?"
"Yes," he said. "Why? Are you going to google me? I have a past."
"Don't worry, I won't. I just like names. Every name tells a story."
"Dracut," he wrote.
"Cool. Like that town in Massachusetts?"
"It's pronounced the same way," he said, handing me back the paper.
"Thanks," I said, folding it into my pocket.
A few days later I came across the note while I was at my desk. I googled Rick Dracut and found a big local news story from ten years ago. Rick Dracut had murdered his father. The courts ruled insanity and his mother said she forgave him. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and then another, and another.

Detective Eyes

When I see people on the street, I look at how they walk. It's like a signature, a fingerprint.
- Mikhail Baryshnikov

Baking in the Rain

Yesterday I saw the forecast of 40 degree rain and decided to mixed up two buckets of sourdough rye corn oat wheat blend to rise overnight. This morning I punched down the dough and shaped it into two boules in each of my four glass loaf pans. I slit the tops and placed them on racks in the unheated oven to rise again. Now they are baking and the scent is spectacular on this damp day.

What I would give to go back

Back in our old house in Montana,

by Judith Waller Carroll

my mother hums something by Sinatra.
Outside, piles of leaves circle the yard
like teepees. Soon she will go out
to burn them, squinting against the smoke.
But there is a fire in the stove
so she lingers a while, sipping her coffee.

What I would give to go back
to that time and sit down beside her.
All day, the name of the tune she was humming
purrs around the edge of my memory
like a cat around my ankles, then glides away
just as I reach out to hold it.


by Judith Waller Carroll from The Consolation of Roses. © Astounding Beauty Ruffian Press, 2015

Ordinary TIme

by
Judith Waller Carroll


Sometimes I miss the tyranny
of our old schedule:
carpools, deadlines, meetings,
the Saturday scramble to get the kids
to soccer and ballet.
The way it kept one day
from blurring into the next.

But other days, our hazy plans
become a kind of sweet cadence
we can hum along with.

Like today, just an average Wednesday,
the laundry folded, a bowl of plump grapes
on the round oak table,
the afternoon stretching ahead.

Tonight, if the peaches have softened,
we will make Jamaican Chicken,
dark chili and cumin blending with garlic,
the peel of the peach sliding off the knife
in one long, silken strip.

© by Judith Waller Carroll.

Scorched

“There's things that happen in a person's life that are so scorched in the memory and burned into the heart that there's no forgetting them.”
― John Boyne

Just Because

“Just because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.”
― John Boyne, The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas

Invisible Furies

“I've always believed that if women could only collectively harness the power that they have then they'd rule the world.”
― John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies

Bob Dylan

“I think women rule the world and that no man has ever done anything that a woman either hasn't allowed him to do or encouraged him to do.”
― Bob Dylan

“Some people feel the rain. Others just get wet.”
― Bob Dylan

“Behind every beautiful thing, there's some kind of pain.”
― Bob Dylan

“A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.”
― Bob Dylan

“When you feel in your gut what you are and then dynamically pursue it - don't back down and don't give up - then you're going to mystify a lot of folks.”
― Bob Dylan

“Gonna change my way of thinking, make my self a different set of rules. Gonna put my good foot forward and stop being influenced by fools.”
― Bob Dylan (Lyric)

Writing in Motion

All good writing comes out of aloneness. You have to do it on an open highway. You wouldn’t want to do it in New York City. But on Highway 40 West or some of those big open highways, you can hold the wheel with one hand and write with the other. It’s a good discipline, because sometimes you can only write two or three words at a time before you have to look back at the road, so those three words have to count. The problem is whether you can read the damn thing by the time you reach your destination.

SAM SHEPARD

Art is an investigation.

Creativity is a habit, and the best creativity is the result of good work habits.
Twyla Tharp

In dreams, anything can be anything, and everybody can do. We can fly, we can turn upside down, we can transform into anything.
Twyla Tharp

Creativity is not just for artists. It's for businesspeople looking for a new way to close a sale; it's for engineers trying to solve a problem; it's for parents who want their children to see the world in more than one way.
Twyla Tharp

I find the aesthetics of the 20th century hopelessly barren.
Twyla Tharp

What we want from modern dance is courage and audacity.
Twyla Tharp

I had always seen myself as a star; I wanted to be a galaxy.
Twyla Tharp

Ultimately there is no such thing as failure. There are lessons learned in different ways.
Twyla Tharp

Dance is the most fundamental of all art forms.
Twyla Tharp

If you're speaking of love, you really must include the element of uncertainty - and perhaps it's best approached as the art of constant maintenance.
Twyla Tharp

Nobody worked harder than Mozart. By the time he was twenty-eight years old, his hands were deformed because of all the hours he had spent practicing, performing, and gripping a quill pen to compose. That's the missing element in the popular portrait of Mozart.
Twyla Tharp

I realize that dancers have worked long and hard for standards. However, on occasion, I think that it's good to examine one's heart and ask why are we dancing.
Twyla Tharp

I used to say to myself, 'Well, in the old days everybody danced because they loved to dance, and there was none of this professional garbage going on about how much can you get for this or that or the other, or any of the kinds of things that insecurity can sometimes promote. Sometimes it's for the wrong reasons.'
Twyla Tharp

I have the wherewithal to challenge myself for my entire life. That's a great gift.
Twyla Tharp

To survive, you've got to keep wheedling your way. You can't just sit there and fight against odds when it's not going to work. You have to turn a corner, dig a hole, go through a tunnel - and find a way to keep moving.
Twyla Tharp

I don't hate language. I have my own language, but I also enjoy the English language. Obviously, you don't read a lot of literature and not care about language.
Twyla Tharp

You can only generate ideas when you put pencil to paper, brush to canvas... when you actually do something physical.
Twyla Tharp

Art is the only way to run away without leaving home.
Twyla Tharp

The only thing I fear more than change is no change. The business of being static makes me nuts.
Twyla Tharp

I don't think that scheduling is uncreative. I think that structure is required for creativity.
Twyla Tharp

This is the strange thing: Dancers don't age.
Twyla Tharp

I think a sense of humor will help get a girl out of a dark place.
Twyla Tharp

Proust writes, he remembers, physically. He depends on his body to give him the information that will bring him to the past. His book is called 'In Search of Lost Time,' and he does it through the senses. He does it through smell. He does it through feeling. He does it through texture. It is all physically driven, that language.
Twyla Tharp

In the not-for-profit world, there can be wastefulness because there's not the desperate urgency of when you're on a clock.
Twyla Tharp

Everything present is included in the past somewhere; nobody's present pops out of nowhere.
Twyla Tharp

My dancers expect me to deliver because my choreography represents their livelihood.
Twyla Tharp

Walt Disney was a master of the human psychology. His sense of timing, sense of speed. In a sense, those cartoons are like Rorschach tests.
Twyla Tharp

Optimism with some experience behind it is much more energizing than plain old experience with a certain degree of cynicism.
Twyla Tharp

Dance has never been a particularly easy life, and everybody knows that.
Twyla Tharp

My father always said, 'I don't care if you're a ditch digger, as long as you're the best ditch digger in the world.'
Twyla Tharp

A lot of people insisted on a wall between modern dance and ballet. I'm beginning to think that walls are very unhealthy things.
Twyla Tharp

I'm obviously always interested in the dancer who's an athlete and vice versa. I expect dancers to be in condition like an athlete is and to challenge themselves in the same way, to the same physical degree.
Twyla Tharp

It's always a problem, getting the curtain in at the end of the first act; having enough of a resolve so that you can bring the curtain in and then opening the show a second time is a little bizarre as a tradition. I've always preferred to go straight through.
Twyla Tharp

A dancer's life is all about repetition.
Twyla Tharp

Art is an investigation.
Twyla Tharp

'Bum's Rush' is a piece about timing, and everything that's in the piece needs to be with the piece. If people are missing, or marking, or unable to use their voices, the impulses that prompt the action are lost, and its logic crumbles.
Twyla Tharp

The formal education that I received made little sense to me.
Twyla Tharp

When I was a kid, toe dancing and toe shoes had a meaning in our culture as a serious kind of art.
Twyla Tharp

In terms of individuals who actually inspired me, very few of the academic people that I had access to had that power over me. Maybe it's simply because I wasn't that committed to geometry.
Twyla Tharp

After so many years, I've learned that being creative is a full-time job with its own daily patterns. That's why writers, for example, like to establish routines for themselves.
Twyla Tharp

I think people want very much to simplify their lives enough so that they can control the things that make it possible to sleep at night.
Twyla Tharp

I would have to challenge the term, modern dance. I don't really use that term in relation to my work. I simply think of it as dancing. I think of it as moving.
Twyla Tharp

It is extremely arrogant and very foolish to think that you can ever outwit your audience.
Twyla Tharp

It was not until I had graduated from college that I made a professional commitment to it. Frankly, I didn't think it wise. I was my own interior parental force, and it's very difficult to justify a profession as a dancer.
Twyla Tharp

Well, Mozart is extraordinary not only in that he became virtuoso along the lines of his father, but that he had that compositional gift, that melodic gift. By the time he was four, he was doing piano concertos with harmony in the background.
Twyla Tharp

At the ballet classes I took when I first came to New York, I would see great dancers like Cynthia Gregory and Lupe Serrano. I would look at them and study what they could do, and what I couldn't do. And then I'd think maybe they should try what I could do.
Twyla Tharp

When I say I can see through clothes, sometimes I try to use it as an X-ray vision to look into the dancer and see who this dancer is right now, at this exact moment in time. I live inside them in a way.
Twyla Tharp

Desire is the first thing a modern dancer should have. Skill can be developed. But if you don't have desire as a modern dancer, forget it.
Twyla Tharp

It's very difficult for me to do fund raising for my own organization if I'm working for other companies because sponsors will say, 'Well, hey, man, if she's doing a ballet for Ballet Theatre, we'll give money to Ballet Theatre.'
Twyla Tharp

I see dance as glue for a community.
Twyla Tharp

I grew up in a drive-in theater, from the time I was 8, working in a snack bar watching four features every week. It was silent theater in the sense that this was a drive-in, which meant that I often saw the films going with no sound. But I learned to tell stories through action.
Twyla Tharp

There is obviously a power and a truth in action that doesn't lie, which words easily can do.
Twyla Tharp

I do at least 75 push-ups a day.
Twyla Tharp

I don't think politicians should be allowed into power who are not familiar with their bodies, because that's where our bottom line is. And I know that they would make totally different decisions if they felt responsible simply for their own bodies.
Twyla Tharp

I am still pushing the edge of what my body can do.
Twyla Tharp

Any comic is a tragic soul. Comedy is one of the things that allows one to survive. Particularly if one has been in the process of separating off the emotions, it's one place you can process them.
Twyla Tharp

I don't mean this, but I'm going to say it anyway. I don't really think of pop art and serious art as being that far apart.
Twyla Tharp

I have not wanted to intimidate audiences. I have not wanted my dancing to be an elitist form. That doesn't mean I haven't wanted it to be excellent.
Twyla Tharp

I learned very early that an audience would relax and look at things differently if they felt they could laugh with you from time to time. There's an energy that comes through the release of tension that is laughter.
Twyla Tharp

I never studied with Balanchine, but his work was very important to me.
Twyla Tharp

I often say that in making dances I can make a world where I think things are done morally, done democratically, done honestly.
Twyla Tharp

I started formal piano training when I was 4. From there I had little violas, and I had dancing lessons of every sort and description, and painting lessons. I had German. And shorthand.
Twyla Tharp

I think that anyone who's pushed to do the very best that they can is privileged. It's a luxury.
Twyla Tharp

I thought I had to make an impact on history. I had to become the greatest choreographer of my time. That was my mission. Posterity deals with us however it sees fit. But I gave it 20 years of my best shot.
Twyla Tharp

I was privileged to be able to study a year with Martha Graham, the last year she was teaching.
Twyla Tharp

I'm not one who divides music, dance or art into various categories. Either something works, or it doesn't.
Twyla Tharp

In those days, male dancers were a rarer breed than women, as they are still today. A good male dancer, one as strong as we were, was very difficult to come by if you couldn't afford to pay them.
Twyla Tharp

My mother was a dominant force in my life. She had a very specific idea about education, which was: you should know everything about everything. It was quite simple. There was no exclusivity, and there really was no judgment.
Twyla Tharp

The necessity to constantly turn in an excellent performance, to be absolutely wedded to this dedication and this ideal means that as a child you're going to pay for it personally.
Twyla Tharp

The rewards of dancing are very different from choreographing.
Twyla Tharp

There's this expression called postmodernism, which is kind of silly, and destroys a perfectly good word called modern, which now no longer means anything.
Twyla Tharp

With each piece I've completed I have worked to make it intact, and each of them has been an equal high. It's like children. A mother refuses to pick out one as a favorite, and I can't do any better with the dances.
Twyla Tharp

Judgment is not my business. Existing is my business.
Twyla Tharp

I'm a known reader. That's what I do with my time.
Twyla Tharp

I work because I have issues and questions and feelings and thoughts that I want to have a look at. I'm not in need of, or wanting, particularly, to know what other folk are up to.
Twyla Tharp

Playwrights have texts, composers have scores, painters and sculptors have the residue of those activities, and dance is traditionally an ephemeral, effervescent, here-today-gone-tomorrow kind of thing.
Twyla Tharp

What I do remember is visualization of the sound of music, seeing bodies in movement in relation to how music sounded, because my mother practiced at the keyboard a lot and I also went to her lessons. As a two year old, three year old I remember seeing things in movement.
Twyla Tharp

My mother was the first woman in the county in Indiana where we were born, in Jay County, to have a college degree. She was educated as a pianist and she wanted to concertize, but when the war came she was married, had a family, so she started teaching.
Twyla Tharp

I am fairly concise when I work and I work quickly because I think work is done better in a high gear than done our in a gear when everyone's exhausted. Get focused, do it!
Twyla Tharp

In circuses, there is a lot of magic. Things become other things.
Twyla Tharp

We don't need to illustrate music; music illustrates itself.
Twyla Tharp

The content and thematic materials of dance is, of itself, like boxing. You play tennis and baseball. But boxing is not a sport you play: you stand up and do it.
Twyla Tharp

A commission is an invitation to fall in love.
Twyla Tharp

Broadway has some very tight expectations as to what a show is.
Twyla Tharp

Nothing is more terrifying to me, really, than the status quo. I'll make mistakes before I keep doing something the same way.
Twyla Tharp

You either entertain an audience or you don't.
Twyla Tharp

These days, I think we could all agree that having a just-friend is not a bad thing.
Twyla Tharp

Unfortunately, I think we've probably all had the experience that if we're in a relationship where one of the partners is doing it 'my' way, that relationship is not going to survive.
Twyla Tharp

I'm not interested in seeing dance die. It's not to my advantage. Nor is it to our culture's advantage or anybody else's.
Twyla Tharp

I've always believed that a dance evening energizes an audience, that an audience goes out feeling chemically stronger and more optimistic. This is what I understand about dance. And this is an important thing. We need this. Our culture needs it.
Twyla Tharp

My favorite audience is everybody. I worked in a drive-in theater from the time I was 8 years old until I went to college, and I'm accustomed to everybody can buy a ticket and everybody should be taken into account.
Twyla Tharp

Critics should be looked at simply as commentators.
Twyla Tharp

Dance is just like film in that it allows for thoughts in movement.
Twyla Tharp

If a thing moves, it lives.
Twyla Tharp

I always tell students that you've got to be practical. You do not need a dream. You need a purpose, something you can wake up to in the morning when the dream is dissipated.
Twyla Tharp

Everyone has a talent. It's simply a question of good discipline, of the good fortune to have an education that meshes with that talent, and a lot of luck.
Twyla Tharp

I'm not satisfied sitting in just the world of abstract work.
Twyla Tharp

There's the tradition of the 19th-century ballets, and the 20th century has had a difficult time with that tradition. And it's had a difficult time with many components of the Romantic imagination because of modernism.
Twyla Tharp

The ballet needs to tell its own story in such a way it can be received without having to be translated into language.
Twyla Tharp

When I look at the people who are the guiding figures in modern dance, I think, 'This does not look to me like the way I want to spend my days.'
Twyla Tharp

I feel I can handle the architecture of dance as well as anybody.
Twyla Tharp

When I started thinking seriously about learning the rules of narrative, I thought, 'You've learned the rules of dancing from the ballet; what's the matter with learning the laws of theater from the people who know how to do it?'
Twyla Tharp

I've always felt compelled to explore range, because, as far as I know, we're only here once. So let's see how much we can encompass.
Twyla Tharp

What is music about? You can't listen to one era, one composer, and know what music is about.
Twyla Tharp

Work is work; wherever I'm working, I do the best I can. If the actual dollars come from investors as opposed to taxpayers and patrons, what's the difference?
Twyla Tharp

People often say to me, 'I don't know anything about dance.' I say, 'Stop. You got up this morning, and you're walking. You are an expert.'
Twyla Tharp

There is a moral dimension, for me, in anything that's any good.
Twyla Tharp

Do I watch dancers as people? Yes, absolutely. Do I watch really good dancers for specifically who they are? Absolutely, because how they move best and how they look best is going to be most familiar to them, and not necessarily to me.
Twyla Tharp

I do not watch television, never have.
Twyla Tharp

Who a dancer is physically feeds into character for me. Always has.
Twyla Tharp

I look for dancers who have all the technique in the world. But they must be dancers who are open-minded, who are willing to forget that they know anything. They also have to be gorgeous; they must have a clear image of themselves and strong personalities.
Twyla Tharp

Modern dancers should be doing things no one else is doing, and it should come from the gut.
Twyla Tharp

I've survived inattention. I hope to God I survive attention.
Twyla Tharp

I've always found it necessity to strip away everything but the most fundamental ways to work - the rest is style.
Twyla Tharp

It's very important to work myself physically as hard as I can.
Twyla Tharp

The only way to know the truth of a movement is to do it on your own body.
Twyla Tharp

No artist is well served in thinking what will happen to their works. The best one can hope is that they'll enter the mainstream, and people will pull bits and pieces from them.
Twyla Tharp

'The Creative Habit' is basically about how you work alone, how you survive as a solitary artist. 'The Collaborative Habit' is obviously about surviving with other people.
Twyla Tharp

If I didn't believe in myself as a dancer, I wouldn't choreograph.
Twyla Tharp

My own physicality, not an abstract idea, makes me a choreographer.
Twyla Tharp

Counterpoint is a component that gives real energy, and it is about optimism.
Twyla Tharp

The ultimate point of a piece for me is that it drives the next one. Does it open new doors? That's the success of a piece.
Twyla Tharp

Things change all the time, so why do people make such a philosophical to-do that things are constantly in transition?
Twyla Tharp

I find that dancers are only well trained in ballet these days.
Twyla Tharp

I've read probably 25 or 30 books by Balzac, all of Tolstoy - the novels and letters - and all of Dickens. I learned my craft from these guys.
Twyla Tharp

I think Tolstoy had an unbelievably complicated relationship with women.
Twyla Tharp

Balzac loved courtesans. They were independent women, and in the 19th century, that was a breed that was just evolving.
Twyla Tharp

Dance should not just divide people into audience and performers. Everyone should be a participant, whether going to classes or attending special events or rehearsals.
Twyla Tharp

I have a sort of tactility about music. I go into record stores and just run my fingers over it, the spines.
Twyla Tharp

Let me put it this way: I would like to direct a successful film. An unsuccessful film I would not like to direct. Films are very difficult.
Twyla Tharp

To make real change, you have to be well anchored - not only in the belief that it can be done, but also in some pretty real ways about who you are and what you can do.
Twyla Tharp

When I started making dances in the '60s, narrative dance was sort of off the radar screen. What was important at the time in the avant-garde was minimalism.
Twyla Tharp

There are very few critics who have historical context or authority.
Twyla Tharp

I always find that the best collaborations are when you work with people that know what they're doing, and you leave them alone to do it.
Twyla Tharp

I don't judge. Judgment is not my business. Existing is my business.
Twyla Tharp

Schubert had arguably the same melodic gift as Mozart, but even less support. He didn't have the early exposure, never got to travel anywhere, and yet generated and amassed a body of work that grew and developed and is very profound.
Twyla Tharp

The artist doesn't really think about consequences - he or she does the work, stands back and looks at and thinks, 'Hmm, that could have worked better like this.' But as a person who needs to sell tickets to do the next work, one needs to analyze how it does or does not hit its mark.
Twyla Tharp

When I was a kid, the avant-garde to me was boring because it was just the flip side of being really successful.
Twyla Tharp

Kids should be encouraged to compete.
Twyla Tharp

Nothing personal; I just don't have people over.

Alvin Ailey Quotes
American - Dancer January 5, 1931 - December 1, 1989

Dance is for everybody. I believe that the dance came from the people and that it should always be delivered back to the people.
Alvin Ailey

One of the worst things about racism is what it does to young people.
Alvin Ailey

The creative process is not controlled by a switch you can simply turn on or off; it's with you all the time.
Alvin Ailey

One of the processes of your life is to constantly break down that inferiority, to constantly reaffirm that I Am Somebody.
Alvin Ailey

I always want more.
Alvin Ailey

Sometimes you feel bad about yourself when there's no reason to.
Alvin Ailey

I am trying to show the world that we are all human beings and that color is not important. What is important is the quality of our work.
Alvin Ailey

Lena Horne is the sweetest and most adorable woman in the world.
Alvin Ailey

If you live in the elite world of dance, you find yourself in a world rife with racism. Let's face it.
Alvin Ailey

No matter what you write or choreograph, you feel it's not enough.
Alvin Ailey

We still spend more time chasing funds than we do in the studio in creative work.
Alvin Ailey

Choreography is mentally draining, but there's a pleasure in getting into the studio with the dancers and the music.
Alvin Ailey

Racism tears down your insides so that no matter what you achieve, you're not quite up to snuff.
Alvin Ailey

Money is a never-ending problem.
Alvin Ailey

My lasting impression of Truman Capote is that he was a terribly gentle, terribly sensitive, and terribly sad man.
Alvin Ailey

I'm attracted to long-legged girls with long arms and a little head.
Alvin Ailey

I always want to have more dancers in my company.
Alvin Ailey

In this business, life is one long fund-raising effort.
Alvin Ailey

It will take very sophisticated marketing to achieve our aim of bringing more black people into the theater.
Alvin Ailey

My feelings about myself have been terrible.
Alvin Ailey

Nothing personal; I just don't have people over.
Alvin Ailey

I have always had this thing about moving around

Merce Cunningham
American - Dancer April 16, 1919 - July 26, 2009

Dancing has a continuity of its own that need not be dependent upon either the rise or fall of sound or the pitch and cry of words. Its force of feeling lies in the physical image, fleeting or static.
Merce Cunningham

What really made me think about space and begin to think about ways to use it was Einstein's statement that there are no fixed points in space. Everything in the universe is moving all the time.
Merce Cunningham

The use of chance operations opened out my way of working. The body tends to be habitual. The use of chance allowed us to find new ways to move and to put movements together that would not otherwise have been available to us. It revealed possibilities that were always there except that my mind hadn't seen them.
Merce Cunningham

You can get fixed ideas, and it can get restrictive. So, I try to put myself in a precarious position.
Merce Cunningham

I think the thing that we agreed to so many years ago, actually, was that the music didn't have to support the dance nor the dance illustrate the music, but they could be two things going on at the same time.
Merce Cunningham

Fortunately, dance has been what's interested me all my life. So whether I am faced with incapacities or not, it still absorbs me.
Merce Cunningham

I have always had this thing about moving around, and that has just remained, regardless of my physical changes. That feeling about it has never changed.
Merce Cunningham

My dance classes were open to anybody, my only stipulation was that they had to come to the class every day.
Merce Cunningham

It is upon the length and breadth and span of a body sustained in muscular action that dance invokes its image.
Merce Cunningham

The legs and arms can be a revelation of the back, the spine's extensions.
Merce Cunningham

Movement is expressive. I've never denied that. I don't think there's such a thing as abstract dance.
Merce Cunningham

I don't like teaching, because it's so repetitive - especially the beginning of class, which is always more or less the same and has to be carefully done. It's tedious. But I know it's necessary for dancers to keep working on technique.
Merce Cunningham

I was told that I had to give grades to the students, which I wasn't particularly interested in doing.
Merce Cunningham

All these dismal things that are going on in the world - the isolation and the sickness and the governments and the pollution - it's so frightful, over the whole world.
Merce Cunningham

My work always comes from the same source - from movement. It doesn't necessarily come from an outside idea, though the source can be something small or large that I've seen, often birds or other animals. The seeing can then provoke the imagining.
Merce Cunningham

I think anything can feed you, depending on the way you look at it or listen to it.
Merce Cunningham

My process has changed over the years. I'd say it has been enhanced.
Merce Cunningham

In using chance operations, the mind is enriched.
Merce Cunningham

I use the computer as a tool. Like chance or the camera or the other tools I've used, it can open my eye to other ways of seeing or of making dances. It's not simply to do a trick.
Merce Cunningham

Cage always wanted to know what my structure was, if I had one. I often did have some sense of the time structure. Then he'd make a different one for the music.
Merce Cunningham

I began to fear that the Graham work was not in lots of ways sufficient for me. I suppose it came about from looking at other dancing and being involved with the ballet - something about the air and the way she thought about dancing.
Merce Cunningham

I began to do this thing I do of giving myself a class every day, and trying to experiment and push further. I don't mean to say I knew everything, because I didn't, but I would do what I knew and then push beyond that and see what else I could find.
Merce Cunningham

Very often, you did something slow with your arm, for example, and something rapid with your feet - but the arm had to do something large against this - and this set up a kind of opposition.
Merce Cunningham

You do not separate the human being from the actions he does or the actions which surround him, but you see what it is like to break these actions up in different ways, to allow passion - and it is passion - to appear for each person in his own way.
Merce Cunningham

Our emotions are constantly being propelled by some new face in the sky, some new rocket to the moon, some new sound in the ear, but they are the same emotions.
Merce Cunningham

the body has a stronger memory than your mind

I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself. Mikhail Baryshnikov

The more injuries you get, the smarter you get. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Dancers are made, not born. Mikhail Baryshnikov When a body moves, it's the most revealing thing. Dance for me a minute, and I'll tell you who you are. Mikhail Baryshnikov

No matter what I try to do or explore, my Kirov training, my expertise, and my background call me to return to dancing after all, because that's my real vocation, and I have to serve it. Mikhail Baryshnikov

In '74 it was really a very gloomy atmosphere, I would say, to put it mildly. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I was not extremely patriotic about Mother Russia. I played their game, pretending. You have to deal with, you know, party people, KGB. Horrifying. Mikhail Baryshnikov

It's weird when you see pieces of choreography that were done for you 15 or 20 years ago and now they are being done by another dance company. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I fell in love with New York. It was like every human being, like any relationship. When I was a young New Yorker, it was one city. When I was a grown man, it was another city. I worked with many dance organizations and many wonderful people. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I found that dance, music, and literature is how I made sense of the world... it pushed me to think of things bigger than life's daily routines... to think beyond what is immediate or convenient. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Your body actually reminds you about your age and your injuries - the body has a stronger memory than your mind. Mikhail Baryshnikov

You see, dancers are quite mature people because they start performing so early. They become professionals when they start to take everyday classes. Mikhail Baryshnikov

You open a section of 'The New York Times,' and there's a review or a story on a choreographer or a dancer, and there's an informative, clear image of a dancer. This is, in my view, not an interesting photograph. Mikhail Baryshnikov

When I see people on the street, I look at how they walk. It's like a signature, a fingerprint. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I have the life of seven cats. Mikhail Baryshnikov

My father was a Party member and he was a pretty high rank military officer under the colonel, junior colonel, I don't know the term. He was a total Stalinist. A bit with a streak of anti-Semitism and very shrewd man, a very kind of nervous man. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Dancing is my obsession. My life. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Choreographers use me as the old guy who still dances. Not that I put on white tights. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I was very restless. I really wanted to be a part of a kind of a progressive society. I was fed up with these Communist doctrines and you were hassled all the time with members of the Party committee who were KGB, what you have to do, where in the West you can go or not to go. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Your heart is very much connected to your mind. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I go a lot to see young people downtown in little theaters. It's great. If you start somebody's career, it's so exciting. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I like to go to anybody else's birthday, and if I'm invited I'm a good guest. But I never celebrate my birthdays. I really don't care. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I think I got disappointed over the years about New York, about the States. You know, sometimes you go and visit Europe and see good old socialism in its good part! You see public concern about art, and young people's participation and young faces in the audience. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Dance is one of the most revealing art forms. Mikhail Baryshnikov

In the second part of life you get rid of stuff you've accumulated. Mikhail Baryshnikov

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure. Mikhail Baryshnikov Nothing is ever too expensive if it furthers the repertoire and artistic standards of a dance company. Mikhail Baryshnikov

People of art should never get married and have children, because it's a selfish experience. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Dances have a second and third life. You feel they are never ready. They always have a chance for another life. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I am a performer. I go on stage and make a fool of myself. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I really reject that kind of comparison that says, Oh, he is the best. This is the second best. There is no such thing. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I don't drink milk, and I don't eat bread, pasta or rice. But I eat a lot of meat, chicken, fish and salads. Mikhail Baryshnikov

My life has been immensely enriched by gay mentors, colleagues and friends, and any discrimination and persecution of gay people is unacceptable. Mikhail Baryshnikov

No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know that we all should have been in another business. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Working is living to me. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I have been very lucky to work in so many new ballets, but that is what a dancer's work is. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Every ballet, whether or not successful artistically or with the public, has given me something important. Mikhail Baryshnikov

It's what's left in life, to work with interesting people. Mikhail Baryshnikov

To walk across the street is a risk. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Creative Artists Agency put together a project of extraordinary mediocrity and colossal stupidity. Otherwise, it was great. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I feel very uneasy with a lot of aspects of the Russian life and the Russian people. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Astaire was not a sexual animal, but he made his partners look so extraordinarily related to him. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I get speeding ticket like everybody else. If the restaurant is full I'm waiting in line like everybody else. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I think art education, especially in this country, which government pretty much ignores, is so important for young people. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Dancers are stripped enough onstage. You don't have to know more about them than they've given you already. Mikhail Baryshnikov

To achieve some depth in your field requires a lot of sacrifices. Want to or not, you're thinking about what you're doing in life-in my case, dancing. Mikhail Baryshnikov

You cannot be happy with your family while being personally unhappy with your work. It's a Catch-22 kind of thing. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I cannot belong to a nonprofit organization because when you receive grants, you have to make such great compromises with your artistic plans. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I want to do exactly what I want to do. I'd rather gamble on the box office than beg for a grant. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I kind of lost interest in the classical dance. I was very much interested in the modern choreography. Mikhail Baryshnikov

The Russian people get so insanely close to each other as friends. Their lives are interrelated so much on an everyday basis. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I am not the first straight dancer or the last. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I have some Russian friends. But probably only 10 percent. I don't hang out usually in the big Russian communities in Brooklyn and New Jersey. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Running a company is pretty demanding. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Obviously, the young dancers lack a certain air of maturity. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I am teaching more. That is what I do best. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I have made mistakes. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I don't want to do anything Freudian. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I miss horribly those couple of hours before the performance when you get into the theater and you see people. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Soviet regime in a way deprived me from my childhood in my homeland, because my father was in military, and after the Yalta agreement he was sent to teach in military academy in Riga, and I was born then. Mikhail Baryshnikov

My mother had a son from previous marriage and her husband died in Second World War. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I - you know, I'm not an actor. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I read Russian literature a lot. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Nobody is born a dancer. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I've been hurt quite a few times. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I am not trying to do material which I cannot do full out. Mikhail Baryshnikov

People dance at any age. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I would like to go and dance in Palestine one day, with great pleasure, great pleasure. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I've always said, 'I am a selector, I am not defector' - the first few phrases in English I learned. I said I hate 'defector'; something defective about the people. It's a bad word. Mikhail Baryshnikov

A country like Belgium, or socialist countries in central Europe spend more money on art education than the United States, which is a really puzzling thought. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I never liked dance photography; it's very flat, and dance photography in the studio looks very contrived. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I was always interested in photography and other forms of art. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I spend at least a couple hours a day in the studio, every day, whether I'm dancing or not. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I don't go to a gym, I don't do yoga. I don't do personal training. Mikhail Baryshnikov

When I'm alone, I work sometimes with music, sometimes without and sometimes just listening to NPR. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Nobody else in the world has a form like the Native American musical, and Americans should be very proud. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I don't see in myself any perfection. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I know when I am on stage and I'm kind of on the right track - hopefully most of the time. But a lot of time I'm not. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Although I don't gamble in life - I've never played poker - I do gamble on stage. I gamble with myself: 'Can I do this?' Mikhail Baryshnikov

Now there is in a way a renaissance of modern dance - suddenly, it is more respected and discovered. Mikhail Baryshnikov

In opera tradition, when opera die-hard fans, there is a replacement of singer or singer wasn't at his or hers vocal best, doing something, they boo. Especially now that they pay hundreds of dollars for the ticket. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I'm a news junkie. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I fell in love with New York. Mikhail Baryshnikov I cannot stand authority. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I like to make my own mistakes. Mikhail Baryshnikov

We lived, until I was 12 or so, in communal apartment with five different families and the same kitchen, in two little - my brother and me and my parents. It was hell, but it was a common thing. My father was not general or admiral, but he was colonel. He was teaching in military academy military topography. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I remember vividly seeing 'Tarzan' and Fred Astaire, the Chaplin films, Fred Astaire musicals, MGM, because of my mother. She was just interested in everything and she took me to opera and ballet, and then ballet got me hooked. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I adored my mother, and I will always have extraordinary memories about her and remember her, and she opened the doors for me to appreciate arts. Mikhail Baryshnikov

In any art form, in Hollywood or in music, there is a handful of people who really, you know, move the envelope. Mikhail Baryshnikov

The body cannot lie. You cannot be somebody else onstage, no matter how good of an actor or dancer or singer you are. When you open your arms, move your finger, the audience knows who you are, you know. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I cannot draw to save my life, and I'm not a big art scholar, but I worked with many designers throughout my career - in theater, in dance, costume designers, set designers, and I have a lot of artist friends and I do photography, and I think it's kind of in my life. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Everything I do, it's a bit painterly. I like being surrounded by objects, mostly on paper. I like the images. I like the painting. I like good photography. It's something that makes me an emotional connection, and I feel comfortable around it. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Film, theater and television always kind of scared me. I don't ever seriously think of myself as an actor at all, and I don't plan any film career or television career. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I'm a product of Russian culture, but I never felt it was my country. Mikhail Baryshnikov

I'm an impatient person in many respects. I like to put myself in uncomfortable situations. It forces me to deliver. Mikhail Baryshnikov

Mikhail Baryshnikov

When a body moves, it's the most revealing thing. Dance for me a minute, and I'll tell you who you are.
- Mikhail Baryshnikov

Dance

“Dance is the hidden language of the soul”
― Martha Graham

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.”
― Martha Graham

“Nobody cares if you can't dance well. Just get up and dance. Great dancers are great because of their passion.”
― Martha Graham

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep yourself open and aware to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. ... No artist is pleased. [There is] no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others”
― Martha Graham

“What people in the world think of you is really none of your business.”
― Martha Graham

“I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living, the principles are the same. In each, it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes, in some area, an athlete of God. Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired.”
― Martha Graham

“All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the moment important, vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.”
― Martha Graham

“Great dancers are not great because of their technique, they are great because of their passion. ”
― Martha Graham

“People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life. ”
― Martha Graham, Blood Memory

“The only sin is mediocrity.”
― Martha Graham

“There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost.”
― Martha Graham

“Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to,
when all they need is one reason why they can.”
― Martha Graham

“The unique must be fulfilled.”
― Martha Graham

“No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissastifaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
― Martha Graham

“I feel that the essence of dance is the expression of man--the landscape of his soul. I hope that every dance I do reveals something of myself or some wonderful thing a human can be.”
― Martha Graham, Blood Memory

“No artist is ahead of his time. He is the time. It is just that others are behind the time.”
― Martha Graham

“Dancers are the messengers of the gods.”
― Martha Graham

“You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled, then something has been lost.”
― Martha Graham

“There is a fatigue so great that the body cries, even in its sleep. There are times of complete frustration; there are daily small deaths.”
― Martha Graham

“Think of the magic of the foot, comparatively small, upon which your whole weight rests. It's a miracle and the dance is a celebration of that miracle.”
― Martha Graham

“I am a dancer. I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living.... In each it is the performance of a dedicated precise set of acts, physical or intellectual, from which comes shape of achievement, a sense of one's being, a satisfaction of spirit. One becomes in some area an athlete of God.”
― Martha Graham

“There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is on a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others.”
― Martha Graham

“Looking at the past is like lolling in a rocking chair. It is so relaxing and you can rock back and forth on the porch, and never go forward. ”
― Martha Graham, Blood Memory

“ Dancing is just discovery, discovery, discovery”
― Martha Graham

“Misery is a communicable disease. ”
― Martha Graham

“Movement never lies. It is a barometer telling the state of the soul's weather to all who can read it.”
― Martha Graham

“Dance is a song of the body. Either of joy or pain.”
― Martha Graham

“At the time I started in ballet they were dancing 'The Spirit of Champagne' on pointe, in Paris. I thought, 'I don't want to dance the spirit of champagne, I want to drink it!”
― Martha Graham, Blood Memory

“You can be Eastern or Burmese or what have you, but the function of the body and the awareness of the body results in dance and you become a dancer, not just a human being. ”
― Martha Graham, Blood Memory

“It is not your business to determine how good it is, nor how valuable it is, nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.”
― Martha Graham

An Exorcism

“Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself...It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.”
― Harper Lee

Live with Myself

“Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Morning

“Things are always better in the morning.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Never Learned

“There are just some kind of men who-who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Shows You

“It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

When a Child Asks

“When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion faster than adults, and evasion simply muddles 'em.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Fists Down

“You just hold your head high and keep those fists down. No matter what anybody says to you, don't you let 'em get your goat. Try fightin' with your head for a change.
-Atticus Finch”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Bravest

“It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Trash

“As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it—whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Harper Lee

“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”
― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Genetic Mutation

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/18/health/genetics-weight-obesity.html?searchResultPosition=2

This Genetic Mutation Makes People Feel Full — All the Time

Two new studies confirm that weight control is often the result of genetics, not willpower.
Image
Mutations in the MC4R gene usually lead to obesity by preventing a sense of fullness. But one such mutation leaves people uninterested in eating, scientists report.CreditCreditSusan Wright for The New York Times
Gina Kolata

By Gina Kolata

April 18, 2019

The study subjects had been thin all their lives, and not because they had unusual metabolisms. They just did not care much about food.

They never ate enormous amounts, never obsessed on the next meal. Now, a group of researchers in Britain may have found the reason.

The people carry a genetic alteration that mutes appetite. It also greatly reduces their chances of getting diabetes or heart disease.

The scientists’ study, published on Thursday in the journal Cell, relied on data from the U.K. Biobank, which includes a half million people aged 40 to 69. Participants have provided DNA samples and medical records, and have allowed researchers to track their health over years.

A second study in the same journal also used data from this population to develop a genetic risk score for obesity. It can help predict, as early as childhood, who is at high risk for a lifetime of obesity and who is not.

Anne Lamott

“For people like me, the fight-or-flight instinct comes out in the desperate desire to fix, people-please, and create harmony. My rage usually goes underground and then pops up like a caterpillar, eating another leaf or bud in the garden or an oat bag of popcorn.”

“You are loved; you are capable of lives of great joy and meaning. It’s what you are made of. And it’s what you’re here for. Take care of yourselves; take care of one another.”

“If you’re paying attention and making your own life as beautiful and rich and fun as it can be, you might just attract someone who’s doing the same thing.”

“Every single spiritual tradition says that you must take care of the poor, or you are so doomed that not even Jesus or the Buddha can help you.”

“Refuse to wear uncomfortable pants, even if they make you look really thin. Promise me you’ll never wear pants that bind or tug or hurt, pants that have an opinion about how much you’ve just eaten. The pants may be lying!”

“How do we feed and nourish our spirit, and the spirit of others? First find a path, and a little light to see by. Then push up your sleeves and start helping.”

- Anne Lamott

Deadline

I don’t need time. What I need is a deadline.
DUKE ELLINGTON

Monday

Means baking brownies.

The Trick

“The trick is not becoming a writer. The trick is staying a writer.”
― Harlan Ellison, Strange Wine

Begin in the Middle

“Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself.”
― Harlan Ellison

A Pizza Waffle

for 4 waffles

14 oz pizza dough, 1 tube, or homemade pizza dough
4 tablespoons marinara sauce
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
12 slices pepperoni

Preparation

Slice the pizza dough into 8 equal pieces, then press each piece flat.
Place 4 pieces of dough into a preheated, greased waffle iron.
Spread one tablespoon of marinara, ¼ cup (25 grams) of mozzarella, and 3 slices of pepperoni on each piece of dough.
Top with the 4 remaining pieces of dough and seal.
Cook for 3-5 minutes, until golden brown, then serve.
Enjoy!
https://tasty.co/compilation/waffles-4-ways

A Brief Moment

“Like a wind crying endlessly through the universe, Time carries away the names and the deeds of conquerors and commoners alike. And all that we were, all that remains, is in the memories of those who cared we came this way for a brief moment.”
― Harlan Ellison

Roasted Red Potatoes

Red Roasted Potatoes

Ingredients

2 pounds small unpeeled red potatoes, cut into wedges
2 to 3 tablespoons olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon minced fresh rosemary or 1 teaspoon dried rosemary, crushed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

Directions

Place potatoes in a 13x9-in. baking dish. Drizzle with oil. Sprinkle with the garlic, rosemary, salt and pepper; toss gently to coat.
Bake at 450° until potatoes are golden brown and tender, 20-30 minutes.

Nutrition Facts
1 cup: 114 calories, 4g fat (0 saturated fat), 0 cholesterol, 155mg sodium, 18g carbohydrate (1g sugars, 2g fiber), 2g protein.
Originally published as Oven-Roasted Potatoes in Reminisce November/December 1992

People

“The only thing worth writing about is people. People. Human beings. Men and women whose individuality must be created, line by line, insight by insight. If you do not do it, the story is a failure. [...] There is no nobler chore in the universe than holding up the mirror of reality and turning it slightly, so we have a new and different perception of the commonplace, the everyday, the 'normal', the obvious. People are reflected in the glass. The fantasy situation into which you thrust them is the mirror itself. And what we are shown should illuminate and alter our perception of the world around us. Failing that, you have failed totally.”
― Harlan Ellison

Hardest

“Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching. ”
― Harlan Ellison

Ability to Dream

“The ability to dream is all I have to give. That is my responsibility; that is my burden. And even I grow tired.”
― Harlan Ellison, Stalking the Nightmare

Pain

“I know that pain is the most important thing in the universes. Greater than survival, greater than love, greater even than the beauty it brings about. For without pain, there can be no pleasure. Without sadness, there can be no happiness. Without misery there can be no beauty. And without these, life is endless, hopeless, doomed and damned.
Adult. You have become adult.”
― Harlan Ellison, Paingod and Other Delusions

Informed

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”
― Harlan Ellison

Harlan Ellison

Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you–as if you haven’t been told a million times already–that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.
HARLAN ELLISON

Story

When we’re under the spell of a compelling story, we undergo internal changes along with the protagonist, and her insights become part of the way we, too, see the world. Stories instill meaning directly into our belief system the same way experience does—not by telling us what is right, but by allowing us to feel it ourselves. Because just like life, story is emotion based. As Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert said, “Indeed, feelings don’t just matter, they are what mattering means.” In life, if we can’t feel emotion, we can’t make a single rational decision—it’s biology. In a story, if we’re not feeling, we’re not reading. It is emotion, rather than logic, that telegraphs meaning, thus emotion is what your novel must be wired to transmit, straight from the protagonist to us.

LISA CRON

Successful Hermit

“I’m a heartless optimist. This combination could make me lethal, but mostly it has led to a successful hermit lifestyle.”
― Sarah Noffke, Awoken

Consciousness

“Consciousness is a born hermit.”
― George Santayana, The Life of Reason and Other Works by George Santayana

Silence is the universal refuge

“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
― Henry David Thoreau

The Continual Condition

“now it’s computers and more computers
and soon everybody will have one,
3-year-olds will have computers
and everybody will know everything
about everybody else
long before they meet them.
nobody will want to meet anybody
else ever again
and everybody will be
a recluse
like I am now.”
― Charles Bukowski, The Continual Condition: Poems

Hermits

The cookie

Listening to the night rain on my roof

“Too lazy to be ambitious,
I let the world take care of itself.
Ten days' worth of rice in my bag;
a bundle of twigs by the fireplace.
Why chatter about delusion and enlightenment?
Listening to the night rain on my roof,
I sit comfortably, with both legs stretched out.”
― Ryokan

Livingston Taylor

It didn't seem to be about money, power or fame. Success seemed to be about gratitude. The ability to recognize that your presence here on the planet at this time is a gift and nothing more need be expected or offered. Gratitude is success; and success is gratitude. They are interchangeable. It's true not just in a career, but in life in general. Self-acceptance, forgiveness and gratitude are very attractive qualities on stage.
-Livingston Taylor, Stage Performance (page 77)

Music is my Mistress

It's the birthday of the man who said, "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing": Duke Ellington, born Edward Kennedy Ellington in Washington, D.C. (1899). His father's job as a butler paid well, his mother dressed him in fancy clothes, and so his friends gave him the nickname "Duke". When he was seven years old, a piano teacher refused to teach him, because he wouldn't stop improvising and experimenting with off-tone chords. So he taught himself to play by studying the family player piano. He said, "I never had much interest in the piano until I realized every time I played, a girl would appear on the piano bench to my left, and another to my right."

Ellington thought of his band as a musical laboratory, and he experimented with many different styles, everything from "swing" to "bop". He said, "Playing 'bop' is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing." He went on to compose jazz standards like "Mood Indigo" (1930). In his later career he combined jazz and classical music in works such as Black, Brown and Beige (1943), a musical portrayal of African-American history.

His autobiography was Music is My Mistress (1973), in which he said, "Jazz is a good barometer of freedom. In its beginnings, the United States spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free, that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country."
Writer's Almanac

“Do not fall asleep in your enemy's dream.”

“Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.”
― John Edgar Wideman

“Writers transform: they throw a hand grenade into the notion of reality that people carry around in their heads. That's very dangerous, very destructive, but not to do it means you are satisfied with the status quo - and that's a kind of danger as well, because a kind of violence is already being perpetuated.”
― John Edgar Wideman

“Kids use words in ways that release hidden meanings, revel the history buried in sounds. They haven't forgotten that words can be more than signs, that words have magic, the power to be things, to point to themselves and materialize. With their back-formations, archaisms, their tendency to play the music in words--rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, repetition--children peel the skin from language. Words become incantatory. Open Sesame. Abracadabra. Perhaps a child will remember the word and will bring the walls tumbling down.”
― John Edgar Wideman

“All Stories are True.”
― John Edgar Wideman

“Paradise Lost is a poem. The old, blind bastard’s trying to sing to you. Listen, as the Isley Brothers say, to the music. You must learn to do that before you can expect to understand. Slowly. Slowly. A few licks at a time.”
― John Edgar Wideman

“Thank you, Jesus, for blindness that every once in a great while allows one of us to hit the target.”
― John Edgar Wideman, Fanon

“Looking at each other like, What the fuck's going on here? We big-time undercover supercops.”
― John Edgar Wideman, Brothers and Keepers: A Memoir

“The two of you well fed, tanned, pretty, Beg pardon folks, just passing through, through the cesspool your bad intentions and good intentions created, the sewage in which human beings must make lives for themselves swimming in centuries of your filth. What did you imagine yourselves doing. What do you imagine you're doing with me. What gives you the right to rub the privilege of your whiteness, your immunity, in dying people's faces. Slinking through a place so down and out even niggers with nothing to lose avoid it if they can. Dog-eat-dog back-of-the-wall and at night too. Who the fuck did you think you were. What kind of daydream were you strolling around in.”
― John Edgar Wideman, God's Gym: Stories

“My father was intelligent and closed-mouthed. He knew a lot more than what he was ever going to tell you.”
― John Edgar Wideman

“They killed everyone in the camps. The whole world was dying there. Not only Jews. Even a black woman. Not gypsy. Not African. American like you, Mrs. Clara.

They said she was a dancer and could play any instrument. Said she could line up shoes from many countries and hop from one pair to the next, performing the dances of the world. They said the Queen of Denmark honored her with a gold trumpet. But she was there, in hell with the rest of us.

A woman like you. Many years ago. A lifetime ago. Young then as you would have been. And beautiful. As I believe you must have been, Mrs. Clara. Yes. Before America entered the war. Already camps had begun devouring people. All kinds of people. Yet she was rare. Only woman like her I saw until I came here, to this country, this city. And she saved my life.

Poor thing.

I was just a boy. Thirteen years old. The guards were beating me. I did not know why. Why? They didn't need a why. They just beat. And sometimes the beating ended in death because there was no reason to stop, just as there was no reason to begin. A boy. But I'd seen it many times. In the camp long enough to forget why I was alive, why anyone would want to live for long. They were hurting me, beating the life out of me but I was not surprised, expected no explanation. I remember curling up as I had seen a dog once cowering from the blows of a rolled newspaper. In the old country lifetimes ago. A boy in my village staring at a dog curled and rolling on its back in the dust outside a baker's shop and our baker in his white apron and tall white hat striking this mutt again and again. I didn't know what mischief this dog had done. I didn't understand why the fat man with flour on his apron was whipping it unmercifully. I simply saw it and hated the man, felt sorry for the animal, but already the child in me understood it could be no other way so I rolled and curled myself against the blows as I'd remembered the spotted dog in the dusty village street because that's the way it had to be.

Then a woman's voice in a language I did not comprehend reached me. A woman angry, screeching. I heard her before I saw her. She must have been screaming at them to stop. She must have decided it was better to risk dying than watch the guards pound a boy to death. First I heard her voice, then she rushed in, fell on me, wrapped herself around me. The guards shouted at her. One tried to snatch her away. She wouldn't let go of me and they began to beat her too. I heard the thud of clubs on her back, felt her shudder each time a blow was struck.

She fought to her feet, dragging me with her. Shielding me as we stumbled and slammed into a wall.

My head was buried in her smock. In the smell of her, the smell of dust, of blood. I was surprised how tiny she was, barely my size, but strong, very strong. Her fingers dug into my shoulders, squeezing, gripping hard enough to hurt me if I hadn't been past the point of feeling pain. Her hands were strong, her legs alive and warm, churning, churning as she pressed me against herself, into her. Somehow she'd pulled me up and back to the barracks wall, propping herself, supporting me, sheltering me. Then she screamed at them in this language I use now but did not know one word of then, cursing them, I'm sure, in her mother tongue, a stream of spit and sputtering sounds as if she could build a wall of words they could not cross.

The kapos hesitated, astounded by what she'd dared. Was this black one a madwoman, a witch? Then they tore me from her grasp, pushed me down and I crumpled there in the stinking mud of the compound. One more kick, a numbing, blinding smash that took my breath away. Blood flooded my eyes. I lost consciousness. Last I saw of her she was still fighting, slim, beautiful legs kicking at them as they dragged and punched her across the yard.

You say she was colored?

Yes. Yes. A dark angel who fell from the sky and saved me.”
― John Edgar Wideman, Fever

“They beat me, and fucked me in every hole I had. I was their whore. Their maid. A stool they stood on when they wanted to reach a little higher. But I never sang in their cage, Bobby. Not one note.”
― John Edgar Wideman, Fever

“Do not fall asleep in your enemy's dream.”
― John Edgar Wideman

“A great artist transforms our world, removes scales from our eyes, plugs from our ears, gloves from our fingertips and teaches us to perceive reality differently.”
― John Edgar Wideman

“One of the earliest lessons I learned as a child was that if you looked away from something, it might not be there when you looked back.”
― John Edgar Wideman

“Too much is made for us; too much is given to us - even those of us who are underprivileged. The poverty is given to us. The difficulties are given to us.”
― John Edgar Wideman

“The title of my book is 'American Histories,' plural. And as far as I'm concerned, my reading of history is it is a sort of nightmare. It is a sort of nightmare, and I'm trying to wake up from it. And as any nightmare, it's full of much that is unspeakable.”
― John Edgar Wideman

“Professor of Comparative Literature, B.A. Harvard. Ph.D. Sorbonne, Oxford. Somewhere certificates pasted in full-of-truth blue book. At points we diverge, essential points in fact. Always a clean white page to begin on. Où sont les neiges. The boy had been strangely unreluctant. Although detached, even cold in a numb, childish fashion, the boy had willingly submitted. First his shoes, then his socks and trousers pulled off by the Doctor’s trembling white hands, his priest hands moving of themselves, mechanical but infused with timeless primordial mystery that guided his fingers with a logic more powerful and comprehending than his own being. The flesh presented to his lips, staleness of his own groin floating up to meet him as he knelt. Breath of a dying wino. With this kiss I thee wed, the lean black bridegroom puff of veiled white beside him arm curled into his as they stood rigid with grotesque, confectionery smiles atop the pyramid of cake. Stale cake toppling then as knife keenly enters collapsing with a wheeze the creamy icing. He gave of himself in grudged thin spasms. The hierophant rose on stiff knees.”
― John Edgar Wideman, A Glance Away

“I wonder how far away it is somebody should know somebody should find out and tell people cause I’m sure they want to know look at them both closer to my fire now and both looking at the flames I wonder what it feels like to burn it if always hurts once your hand is in it deep and if it pops and sparks like wood and if the color is the same and if it hurts and where does it go if you keep it in smoke rises through the trees to the sky towards the black roof where the sun will come if the sun comes tomorrow does it hurt or smell and how high up the smoke kids do it stick their hands right in you gotta keep them away or they’ll do it like buys who get too close and burn up I see why they try once why they want to touch I can see it in Eddie’s eyes in the white man’s eyes that stare at the flame they want to touch to put them in and see if it keeps hurting I can understand why kids do it cause I want to touch myself just like one I want to put my hand in I want to go to smoke and see how high…”
― John Edgar Wideman, A Glance Away

“Real change is always violent, but it may hurt a lot less than what's in place before the violence occurs.”
― John Edgar Wideman

“I think I was kind of melancholy as a kid. I spent a lot of time inside my own head, a lot of time sort of staring into space wondering the hell was going on.”
― John Edgar Wideman