Random Musing
A Baker's Dozen included a painting of mine in their latest issue. You can see it here, just scroll down to item #3.

Quotation
"My days were all alike, but they had something that today, in hindsight, I don't hesitate to call happiness." -Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)

Quotation
"The injury of words.
Yes, the brutality of words." -Mark Zusak, The Book Thief

Quotation
Amiens: …Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remember'd not. -William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Quotation
"'And with love one can live even without happiness. Life is good even in sorrow, it's good to live in the world, no matter how.'" -Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)

Quotations
"…peaceful in a way that seemed to go beyond simple peacefulness, thought Fate, or maybe not, maybe her peacefulness was just peacefulness and a hint of weariness, peacefulness and banked embers, peacefulness and tranquility and sleepiness, which is ultimately (sleepiness, that is) the wellspring and also the last refuge of peacefulness. But then peacefulness isn't just peacefulness, thought Fate. Or what we think of as peacefulness is wrong and peacefulness or the realms of peacefulness are really no more than a gauge of movement, an accelerator or a brake, depending."
-Roberto Bolaño, 2666 (Translated by Natasha Wimmer)

"When shall I finally untangle my thoughts, when shall I find peace and rest within myself again?" -Anne Frank, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

"'Yet surely I am not born to be for ever wretched; the time will come when' — She began to think she might one time be happy, but recollecting the desperate situation of Theodore, 'No,' said she, 'I can never hope even for peace!'" -Ann Radcliffe, The Romance of the Forest

"That's the whole trouble. You can't ever find a place that's nice and peaceful, because there isn't any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you're not looking, somebody'll sneak up and write 'Fuck you' right under your nose. Try it sometime." -J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

"'That's peace — real peace. To come to the end — not to have to go on….  Yes, peace…'" -Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None

Quotation
"I want a book that acknowledges that life goes on but that death goes on, too, that a person who is dead is a long, long story. You move on from it, but the death will never disappear from view. Your friends may say, Time heals all wounds. No, it doesn't, but eventually you'll feel better. You'll be yourself again." -Elizabeth McCracken, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

Random Musing
Strange to think that it's already been a year. Time moves really fast. Rest in peace Chip. As always, my thoughts are with your friends and family. I hope they're on the road to feeling like themselves again.

Quotation
"'Oh, beauty!' whispered Emily, passionately, lifting her hands to the stars. 'What would I have done without you all these years?'" -L.M. Montgomery, Emily's Quest

Quotation
"What concerns me among multitudes and multitudes of other sad questions which one had better try to lure aside with parfaits and sunshine, is that there is a certain great sorrow in me now, with as many facets as a fly's eyes, and I must give birth to this monstrosity before I am light again." -Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Quotations
"'That was what set me off hating civilization.'
'Well, cheer up,' he said; 'there isn't much of it left.'" -Elizabeth Bowen, "Mysterious Kôr"

"What is it that civilization softens in us? Civilization cultivates only a versatility of sensations in man, and…decidedly nothing else." -Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground (Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky)

"…where there was nature and earth, life and water, I saw a desert landscape that was unending, resembling some sort of crater, so devoid of reason and light and spirit that the mind could not grasp it on any sort of conscious level and if you came close the mind would reel backward, unable to take it in. It was a vision so clear and real and vital to me that in its purity it was almost abstract. This was what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the intangible. This was the geography around which my reality revolved: it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could be a better place through one's taking pleasure in a feeling or a look or a gesture, of receiving another person's love and kindness. Nothing was affirmative, the term 'generosity of spirit' applied to nothing, was a cliché, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no long an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire - meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilty, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in…this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged…" -Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho

Quotations
"And it seems that always in August I am more aware of the rain." -Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

"August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time." -Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath