“There are some things which have no business being put into books for all the world to read.”
– Mr. Norrell
Clarke, Susanna. Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. United Kingdom, Bloomsbury, 2005. pg12
Category: Thinkers
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Rail
Every good man has a train
That goes towards his mother's house
Sounding its whistle
Blowing smoke.Kumar, Amitava. The Blue Book: A Writer’s Journal. India, HarperCollins Publishers India, 2022. pg 58
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Doodling here is writing’s other self, its shadow form. As much as they tell us about writing, doodles tell us about reading. They get at the heart of the critical act by seeming to solicit interpretation, then skittering away when we get down to the business of studying them. They might, after all, register no more than the inky imprints of the pleasures of mark-making or the necessity of testing the pen. Take a doodle too seriously, and you risk finding only your own desire for meaning bounced back at you.
Draw.
Polly Dickson, “Doodle Nation: Notes on Distracted Drawing,” The Paris Review (blog), July 17, 2024, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2024/07/17/doodle-nation-notes-on-distracted-drawing/.
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My debt to Plato is a certain number of sentences: the like to Aristotle. A large number, yet still a finite number, make the worth of Milton and Shakespeare, to me. I would therefore run over what I have written, save out the good sentences, and destroy the rest.
He only is a good writer who keeps one eye on his page and with the other sweeps over things. So that every new sentence brings us a new contribution of observation.
Richardson, Robert D.. First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process. United States, University of Iowa Press, 2015. pg 53,54
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“Reason holds the helm, but passions are the gales.”
– John Adams
John Adams was enlightened to the human heart.
McCullough, David. John Adams. United Kingdom, Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 421
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That one had to keep a “good heart,” come what may, was Abigail’s lifelong creed. “A merry heart doeth good like medicine,” she loved to say, quoting Proverbs. “I hate to complain,” she now wrote. “No one is without difficulties, whether in high or low life, and every person knows best where their own shoe pinches.
With all of the Richmond Hill house sick, Abigail Adam’s “good heart” endured.
The most formidable first lady of all time?
McCullough, David. John Adams. United Kingdom, Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 423
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At loose ends once again in Europe, and with no word from Congress, Adams was nonetheless determined to make himself useful. If nothing else, he could write—Adams would always write. Another man might have relaxed and bided his time, just as another man might have waited at El Ferrol for his ship to be repaired, rather than striking out over the mountains of Spain.
Always choose to make yourself useful, regardless of circumstance.
You too, can always write.
McCullough, David. John Adams. United Kingdom, Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 234
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What a large volume of adventures may be grasped within this little span of life by him who interests his heart in everything.
McCullough, David. John Adams. United Kingdom, Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 287
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“Popularity was never my mistress, nor was I ever, or shall I ever be a popular man,”
– John Adams to James Warren
It’s almost as if Adams knew his contributions to the formation of the United States would go overlooked. However, he always behaved with conviction.
McCullough, David. John Adams. United Kingdom, Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 373
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Thanks to Madame Lafayette, they were seated in a gallery overlooking the choir, “as good a place as any in the church,” thought John Quincy, who in a long description of the spectacle in his diary demonstrated that besides being precociously erudite, he had learned, as his father urged, to observe the world around him and was well started on becoming an accomplished writer. He described the Parliament lined up to the right side of the choir, robed in scarlet and black, the Chambre des Comptes on the left, in robes of black and white; the bishops arriving two by two, “a purple kind of mantle over their shoulders,” the Archbishop of Paris, “a mitre upon his head,” and finally the arrival of the King.
John Quincy Adams heeding his father’s advice to observe the world around him.
Or as Teju Cole begs: observe, observe, observe.
McCullough, David. John Adams. United Kingdom, Simon & Schuster, 2001. pg 327
Floodlights and Goalposts 