“Being in a film school was like an island in the craziness.”—Vilmos Zsigmond, in Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, Budapest. S5E5
An Oscar-winning cinematographer remembers film school in Hungary’s hardest years as an island in the craziness. Most of us have needed one.
"I don't know what else I'd do if I didn't write songs, or sing." Christine McVie, interview with Larry Katz, 1987
In 1987 a journalist asked Christine McVie whether she could still see herself doing this at fifty or sixty. Her answer wasn't a promise. It was something truer.
"I want something serious, something fresh — something with soul in it! Onward, onward." — Vincent van Gogh, letter to his brother Theo, The Hague, 3 January 1883. Letter 298.
Through working hard, Van Gogh wrote, "I'm hunting it and fighting for it." The story of a man who never claimed to have arrived — only to keep going. Onward, onward.
"El sueño de la razón produce monstruos. / The sleep of reason produces monsters."— Francisco Goya, Los Caprichos, Plate 43 (1799).
Everyone quotes half of it. Goya's own caption said the fuller thing — reason and imagination aren't enemies. They need each other.
"My cup runneth over."— King David, Psalm 23.
Some gatherings pour a toast. Others pour something that only takes. David knew both — in the very same breath.
"It's climbing and striving for something always beyond."— Emily Carr, Hundreds and Thousands: The Journals of Emily Carr
For fifteen years, Emily Carr nearly gave up painting. What she did with that gap changed what came after.
"Noble be man, merciful and good."— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Divine.
In a courtyard in 1945, a soldier asked a question no one had asked her in six years. She answered him with Goethe.
"Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away." — Louis de Bernières, Captain Corelli's Mandolin, 1994
Every morning, someone kisses someone goodbye at the door, certain there will be another goodbye tomorrow to trade for it. Most days, they're right. That's exactly the problem.
“Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. — Seneca, On the Shortness of Life
Every morning, someone kisses someone goodbye at the door, certain there will be another goodbye tomorrow to trade for it. Most days, they're right. That's exactly the problem.
“We've had that over and over. But we always survived. We're still here.”— Waubgeshig Rice — Moon of the Crusted Snow, 2018
The younger characters call it an apocalypse. One of the elders corrects them, gently. Apocalypse, she says — there isn't even a word for that in her language.
“The art of losing isn't hard to master” — Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art" (poem), 1976
There's a poem almost anyone can relate to — because everyone has lost something. Elizabeth Bishop spent five stanzas convincing herself losing was easy. Then one line gave her away.
On Staying True — Vince Guaraldi
A respected jazz musician found himself scoring music for a children's Christmas cartoon — and instead of feeling diminished, he felt like he'd bought into something worth giving himself to.
On Presence — Mary Oliver
For over forty years, she walked the same woods each morning, watching what most people walk past without noticing. Mary Oliver's answer to living a wild and precious life wasn't a plan — it was daily attention.
On Legacy — Emanuel Swedenborg
He spent fifty-six years building a name the world respected — then risked all of it for something he couldn't prove. What Swedenborg discovered changes how you think about what actually lasts.
On Being There — Jerzy Kosińsky
Chance the gardener knew nothing — and people mistook his simplicity for depth. We see in others exactly what we already believe.
On Restraint — Naomi Osaka
Naomi Osaka has always been quiet in a sport that rewards noise. The world only sees what she chooses to do. It never sees the hundred quiet refusals that made the yes possible.
On Awareness — James Thurber
James Thurber created Walter Mitty — the quiet man who lived entire heroic lives inside his own imagination. Mitty was fiction. The awareness was real.
On Wholehearted Acceptance — Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius wrote Meditations as a private journal no one was meant to read. A reflection on wholehearted acceptance — of your circumstances and the people fate placed beside you.
On Anticipation — J.R.R. Tolkien
Tolkien wrote this for a hobbit who didn't choose his moment. Neither did you. A reflection on courage, uncertainty, and what the present moment is asking of you.
On Love — Frederick Buechner
A Presbyterian minister wrote one sentence about love that no mathematician can explain. Frederick Buechner on the miracle of two people who multiply each other.