A Love/Hate Relationship

Although she feeds me bread of bitterness,
And sinks into my throat her tiger's tooth,
Stealing my breath of life, I will confess
I love this cultured hell that tests my youth!

~ Claude McKay from "America" ~

Culture

Culture is to know the best that has been said and thought in the world.

~ Matthew Arnold ~

About Bestsellers...

Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.

~ Anthony Burgess ~

Oscars

Every time an Oscar is given out,
an agent gets his wings.

~ Kathy Bates ~

It's Just a Matter of Time

The Disney industry has not yet attacked 'Hansel and Gretel'...

~ from The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

It is difficult to obtain the friendship of a cat. It is a philosophical animal...one that does not place its affections thoughtlessly.

~ Theophile Gautier ~

This cat does not want to be friends!

It's National Pick-on-Dog Owners Day!

Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing, right in your ear.

~ Dave Barry ~


I made up that holiday!--KK

Hope

Hope is a thing made only for people.
a scrap to hold onto
in darkness and in light.

~ from Home of the Brave by Katherine Applegate ~

Ha! Just Try It with the Canard de Bain!

Some parents say it is toy guns that make boys warlike. But give a boy a rubber duck and he will seize its neck like the butt of a pistol and shout "Bang!"

~ George F. Will ~


If you enjoyed the picture of the giant duck, then check out the other works by the Dutch artist, Florentijn Hofman. I particularly like the "muskusrat."

Fresh Strength

A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.

~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~

Castro Steps Down

My elemental duty is not to cling to positions, much less to stand in the way of younger persons, but rather to contribute my own experience and ideas whose modest value comes from the exceptional era that I had the privilege of living in.

~ Fidel Castro ~

President's Day

It has been my experience that folks with no vices have few virtues.

~ Abraham Lincoln ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

When my cats aren't happy, I'm not happy. Not because I care about their mood but because I know they're just sitting there thinking up ways to get even.

~ Percy Bysshe Shelley ~

Photo of Cassie courtesy of Lucinda McQueen

King Tut's Burial Chamber Was Opened on This Date in 1923

Dancing by the Nile,
Disco Tut, Tut
The ladies love his style.
Boss Tut, Tut
Rockin' for a mile,
Rockin' Tut, Tut
He ate a crocodile.

~ Steve Martin ~

On the Start of a Three-Day Weekend...

Well, I was born and raised in the Midwest, in Indiana specifically, and my childhood was full of weekend movies, you know, the Saturday and Sunday popcorn movies.
~ Sydney Pollack ~

I was born and raised in New York, and nearly every Saturday found me at the movies!

Yeah, Me, Too...

I'm a hopeless romantic. It's disgusting. It really is. I've seen "While You Were Sleeping," like, twenty times, and I still believe in the whole Prince Charming thing.

~ Jennifer Love Hewitt ~

Poor Girl, Imagine Making Her Wait in Weather Like We Had Today!

I need not go
Through sleet and snow
To where I know
She waits for me:
She will tarry there
Till I find it fair,
And have time to spare
From company.

~ Thomas Hardy ~

Money

If you want to see what God thinks of money, just look at all the people He gave it to.
~ Dorothy Parker ~

Origami

from the Peabody Essex Museum
The most extreme violation of the Western separation of the medium from the message is to be found in an art-form like Japanese origami. Whereas Western art focuses upon the freedom to move images around on paper or canvas to create fixed patterns, origami ignores the separation between the image and the paper. The paper becomes part of the image, and is twisted and folded until it is the picture, not merely the surface on which it lies.

~ John D. Barrow ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

A dog is prose, a cat is a poem.

~ Jean Burden ~

Regrets

I think I don't regret a single "excess" of my responsive youth--I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.

~ Henry James ~

Chinese New Year

So exert ourselves to the utmost here tonight,
I still admire the exuberance of our youth!

~ Su Shi ~

It's Snowing Again...

Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.

~ Andy Goldsworthy ~

Tea with the Mad Hatter

"Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, "so I can't take more."

"You mean you can't take less," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more than nothing."

~ from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll~

Tea

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

~ C. S. Lewis ~

Dreaming

If a little dreaming is dangerous, the cure for it is not to dream less but to dream more, to dream all the time.

~ Marcel Proust ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Cats are dangerous companions for writers because cat watching is a near-perfect method of writing avoidance.

~ Dan Greenberg ~

Happy Groundhog's Day!

Don't you think the nation is ready for an official female groundhog?

~ Jan Kruse, an Massachusetts Audubon spokeswoman ~

To learn more click here.

Listening

Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force.

~ Brenda Ueland ~



I suppose that can be be turned around when eavesdropping is involved!