Ideas

Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.

~ John Steinbeck ~
Photo by Richard Taylor.

Keep Your Eyes and Ears Open!

We learn simply by the exposure of living. Much that passes for education is not education at all but ritual. The fact is that we are being educated when we know it least.

~ David P. Gardner ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

Cats come and go without ever leaving.

~ Martha Curtis ~







Photo by Ian Southwell.

An Apt Simile

A writer is like a bag lady going through life with a sack and a pointed stick collecting stuff.

~ Tony Hillerman ~

Poetry Friday

A work of art is above all an adventure of the mind.

~ Eugene Ionesco ~\






Photo by Philippe Alès courtesy Wikimedia.

Put Your Glasses On!

Where there is no vision,
there is no hope.

~ George Washington Carver ~




Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Only a Half Day Late

I nearly forgot to post today! So this one is for me! --KK


Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders.

~ Friedrich Nietzsche ~

Or Power Hungry

It's not going to do any good to land on Mars if we're stupid.

~ Ray Bradbury ~
Image courtesy NASA.

Museums

Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an interpretation of history, of how to view the world and locate ourselves in it. They are, if you want to put it in positive terms, great educational institutions. If you want to put it in negative terms, they are propaganda machines.

~ Hans Haacke ~

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The beauty of the cat is very deceptive, for under the grace of the furry exterior lie concealed steel-like muscles.

~ Carl Van Vechten ~
"Black Cat at a Windowsill" [1902] by Constantin Alexeevich Korovin, courtesy The Athenaeum.

And So It Remains Today--Delusion Runs Deep

Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.

~ John Steinbeck ~



Photo courtesy Nobel Foundation.

Poetry Friday

Well, don’t you think there comes a time when everyone, not just a poet, wants to get beyond the Self? To reach, if you like, the "god" within you?

~ James Merrill ~



Photo courtesy Wikipedia.

Few People Understand This

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery ~
Photo of 50 franc banknote courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Pirates Tell Terrible Jokes

Q: Where does a pirate play ball?

A: In the backyaaaaarrd!



Illustration courtesy openclipart.

Treasure!

"And let me say here, I know that no one escaped alive from our vessel except myself and those that were taken by the man-of-war. And those were all executed as pirates,--so I know that no other man knows of this treasure except myself and it must be and is where we buried it until to-day and unless you get it through this statement it will remain there always and do no one any good.

"Therefore, it is your duty to trace it up and get it for your own benefit, as well as others, so delay not, but act as soon as possible.

"I will now describe the places, locations, marks etc., etc., so plainly that it can be found, without any trouble.

"The first is a sum of one million and a half dollars--($1,500,000)--"

~ Richard Le Gallienne from Pieces of Eight ~

So Sad...

As free and crazy as we want to be, and how much we want to make the world a canvas, there's also a part of us that doesn't want to make any mark.

Gerard Way

Sunday Kat Kwote

Crazy Cat Lady Approved.

Found at Archie McPhee & Co.

Avoiding Stupid Things

...when your aim is to conduct a responsive and responsible foreign policy, the avoidance of stupid things is often the avoidance of bloodshed and unforeseen strife. History suggests that it is not a mantra to be derided or dismissed.

~ David Remnick ~

Poetry Friday

A bad poem is full of English literature.

~ William Carlos Williams ~

Sincerity

A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

~ Oscar Wilde ~




Photo courtesy Library of Congress.

Gifts

If I were Queen of the World, I would decree that all students be given the gifts of time and books they want to read throughout their schooling...

~ Valerie Strauss ~

The Key to Everything

Intuition is the key to everything, in painting, filmmaking, business--everything. I think you could have an intellectual ability, but if you can sharpen your intuition, which they say is emotion and intellect joining together, then a knowingness occurs.

~ David Lynch ~

Screenwriting

The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement.

~ Raymond Chandler ~
Photo courtesy The Telegraph.

Sunday's Kat Kwote

The cat always leaves her mark upon her friend.

~ Spanish proverb ~
[And I have the scars to prove it! --KK]

Photo by Finn Frode.

Don't Be Bamboozled!

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

~ Carl Sagan ~

Poetry Friday

Painting is silent poetry, and poetry is painting that speaks.

~ Plutarch ~

Chicken Soup

Almost every culture has its own variation on chicken soup, and rightly so--it's one of the most gratifying dishes on the face of the Earth.

~ Yotam Ottolenghi ~
Note: when KK was growing up, Campbell's was how you defined chicken soup. Sad, but true.

Warhol illustration courtesy artswallpapers.org.

Again With the Chickens

Q. What do you call a chicken crossing the road?

A. Poultry in motion.

~ Unknown ~
Photo by feeb.

It's National Chicken Month!

I did not become a vegetarian for my health, I did it for the health of the chickens.

~ Isaac Bashevis Singer ~
Illustration courtesy openclipart.

Something to Remember on Labor Day

Child labor and poverty are inevitably bound together and if you continue to use the labor of children as the treatment for the social disease of poverty, you will have both poverty and child labor to the end of time.

~ Grace Abbott ~
Photo by Lewis Wickes Hine, courtesy Library of Congress.