Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.
Illustration for The New York Review of Books by Félix Vallotton.
“My mind rebels at stagnation. Give me problems, give me work, give me the most abstruse cryptogram, or the most intricate analysis, and I am in my own proper atmosphere. But I abhor the dull routine of existence. I crave for mental exaltation.”—Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (May 22, 1859—July 7, 1930; Happy birthday!)
“Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald
(at Oxford Exchange)
We live and breathe words. …. It was books that made me feel that perhaps I was not completely alone. They could be honest with me, and I with them. Reading your words, what you wrote, how you were lonely sometimes and afraid, but always brave; the way you saw the world, its colors and textures and sounds, I felt—I felt the way you thought, hoped, felt, dreamt. I felt I was dreaming and thinking and feeling with you. I dreamed what you dreamed, wanted what you wanted—and then I realized that truly I just wanted you.
Ernest Hemingway, center, photographed for the Oak Park High School football team, November 1915
We rely upon the poets, the philosophers, and the playwrights to articulate what most of us can only feel, in joy or sorrow. They illuminate the thoughts for which we only grope; they give us the strength and balm we cannot find in ourselves. Whenever I feel my courage wavering, I rush to them. They give me the wisdom of acceptance, the will and resilience to push on.
This picture speaks volumes. They are together on the train but are clearly alone.
“I had lines inside me, a string of guiding lights. I had language. Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination. I had been damaged, and a very important part of me had been destroyed - that was my reality, the facts of my life. But on the other side of the facts was who I could be, how I could feel. And as long as I had words for that, images for that, stories for that, then I wasn’t lost.”—Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro.
Thomas à Kempis
[Latin Translation: “Everywhere I have sought peace and not found it, except in a corner with a book.”]
The magic of words and books
Inspired by Worthington Libraries: Blind Date with a Book!
We started with ~40 books. Two hours later, all but four had found homes with library patrons (sorry, Flush, Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Persepolis, and The ThingsThey Carried, they don’t know what they’re missing).
Nice reading room/home library
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All the quotes on this site are marked with the author's name, except those marked with TBV; those quotes are my own.
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