Borges

“Sometimes I think that beauty is not something rare. I think beauty is happening all the time. Art is happening all the time. At some conversation a man may say a very fine thing, not being aware of it. I am hearing fine sentences all the time from the man in the street, for example. From anybody.”

-- Jorge Luis Borges

William F. Buckley Jr.

A few more quotes from Buckley's Paris Review interview.

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I live a hectic life. Someone once asked me if I ever could lay aside my Christian scruples so as to have a mistress, and I said, I really don’t have the time.

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I always resent critics who find themselves saying, Mr. Buckley’s novels look as though they were written with one eye on the in-flight movie.

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The Fog Index is the average number of syllables per word and the average number of words per sentence.

-- William F. Buckley Jr.

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John Fowles

“The moon hung over the planet Earth, a dead thing over a dying thing.”

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“To write poetry and to commit suicide, apparently so contradictory, had really been the same, attempts at escape.”

-- John Fowles

Robert Frost

“I know San Francisco like my own face. It’s where I came from, the first place I really knew. You always know where you come from, don’t you?”

-- Robert Frost

It was a lesson to me that Frost was not a northeastern farm boy, born and bred. Perhaps it helped his poetry to bring a fresh eye to his new rural landscape.

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“It’s as though he were dropped into the countryside north of Boston from outer space, and remained perpetually stunned by what he saw … I don’t think you can overemphasize that aspect of Frost. A native takes, or may take, a place for granted; if you have to earn your citizenship, your locality, it requires a special focus.”

-- Robert Penn Warren

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[Source: Jay Parini, “Robert Frost: A Life”]

Pop, Mr. Party

My paranoiac energy is spiking this evening. I see that Pop is loading up heavy on the booze, including a new big bottle of Jim Beam. Presumably it is for the Cowboys game on Sunday, but I doubt Lorie will be here to help him drink his supplies down. She was awfully embarrassed the last time. However, I recall Pop's recent mention of Falstaff, and my mind is connecting the dots fast. Pop badly wants to have a great time on Cowboys Sunday, and Falstaff - with perhaps some of the rest of the gang, including Jacko - can certainly help him drink his booze and raise the noise level to make things sound a little like a wild and fun party. It is another three o'clock game, and I intend to take my walk to the duck pond again, but such a rude visitation could still be trouble. It would certainly be vastly annoying, walk or no walk.

I suppose you have to hand it to Pop: he is not going gently into the dark night and to enfeebling old age. He has such an appetite for life, more than I ever knew him to show when he was young.