General Vagaries.

vintageanchor:

“A woman who is willing to be herself and pursue her own potential runs not so much the risk of loneliness, as the challenge of exposure to more interesting men - and people in general.”
—Lorraine Hansberry

Birthday wishes to playwright Lorraine Vivian Hansberry ( born today in 1930), author of “A Raisin in the Sun” (1959).

vintageanchor:

“All humanity is passion; without passion, religion, history, novels, art would be ineffectual.”
—Honoré de Balzac

Today is the anniversary of the birth of French novelist Honoré de Balzac (born in 1799; d.1850), who wrote The Human Comedy in 80 volumes.

“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it.
Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”
― William Faulkner

vintageanchor:

fuckyeahhistorycrushes:

Frank O’Hara

it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

vintageanchor:

“Creo que las mujeres sostienen el mundo en vilo, para que no se desbarate mientras los hombres tratan de empujar la historia. Al final, uno se pregunta cuál de las dos cosas será la menos sensata.”

“I think women try to hold the world together so that it doesn´t fall apart while men try to push history forward. In the end, one wonders which of the two is the less sensible.”
—Gabriel García Márquez

vintageanchor:

“If happiness is anticipation with certainty, we were happy.”
― Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

vintageanchor:

“Writing a story or a novel is one way of discovering sequence in experience, of stumbling upon cause and effect in the happenings of a writer’s own life.”

—Eudora Welty

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Southern writer Eudora Welty (1909; d.2001), winner of the 1972 Pulitzer Prize.

vintageanchor:

As I Walked Out One Evening   by W. H. Auden

As I walked out one evening,
   Walking down Bristol Street,
The crowds upon the pavement
   Were fields of harvest wheat.

And down by the brimming river
   I heard a lover sing
Under an arch of the railway:
   'Love has no ending.

'I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
   Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
   And the salmon sing in the street,

'I'll love you till the ocean
   Is folded and hung up to dry
And the seven stars go squawking
   Like geese about the sky.

'The years shall run like rabbits,
   For in my arms I hold
The Flower of the Ages,
   And the first love of the world.'

But all the clocks in the city
   Began to whirr and chime:
'O let not Time deceive you,
   You cannot conquer Time.

'In the burrows of the Nightmare
   Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
   And coughs when you would kiss.

'In headaches and in worry
   Vaguely life leaks away,
And Time will have his fancy
   To-morrow or to-day.

'Into many a green valley
   Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
   And the diver's brilliant bow.

'O plunge your hands in water,
   Plunge them in up to the wrist;
Stare, stare in the basin
   And wonder what you've missed.

'The glacier knocks in the cupboard,
   The desert sighs in the bed,
And the crack in the tea-cup opens
   A lane to the land of the dead.

'Where the beggars raffle the banknotes
   And the Giant is enchanting to Jack,
And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,
   And Jill goes down on her back.

'O look, look in the mirror,
   O look in your distress:
Life remains a blessing
   Although you cannot bless.

'O stand, stand at the window
   As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
   With your crooked heart.'

It was late, late in the evening,
   The lovers they were gone;
The clocks had ceased their chiming,
   And the deep river ran on. 

vintageanchor:

“It will never be impervious. The memory can be hurt, time and again—but in that may lie its final mercy. As long as it’s vulnerable to the living moment, it lives for us, and while it lives, and while we are able, we can give it up its due.”

— Eudora Welty, The Optimist’s Daughter

vintageanchor:

“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.”
—Oscar Wilde

Why don’t I have an Oscar Wilde action figure?

Poe knew what was up.

vintageanchor:

“I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.”
― Edgar Allan Poe