sparks

Like me, she was very good in a crisis and very bad on a typical weekday; I believe it was she who introduced me to Walker Percy, even taking me to Covington to see where he lived, and he was well-aware of this reality: “It is easier to survive a category five hurricane than it is to get through an ordinary Wednesday afternoon.” My mother was... See more

One thing I have been thinking about since I gave birth is the range of spiritual qualities that are implicit in physical pain — the way it enforces a sort of presence that melts down the world around you. And the irony of how its sibling sensation, emotional pain, persuades (at least in my experience) just the opposite: an evacuation from the... See more

Three things:

1. Everything, if done long enough and deeply enough, is sometimes tedious.


2. I’m pretty sure the key to long-term happiness lies in having fun even when something is tedious and difficult.


3. If you find something fun even when it’s objectively hard, keep going.

“What is talkativeness? It is the result of doing away with the vital distinction between talking and keeping silent. Only some one who knows how to remain essentially silent can really talk--and act essentially. Silence is the essence of inwardness, of the inner life. Mere gossip anticipates real talk, and to express what is still in thought

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I have a theory about nostalgia : It happens because the best survival strategy in an uncertain world is to overworry. When you look back, you forget about all the things you worried about that never came true. So life appears better in the past because in hindsight there wasn’t as much to worry about as you were actually worrying about at the... See more

Bob Dylan asks Cohen: "How long did it take you to write Hallelujah?”

“A couple of years” - Cohen replied.

It was a lie — it took him 7 years but he wanted to play it down

Cohen then asked Bob Dylan: “How long did it take you to write Just Like a Woman?”

Dylan replied: “Fifteen minutes”