Van Newman

People need to eat and pay the rent. “An amateur is an artist who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint,” said artist Ben Shahn. “A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.” Whether an artist makes money off his work or not, money has to come from somewhere, be it a day job, a wealthy spouse, a trust

... See more

This is how it works: You’ve always wanted to be a writer, but instead you decide you should become a health care worker. You go to school for four years. You get a degree in social work. You are at your first day of your new job, listening to an orientation, and you realize you really did want to be a writer. You quit your job, go to the library

... See more

The Internet lacks closure, not in some cloying therapeutic sense, but literally. At every moment a website can be surfed, linked, crawled, or refreshed by any one (or several million) of billions of browsers. The net isn't "read" like a book, "watched" like a movie, nor "attended" like the theater -- it is "browsed." The word itself suggests a... See more