Quotable

A collection of 58 posts

Journal

Three qualities of beauty

I think I might just scrap all of my syllabus explanations regarding how I grade essays and short stories in my writing classes. I'll just replace those with this passage from Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose: For three things concur in creating beauty: first

Journal

Reflectors

"That's something poetry can do for you..."

Journal

Details, details...

James Wood in The Nearest Thing to Life: bits of life: converted into (fictional, which is to say new) life. This quotation from Wood's extraordinary book addresses, in one potent paragraph, the big question I explored in a presentation I gave at The Glen Workshop in 2013 — "

On Books & Writing

Needful thwarting

Geoff Dyer, Out of Sheer Rage: The perfect life, the perfect lie, I realized after Christmas, is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, say, or written unpublishable poetry) but which, in fact, you have no wish to do. People need to feel

Journal

Simone Weil on pagan mythology

Here's Simone Weil writing — in Waiting for God — on how, by resisting Christ in her pursuit of the truth, she came to realize that he is the truth waiting for her within everything — even pagan mythology: ...After this I came to feel that Plato was a mystic, that

Journal

The power of material presence

To think through things, that is the still life painter's work — and the poet's. Both sorts of artists require a tangible vocabulary, a worldly lexicon. A language of ideas is, in itself, a phantom language, lacking in the substance of worldly things, those containers of feeling

On Books & Writing

Danger: Art on a vehicle

uration of sound or shape which requires attention and development from the artist. In the process of that development, we find meaning we had not suspected; but if we try to begin with the meanings, they will shrink to the scale of what we already understand: whereas the creative activity

Journal

"That's where the interesting stuff happens..."

From "Humans of New York": I’ve spent my life trying to undo habits — especially habits of thinking. They narrow your interaction with the world. They’re the phrases that come easily to

Seamus Heaney

"It Can Entrance You For a Moment..."

"Debate doesn’t really change things. It gets you bogged in deeper. If you can address or reopen the subject with something new, something from a different angle, then there is some hope."

On Movies & Media

The Quotable Renshaw

One of this film critics' favorite quotable quotes comes from Roger Ebert: "A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it." But now I'll carry another knockout definition of criticism in my back pocket to help clarify matters...

On Movies & Media

If Your House Were Burning Down...

[et_pb_testimonial admin_label="Quote" author="composer Ned Rorem" job_title="From his introduction to Jean Cocteau’s book %22The Difficulty of Being%22" url_new_window="off" quote_icon="on" use_background_color="on" background_color=

Orson Welles

"... the best service anyone could render to art..."

A new quote for my collection of insights on faith and art Orson Welles: If you try to probe, I’ll lie to you. Seventy-five percent of what I say in interviews is false. I’m like a hen protecting her eggs. I cannot talk. I must protect my

Faith

Christianity Today's Knockout Interview with Marilynne Robinson

This is the most thrilling stuff I've read at Christianity Today in a while. Great interview. I wish they'd made this a cover story. It's one of the most important conversations this magazine could offer its audience. But according to this, it's

Quotable

World Cup Pope

What does Pope Benedict XVI think of soccer? Now we know. And his insights give new meaning to the term "GOOOOOAAAAAAALLLLLL!!!"

Quotable

"...the most beautiful book in English..."

What book did C.S. Lewis call "almost the most beautiful book in English"? Thomas Traherne, Centuries of Meditations. I've heard about Lewis's love for this volume many times, but have never gotten around to tracking it down. It seems Traherne also influenced Thomas

Quotable

Who's right?

So... I stumbled onto these two quotes within a few seconds of one another... "In order to write about life, first you must live it!" - Ernest Hemingway (1899 – 1961), writer, journalist But then: * Ned Rorem, Pulitzer Prize-Winning American Composer Which is it? Come on. Time's

Quotable

To Savor or To Save?

E.B. White, in an interview with The New York Times in 1969, said: If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world

"Christian" is a Bad Adjective

C.S. Lewis explains.

C.S. LEWIS: What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects — with their Christianity latent. And that's why so many of the most important, insightful, imaginative Christians who write will never be published so long as they

Quotable

A Christmas Eve appeal

Every Christmas, it's a different verse that burns with new vitality for me. This year, it's this one: O come, Desire of nations, bind In one the hearts of all mankind; Bid Thou our sad divisions cease, And be Thyself our King of Peace. Merry Christmas,

On Movies & Media

Pixar's "Up" at Cannes; Pete Docter Talks Faith and Filmmaking

I'm happy to see Pixar's new film opening on the kind of platform that the studio deserves. Up is opening the Cannes Film Festival with a presentation in Disney Digital 3-D on Wednesday May 13th, 2009. That marks the first time an animated film has

On Movies & Media

That's The Spirit!

Roger Ebert: The Spirit

C.S. Lewis

Yancey: How C.S. Lewis shaped my faith and writing

Philip Yancey in CT: Lewis has taught me a style of approach that I try to follow in my own writings. To quote William James, "... in the metaphysical and religious sphere, articulate reasons are cogent for us only when our inarticulate feelings of reality have already been impressed in

Quotable

"We care for the environment precisely because God will create a new earth."

If you ever overhear me muttering threats while I read Christian media, it's likely that I've discovered more "Christian" shows of contempt for environmentalists. It's amazing how often I find fellow believers putting down those who strive to save the natural world

Quotable

A Little Milton on a Monday Afternoon

My new friend Kelly Foster just emailed this to me. It's a quote from John Milton's Areopagitica, which I haven't read since 1991, so it's time to revisit it: He that can apprehend and consider vice with all her baits and seeming

Quotable

The New Quotes Page!

Inspired by my friend Jen Zug, I decided it was time for a Quotes page. Submit your own favorite quotes in the comments there, and I'll consider posting it.