flâneur

Carmen Lau

10 followers · 6 following · 1006 views

on the atlas — 36

highlights — 54

  • The thing is, Hélène notes, we talk all day and night, endlessly—but always in an unconscious state. We have no notion of language, of using a language, nor of what gets retained in words. Clarice, on the contrary, had a kind of hyperconsciousness when it came to language. She felt it all the time, and she knew that the entire language is at play in every word.
    Clarice Lispector: Madame of the Void
  • when a reader falls in love with an author, the reader becomes the writer
    Clarice Lispector: Madame of the Void
  • You had good questions. I answered, and all I want to know is this: today is October 20, 1976. It’s raining. I’m wearing a suède dress. I’m with my friends Affonso Romano de Sant’Anna and Marina Colasanti. And I want to know, what will that matter after I die?
    A Lost Interview with Clarice Lispector | The New Yorker
  • I am not a professional writer, because I write only when I want to.
    A Lost Interview with Clarice Lispector | The New Yorker
  • I remember quite well the pleasure I had in writing “The Apple in the Dark.” Every morning, I would type it. It was five hundred pages long. I copied it out eleven times in order to find out what I was trying to say, because I was trying to say a thing and I’m still not quite sure what.
    A Lost Interview with Clarice Lispector | The New Yorker
  • Because I don’t write as a catharsis, to get something off my chest. I never got anything off my chest in a book. That’s what friends are for. I want the thing itself.
    A Lost Interview with Clarice Lispector | The New Yorker
  • It’s strange, because I was in the worst situation, in my love life, in my family life, everything was tough, and I wrote “The Passion,” which has nothing to do with any of that—it doesn’t reflect it at all!
    A Lost Interview with Clarice Lispector | The New Yorker
  • I elaborate things very unconsciously. Sometimes people think I’m not doing anything. I’m sitting in a chair, and I just sit there. Not even I realize that I’m doing something. Suddenly, a sentence comes.
    A Lost Interview with Clarice Lispector | The New Yorker
  • I had to discover my method all by myself. I didn’t have any writer friends, I didn’t have anything.
    A Lost Interview with Clarice Lispector | The New Yorker
  • Afterward, when I learned to read and write, I devoured books, and I thought that they were like trees, like animals, something that is born. I didn’t know there was an author behind it all.
    A Lost Interview with Clarice Lispector | The New Yorker
  • She once defined that something like this, “What’s behind the back of thought.” She used words to try to reach beyond words, to surpass them. She wrote to destroy words. That’s why she wasn’t interested in her image as a writer.
    Clarice Lispector: Madame of the Void
  • Viewed from the time in which I am now living, many facts appear to me more clearly, but I am not sure this simplicity, this purity of meaning, is any truer than the opacity, the complexity of the way they once appeared.
    The Yale Review | Annie Ernaux’s Previously Unpublished Diaries on…
  • When actual people act, there’s always an element of the inexplicable at play, the sourceless molten stuff we call human freedom.
    The repulsive crust - by Sam Kriss - Numb at the Lodge
  • When the Iron doesn’t want to come off the mat, it’s the kindest thing it can do for you. If it flew up and went through the ceiling, it wouldn’t teach you anything. That’s the way the Iron talks to you.
    Iron and The Soul by Henry Rollins - www.oldtimestrongman.com
  • The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you’re a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds.
    Iron and The Soul by Henry Rollins - www.oldtimestrongman.com
  • They say the most beautiful version of something is the one where it would cease to exist if you removed anything more from it.
    On driving
  • Another 5mph or two inches to the left and they’d have lost traction and crashed. Something about that precision, the sheer number of repetitions required to internalize it, stuck with me.
    On driving
  • “We need to ban the word ‘agency.’ I’m a dog.”
    Child’s Play, by Sam Kriss
  • As far as he was concerned, the fact that tech people were tripping over themselves to take part in his stunt just confirmed his generally low impression of them. “They have too much money and nothing going on. They have no swag, no smoke, no motion, no hoes. That’s all you need to know.”
    Child’s Play, by Sam Kriss
  • I asked Alexander whether he thought of himself as highly agentic. “No, I don’t,” he said instantly. He told me that in his personal life, he felt as though he’d never once actually made a decision. But, he said, “It seems to be going well.”
    Child’s Play, by Sam Kriss
  • “If we ever get AI that is strong enough to basically be God and solve all of our problems, it will need to use the same techniques that the actual God uses in terms of maintaining some distance. I do think it’s possible that the AI will be like, Now I am God. I’ve concluded that the actual God made exactly the right decision on how much evil to permit in the universe. Therefore I refuse to change anything.”
    Child’s Play, by Sam Kriss
  • Admire the world for never ending on you as you would admire an opponent, without taking your eyes off him, or walking away.
    Write Till You Drop
  • Push it. Examine all things intensely and relentlessly. Probe and search each object in a piece of art; do not leave it, do not course over it, as if it were understood, but instead follow it down until you see it in the mystery of its own specificity and strength.
    Write Till You Drop
  • Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.
    Write Till You Drop
  • If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gift for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give.
    On Self-Respect – Alex Burgin
  • Lispector will work on a small thing, a little nothing, but it’s a little nothing of infinite wealth and complexity. Most people aren’t interested in that. What they want is to receive a message at top speed, in big letters. But you can write only if you know how to reflect endlessly, mathematically, asking yourself, What’s the name of this thing I am seeing and that I have never before seen? It takes time.
    Paris Review - Hélène Cixous, The Art of Criticism No. 7
  • To be a good writer you have to be absolutely lucid at every moment of writing, and in good health. I’m very much against the romantic concept of writing which maintains that the act of writing is a sacrifice, and that the worse the economic conditions or the emotional state, the better the writing. I think you have to be in a very good emotional and physical state. Literary creation for me requires good health, and the Lost Generation understood this. They were people who loved life.
    Paris Review - The Art of Fiction No. 69
  • From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.
    Paris Review - Ernest Hemingway, The Art of Fiction No. 21
  • The silly truth is that I can take almost any amount of work but I have little tolerance for confusion.
    Paris Review - John Steinbeck, The Art of Fiction No. 45
  • The discipline of the written word punishes both stupidity and dishonesty. A writer lives in awe of words for they can be cruel or kind, and they can change their meanings right in front of you. They pick up flavors and odors like butter in a refrigerator. Of course, there are dishonest writers who go on for a little while, but not for long—not for long.
    Paris Review - John Steinbeck, The Art of Fiction No. 45
  • Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick, and generally congenial readers on earth. They accept, almost without question, anything you present them with, as long as it is presented honestly, fearlessly, and clearly.
    Paris Review - E. B. White, The Art of the Essay No. 1
  • A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.
    Paris Review - E. B. White, The Art of the Essay No. 1
  • It’s important to notice when the spark of magic or curiosity is there and what snuffs it out, and being around too many writers, for me, snuffs it out.
    Paris Review - Maggie Nelson, The Art of Nonfiction No. 13
  • As Barthes writes, “Text I is reactive, moved by indig‑ nations, fears, unspoken rejoinders, minor paranoias, defenses, scenes. Text II is active, moved by pleasure.” You have to work on Text I for it to lose its “reactive skin,” to get to Text II.
    Paris Review - Maggie Nelson, The Art of Nonfiction No. 13
  • That’s what the practice of essaying is, to me: a stumbling attempt to re-create, in language, a common space, one that is open to all. It’s in that optimistic spot that I set out my stall, yes, and my ideas and arguments such as they are, sure, but without demanding to see anyone’s identifying papers in the opening paragraph. Because that’s one thing I’ve learned, over the years. Sometimes, in order to create this more open space, you have to loosen your hold on your beloved isms.
    The Art of the Impersonal Essay, by Zadie Smith | The New Yorker
  • I find I still don’t want people to relate to what I’m saying in an essay, or even be moved by the way I say it. (With fiction, I feel the opposite.) I just want to think out loud about the things that matter most to me.
    The Art of the Impersonal Essay, by Zadie Smith | The New Yorker
  • I have learned so much from studying Beckett. I have learned that the simplicity based on clarity and precision is essential to permitting complexity of thought without obfuscation.
    Edward Albee on Samuel Beckett - James Grissom
  • When I had about a hundred and fifty pages done I showed them to twelve publishers, all of whom passed. The thirteenth, Ivan Obolensky, gave me an advance, and with that thousand dollars or whatever it was I took a two-month leave of absence and wrote the last half of the book.
    Joan Didion, The Art of Fiction
  • But the existence of a surprising number of meaningful details is not specific to stairs. Surprising detail is a near universal property of getting up close and personal with reality.
    Reality has a surprising amount of detail
  • Just off the highway to Rochester, Minnesota, Twilight bounds softly forth on the grass. And the eyes of those two Indian ponies Darken with kindness. They have come gladly out of the willows To welcome my friend and me.
    A Blessing | The Poetry Foundation
  • Bjork // "I realized I could have an easy life...just have a glass of Cognac and good books and two jobs and do my songs in the evening, but I would be such a consumer, taking it all in and not giving anything back. I thought: Ok...if I don’t go on a mission now and make some sacrifices, as these people did, I will never forgive myself
    NITCH
  • Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.
    Write Till You Drop
  • If you think something's supposed to hurt, you're less likely to notice if you're doing it wrong. That about sums up my experience of graduate school.
    How to Do What You Love
  • My theory about power is that you never feel powerful, you only feel comfortable.
    Designer, architect, teacher, and learner Dan Taeyoung on growing a cooperative like you’d grow a garden – The Creative Independent
  • She said she once found herself walking in the woods with no pen and later hid pencils in the trees so she would never be stuck like that again.
    Mary Oliver - Wikipedia
  • It's much easier to work on things that are exciting to you It might be easier to do big things than small things for this reason
    Nat Friedman
  • Everyone wants to look like they are a member of a higher class than they actually are. But everyone also wants to avoid getting mistaken for a member of a poorer class. So for example, the middle-class wants to look upper-class, but also wants to make sure no one accidentally mistakes them for lower-class. But there is a limit both to people’s ambition and to their fear. No one has any hopes of getting mistaken for a class two levels higher than their own: a lower-class person may hope to appear middle-class, but their mannerisms, accent, appearance, peer group, and whatever make it permanent…
    Right Is The New Left | Slate Star Codex
  • Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
    Psalm 23:4 KJV - Yea, though I walk through the valley - Bible Gateway
  • For more than 20 years I have pursued a passion for movie location hunting in San Francisco.
    About — Reel SF
  • The pattern becomes especially visible when dedicated practitioners fall in love. Many struggle profoundly, their lives turning upside down as they confront the intimate terrain they've been skillfully avoiding through practice. Having developed sophisticated techniques for maintaining emotional distance, they find themselves ill-equipped for the raw vulnerability that real relationship demands.
    Home | Substack