For the young who want to

Talent is what they say
you have after the novel
is published and favorably
reviewed. Beforehand what
you have is a tedious
delusion, a hobby like knitting.

Work is what you have done
after the play is produced
and the audience claps.
Before that friends keep asking
when you are planning to go
out and get a job.

Genius is what they know you
had after the third volume
of remarkable poems. Earlier
they accuse you of withdrawing,
ask why you don't have a baby,
call you a bum.

The reason people want M.F.A.'s,
take workshops with fancy names
when all you can really
learn is a few techniques,
typing instructions and some-
body else's mannerisms

is that every artist lacks
a license to hang on the wall
like your optician, your vet
proving you may be a clumsy sadist
whose fillings fall into the stew
but you're certified a dentist.

The real writer is one
who really writes. Talent
is an invention like phlogiston
after the fact of fire.
Work is its own cure. You have to
like it better than being loved.
Marge Piercy

More one one of my favorite writers, Anna Kavan.

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself" -- Thomas Paine

Diana Cooper

Alfonso Ossorio

Sherry Camhy uses an interesting technique where black graphite is drawn on black paper to create light tones.

Daniel Libeskind

Ben Grasso

"Nothing will benefit human health or increase the chances for survival of life on earth as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." --Albert Einstein

Zen and the Art of Functional Programming

"In a 43-page opinion, Circuit Judge Karen Lecraft Henderson found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a statute that applies by its terms to all “persons” did not apply to detainees at Guantánamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law."

I passed a house where I once lived:
A man and a woman are still together in the whispers.
Many years have passed with the silent buzz
of staircase bulbs -- on, off, on.

The keyholes are like small delicate wounds
through which all the blood has oozed out
and inside people are pale as death.

I want to stand once more as in my
first love, leaning on the doorpost
embracing you all night through, standing.
When we left at early dusk the house
started to crumble and collapse
and since then the town
and since then the whole world.

I want once more to have this longing
until dark red burn marks show in the skin.

I want once more to be written
in the book of life, to be written
anew every day
until the writing hand hurts.

Yehuda Amichai

"I hope for nothing. I fear nothing. I am free." -- Nikos Kazantzakis

"The child who received a great deal of attention, whose every need was promptly met, as among the New Guinea Mountain Arapesh, became a gentle, cooperative, unaggressive adult. On the other hand, the child who received perfunctory, intermittent attention, as among the New Guinea Mundugomor, became a selfish, uncooperative, aggressive adult...

Another relevant aspect of most of these cultures is that there are very few models of adult aggression, including the physical punishment of children. There is virtually no hitting, fighting, killing, warring or verbal "put downs." Even psychotic behavior is virtually nonexistent. Cooperation is rewarded; aggressive conduct is discouraged...

Among the !Kung Bushmen... when the child's aggression is toward a younger child, the aggressor is scolded harshly; if toward a peer, the children are distracted or separated if necessary; if toward an adult, the behavior is usually ignored."

Child Raising In Non-violent Cultures

The Pain -- When Will It End?