Commonplace Book 05.15.20

Yahia Lababidi, Revolutions of the Heart:
“Belief, in the midst of chaos, remembers the indestructible world.”

“Bodies are like poems that way, only a fraction of their power resides in the skin of things, the remainder belongs to the spirit that swims through them.”

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Samantha Power:
“The binaries of the modern moment don’t suit a lot of lived experience.”

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John Cheever, Journals:
“As I approach my fortieth birthday without having accomplished any one of the things I intended to accomplish—without ever having achieved the deep creativity that I have worked toward for all this time—I feel that I take a minor, an obscure, a dim position that is not my destiny but that is my fault, as if I had lacked, somewhere along the line, the wit and courage to contain myself competently within the shapes at hand.”

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Arnold Bennett:
“Ninety percent of the friction of daily life is caused by tone of voice.”

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Arthur Quiller-Couch, On the Art of Reading:
“For all great Literature, I would lastly observe, is gentle towards that spirit which learns of it. It teaches by apprehension, not by comprehension . . .”