Quote

“Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.”   -Kurt Vonnegut

The "just one person" is me, usually... but with the children's book? The one person is Little Z. That seems, so far, to be working out just fine. I just ask her what she likes. Usually, she tells me what she likes. Sometimes, she just says, "We don't care about that." Meaning children. She does not care about where the words are placed on the page, so long as she can read the story. She does not like scary looking spiders, but she likes cute spiders, even if they have someone that looks like her tied up in a web. She does like giraffes in sunglasses. She likes crows in hats. 

It's easiest to write to one person. Vonnegut was right. 

Prettiness

"You don't owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don't owe it to your mother, you don't owe it to your children, you don't owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked "female".

I'm not saying that you shouldn't be pretty if you want to. (You don't owe un-prettiness to feminism, in other words.) Pretty is pleasant, and fun, and satisfying, and makes people smile, often even at you. But in the hierarchy of importance, pretty stands several rungs down from happy, is way below healthy, and if done as a penance, or an obligation, can be so far away from independent that you may have to squint really hard to see it in the haze.

But what does you-don't-have-to-be-pretty mean in practical, everyday terms? It means that you don't have to apologize for wearing things that are held to be "unflattering" or "unfashionable" -- especially if, in fact, they make you happy on some level deeper than just being pretty does. So what if your favorite color isn't a "good" color on you? So what if you are "too fat" (by some arbitrary measure) for a sleeveless top? If you are clean, are covered enough to avoid a citation for public indecency, and have bandaged any open wounds, you can wear any color or style you please, if it makes you happy..."

-- Erin McKean

Insomnia

Little Z is finally getting potty trained at night. She's been a bed wetter for a long time, but the past couple of weeks, she's actually getting the hang of staying dry.

We told her we were proud of her.

"What's your secret?" I asked her. "What's different? How have you been staying dry all night?"

"I stay awake all night," she said. "I just never sleep, and then I never wet the bed."

Quote of the Day

Today's quote was first found at The Futility Closet. It is pretty typical of the fare there:

"It is a hard and lengthy task to become acquainted with the vagaries of the language, not to mention the forgotten or altered meanings of many words. Some of these vagaries are aptly illustrated by the story of the Frenchman who said to an American:

"I am going to leave my hotel. I paid my bill yesterday, and I said to the landlord, ‘Do I owe anything else?’ He said, ‘You are square.’ ‘What am I?’ He said again, ‘You are square.’ ‘That’s strange,’ said I. ‘I lived so long that I never knew I was square before.’ Then, as I was going away, he shook me by the hand, saying, ‘I hope you’ll be round soon.’ I said, ‘I thought you said I was square; now you hope I’ll be round.’ He laughed and said, ‘When I tell you you’ll be round, I mean you won’t be long.’ Then, seeing me count my change twice over, he said, ‘Are you short?’ I did not know how many forms he wished me to assume: however, I was glad he did not call me flat."

-– William S. Bridge, “The English Language,” in The Typographical Journal, March 15, 1902



{The picture is of Aunt Lou's front door.}

Quote of the Day

"Great ideas, it is said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we can hear, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say that this hope lies in a nation; others, in a person. I believe, rather, that it is awakening and nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history." -Albert Camus



One of the best novels of all time is The Plague by Albert Camus.

Quote of the Day

"Fear has a smell, as love does." -Margaret Atwood

Quote of the Day

"As you press on for justice, be sure to move with dignity and discipline, using only the weapons of love." -Martin Luther King Jr.

Quote of the Day

"I never practice; I always play." -Wanda Landowska



(Me, too, Wanda.)

Quote of the Day

"Millions and millions of years would still not give me half enough time to describe that tiny instant of eternity when you put your arms around me and I put my arms around you." -Jacques Prévert

Quotes

"School is about two parts ABCs to fifty parts Where Do I Stand in the Great Pecking Order of Humankind." -Barbara Kingsolver

Quote of the Day

"Nothing you do for children is ever wasted. They seem not to notice us, hovering, averting our eyes, and they seldom offer thanks, but what we do for them is never wasted." -Garrison Keillor

Quote of the Day

"Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure." -Meister Eckhart

Quote of the Day

"Do not be a magician. Be magic." -Leonard Cohen

Quote of the Day

"They will say you are on the wrong road, if it is your own." -Antonio Porchia

Quote of the Day

"Creative minds always have been known to survive any kind of bad training." -Anna Freud

Quote of the Day

"It is not down in any map; true places never are." -Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Quote of the Day

"Art is spirituality in drag." -Jennifer Yane

Quote of the Day

"There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." -W. Somerset Maugham

Quote of the Day

"Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts." -William Strunk Jr.

[I think he could have left it at the first sentence.]

Quote of the Day

"Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety." -James Baldwin

[Men so rarely smile with all of their teeth showing. I really like this picture.]