May
29
-
"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
Anaïs Nin
(I have been keeping this quote open in a tab for far too long)
May
29
-
"I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do."
Leonardo Da Vinci
(Visited the very comprehensive “Da Vinci - the Genius” exhibition at Science World on the weekend; runs until September 3)
Jul
29
-
"Welcome back."
This is what she told me towards the end of our telephone conversation. It reminded of the times I have flown and landed back at YYZ and a voice over the PA would say, “If Toronto is home, then welcome home.” I received a job offer last night (which I took, happily), so now begins quite truthfully, quite cheesily, the rest of my life.
Jul
26
-
"Once last year seeing her wrapped I said, Sallie, know what a madman’s skin is? And I showed her, filling the automatic indoor bath with warm water and lifting her and dropping her slow into the bath with the sheet around her and then heaving her out and saying that’s what it is, that white thing round you. Try now to dig yourself out of it. Placed her in the bed and watched her try to escape it then."
Michael Ondaatje, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, p. 30
Jul
24
-
"Somewhere in the folds of the conversation, Alice would detect evidence that if she didn’t push herself to leave her apartment, then Eric was unlikely to leave his. His desire to spend the evening together was fractionally, but decisively, weaker than hers. He would have tolerated an evening alone, she couldn’t as easily - and hence, the effort was hers to make. Perhaps if she hadn’t backed down, if she had said, ‘Why the hell don’t you come to me for once?’ then Eric would have driven to her door that instant. But she was in no position to try such brinkmanship: she cared too much to risk encountering a refusal."
Alain de Botton, The Romantic Movement, p. 305-6
Jun
25
-
"I’m playing peek-a-boo with a kitty through a window."
The boy, groggy with sleep and fatigue, this morning
Jun
13
-
"You have to get up every morning with determination if you are going to go to bed with satisfaction."
George Lorimer
Apr
17
-
"The presence of tourists interests me as a view of the viewer and the view. It also interests me as a foreign element in the landscape like litter. It’s the shifting of positions. It’s a theme that pervades the work anyway. Here the view is entrance. But if you think of a typical view (as for example Niagara Falls) it’s like being slapped in the face, it’s like witnessing a murder. But I’m talking about view in the sense of something that is present and that one can interact with. The tourist’s relationship to the view is extremely trivial and tenuous usually. They’re looking for the scene of the crime."
Roni Horn, June 1995 -
interview with the Journal of Contemporary Art, Claudia Spinelli
Mar
13
-
"I let objects collapse, and through their destruction they are transformed. So, in a sense, through their destruction they are reborn. It’s a creative act beginning with failure. In this failure things become something else-and that something else is often much more beautiful and interesting than the original."
Mark Handforth
Mar
13
-
"I’m very interested in the idea of the double, not as a way of questioning reality – what’s real or what’s fake – but of taking away certainty. It’s an attitude that there could be two things at the same time. You don’t have to make a decision; you could live with both options."
Carsten Höller
Feb
02
-
"The self is the story that happened to that body over time."
(might be slightly paraphrased from what was heard in a podcast)
Nov
02
-
"Because woman’s work is never done and is underpaid or unpaid or boring or repetitious and we’re the first to get fired and what we look like is more important than what we do and if we get raped it’s our fault and if we get beaten we must have provoked it and if we raise our voices we’re nagging bitches and if we enjoy sex we’re nymphos and if we don’t we’re frigid and if we love women it’s because we can’t get a “real” man and if we ask our doctor too many questions we’re neurotic and/ pushy and if we expect childcare we’re selfish and if we stand up for our rights we’re aggressive and “unfeminine” and if we don’t we’re typical weak females and if we want to get married we’re out to trap a man and if we don’t we’re unnatural and because we still can’t get an adequate safe contraceptive but men can walk on the moon and if we can’t cope or don’t want a pregnancy we’re made to feel guilty about abortion and…for lots and lots of other reasons we are part of the women’s liberation movement."
Women’s Rights Manifesto - National Organization for Women
..
I started work at the Richmond Women’s Resource Centre this week. Such an interesting place. I found this quote in one of their recent newsletters. Copy, and paste.
Nov
02
-
"I am woman! I am invincible! I am pooped!"
Unknown
Apr
17
-
"Fervently we have wanted to belong somewhere at the same time that we have often wanted to run away. We reached out for something, and when by chance grasped it, we often found that it wasn’t what we wanted at all. There is one part of us that is always lost and searching. It is an echo of a cry that was a longing for warmth and safety. And through our adolescent fantasies, and however our adult reasoning may disguise it, the search continues."
Mai-mai Sze, Echo of a Cry, A Story Which Began in China, 1945, p. 202
Apr
17
-
"Now we’re on my home ground, foreign territory."
Margaret Atwood, Surfacing, (176-7?)
