“ … ”

When you say something, you own it. You get to say what it means. If someone else interprets it differently, you jump in and correct them. To do improv, you need to completely change the way you approach conversation. You have to give away power and control, to the conversation itself. The conversation creates, not the individual speakers. The conversation takes on a life of its own. Meaning emerges from the collective, sequential, unfolding utterances of each speaker.

keith sawyer

Alright, so we’re all gonna die but now is the time to sing & see, to be humble, sacrificed, late, crazy, talkative, foolish, proud, indispensable, early, sane, silent, serious.

jack kerouac, book of sketches

I have always had a thing about old photographs. The older pictures have an uncanny ability of suggesting that there is another world where the departed are. A black and white photograph is a document of an absence, and is almost curiously metaphysical. I have always hoarded them. They represent a sense of otherness. The figures in photographs have been muted, and they stare out at you as if they are asking for a chance to say something.

w g sebald

A mind fed on words such as heaven, earth, dew, essence, cinnabar, moonlight, stillness, jade, pearl, cedar, and winter plum is likely to have a serenity not to be found in minds ringing with the vocabulary of the present age — computer, tractor, jumbo jet, speedball, pop, dollar, liquidation, napalm, overkill! Who would thrill at the prospect of rocketing to the moon in a billion-dollar spacecraft if he knew how to summon a shimmering gold and scarlet dragon at any time of the day or night and soar among the stars?

john blofeld

Even your lip, they say, the way it curves or doesn’t, or can’t decide, will deliver bales of evidence.

william stafford

What were you just thinking?

Imagine yourself a caterpillar. There’s this awful shrug, and then suddenly you’re beautiful for as long as you live.

stephen dunn