It’s one of the characteristics of a leader that he not doubt for one moment the capacity of the people he’s leading to realize whatever he’s dreaming.
DFW, 1993
… managing to be a really alive human being, and also do good work and be as obsessed as you have to be, is really tricky.
David Foster Wallace, 1993
don’t ask Howard Thurman
Don’t ask what the world needs, ask what makes you come alive, because what the world needs is more people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman (1899-1981)
from Madness, Rack, & Honey
Paul Valéry said: the opening line of a poem is like finding a fruit in the ground, a piece of fallen fruit you have never seen before, and the poet’s task is to create the tree from which such a fruit would fall.
from Mary Ruefle’s Madness, Rack, and Honey
attention is prayer
“Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”
Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace
Only Do What Only I Can Do
As my great teacher Artie Isaac says…
Because life is short, I will do only those things that only I can do.
It’s a short list.
Peter Seeger surrounds hate
Pete Seeger by Annie Leibovitz