it is to see, or to not

That's the thing with magic. You've got to know it's still here, all around us, or it just stays invisible for you.

-- Charles de Lint

born again

Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.

-- R.D. Laing

low and slow

It was an instinct to put the world in order that powered her mending split infinitives and snipping off dangling participles, smoothing away the knots and bumps until the prose before her took on a sheen, like perfect caramel.

-- David Leavitt

wonked out

Round the world and home again
That's the sailor's way
Faster faster, faster faster
There's no earthly way of knowing
Which direction we are going
There's no knowing where we're rowing
Or which way the river's flowing
Is it raining, is it snowing
Is a hurricane a-blowing
Not a speck of light is showing
So the danger must be growing
Are the fires of Hell a-glowing
Is the grisly reaper mowing
Yes, the danger must be growing
For the rowers keep on rowing
And they're certainly not showing
Any signs that they are slowing

-- Roald Dahl

tippytoes

There's a magical tie to the land of our home, which the heart cannot break, though the footsteps may roam.

-- Eliza Cook

inconsequentiality

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. Which road do I take? she asked. Where do you want to go? was his response. I don't know, Alice answered. Then, said the cat, it doesn't matter.

-- Lewis Carroll

upon the embracing

You cannot help but learn more as you take the world into your hands. Take it up reverently, for it is an old piece of clay, with millions of thumbprints on it.

-- John Updike

the loss of innocence

There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.

-- Howard Zinn

down in back

Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?

-- Pablo Picasso

walk this way

I'll walk where my own nature would be leading: It vexes me to choose another guide.

-- Emily Bronte

look differently

Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding. Find out what you already know and you will see the way to fly.

-- Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

left alone

You shouldn't be told you're completely irresponsible and be left alone with too much medication. It's too easy to forget. You take a couple of sleeping pills and you wake up in twenty minutes and forget you've taken them. So you take a couple more, and the next thing you know you've taken too many.

--  Judy Garland

i will wait for you

I feel that there is reason lurking in you somewhere, so we will patiently grope round for it.

-- Arthur Conan Doyle, Sr.

in the end

The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.

-- William Wordsworth

apple turnovers

If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.

-- George Bernard Shaw

impermanence

Don't take life too seriously. It's only a temporary condition.

-- Bill Knapp

you go on ahead

I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're going and hook up with them later.

-- Mitch Hedberg

incoming

They sicken of the calm, who know the storm.

-- Dorothy Parker

from some distance away

Somewhere we know that without silence words lose their meaning, that without listening speaking no longer heals, that without distance closeness cannot cure.

--Henri Nouwen

her hands

All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man; no society will survive a shortage of women.

-- Germain Greer

alt shift

I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.

-- Douglas Adams

catnip seriousity

They talk of the dignity of work. The dignity is in leisure.

-- Herman Melville

no crossing

A lot of Christians wear crosses around their necks. You think when Jesus comes back he ever wants to see a fucking cross? It's like going up to Jackie Onassis wearing a rifle pendant.

-- Bill Hicks

transitive rockwellianism

On rare occasions one does hear of a miraculous case of a married couple falling in love after marriage, but on close examination it will be found that it is a mere adjustment to the inevitable.

-- Emma Goldman

really, now

Physicists have determined that even the most solid and heavy mass of matter we see is mostly empty space. But at the submicroscopic level, specks of matter scattered through a vast emptiness have such incredible density and weight, and are linked to one another by such powerful forces, that together they produce all the properties of concrete, cast iron and solid rock. In much the same way, specks of knowledge are scattered through a vast emptiness of ignorance, and everything depends upon how solid the individual specks of knowledge are, and on how powerfully linked and coordinated they are with one another.

-- Thomas Sowell

poetry for a rainy day

Life is a B Movie: it's stupid and it's strange, it's a directionless story, the dialogue is lame, but in the 'he said she said' sometimes there's some poetry, if you turn your back long enough and let it happen naturally.

-- Ani Difranco

no stranger than most

Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.

-- Shirley MacLaine

I'll give you an answer in the morning

No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.

-- P.J. O'Rourke

build around it

I think complexity is mostly sort of crummy stuff that is there because it's too expensive to change the interface.

-- Jaron Lanier

seasonally challenged

My sorrow, when she's here with me, thinks these dark days of autumn rain are beautiful as days can be; she loves the bare, the withered tree; she walks the sodden pasture lane.

-- Robert Frost

Two dangers constantly threaten the world: order and disorder.

--  Paul Valery

farmer in dells

When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don't give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself.

-- Edward Steichen

Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.

--  Gen. Douglas MacArthur

illinois church door, from the parking lot

Illinois church door, a photo by McBeth on Flickr.

Some of the most wonderful people are the ones who don't fit into boxes.

-- Tori Amos

marking space

Above all, it's hard learning to live with vivid mental images of scenes I cared for and failed to photograph. It is the edgy existence within me of these unmade images that is the only assurance that the best photographs are yet to be made.

-Sam Ebell

gotta hand it to you

handy-1, a photo by McBeth on Flickr.

I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

-- Maya Angelou

Junk Drawers by Beth McConnell | Make Your Own Book

slides down smooth

red glass, a photo by McBeth on Flickr.

Cultivate your curves--they may be dangerous but they won't be avoided.

-- Mae West

twelve strings

thom jones, a photo by McBeth on Flickr.

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self.

-- Benjamin Franklin

in her element

simmering drag, a photo by McBeth on Flickr.

By the time we are women, fear is as familiar to us as air. It is our element. We live in it, we inhale it, we exhale it, and most of the time we do not even notice it. Instead of "I am afraid," we say, "I don't want to," or "I don't know how," or "I can't".

-- Andrea Dworkin

oh, puss

lemony snickerts, a photo by McBeth on Flickr.

Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course.

-- William Shakespeare

the ordinary person

pearly whites, a photo by McBeth on Flickr.

Maybe it’s like this, Max--you know how, when you are working on a long and ordered piece, all sorts of bright and lovely ideas and images intrude. They have no place in what you are writing, and so if you are young, you write them in a notebook for future use. And you never use them because they are sparkling and alive like colored pebbles on a wave-washed shore. It’s impossible not to fill your pockets with them. But when you get home, they are dry and colorless. I’d like to pin down a few while they are still wet.

-- John Steinbeck

vertigo

four pillows, a photo by McBeth on Flickr.

There are four ways you can handle fear. You can go over it, under it, or around it. But if you are ever to put fear behind you, you must walk straight through it. Once you put fear behind you, leave it there.

-- Donna Favors

various and sundry

legumes (mostly), a photo by McBeth on Flickr.

Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.

-- Ansel Adams

let's do this thing

heidi and mike, a photo by McBeth on Flickr.

The bravest thing that men do is love women.

-- Mort Sahl

by and by

kiwi, a photo by McBeth on Flickr.

They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.

-- Ernest Hemingway

dude quacks me up

team project/graphic design student, a photo by McBeth on Flickr.

Once I saw a duck walking down the street so I went into Subway and ordered two pieces of bread, and they informed me that they could not do that, like there was some special rule at Subway that two pieces of bread weren't allowed to touch. So the woman asked me what I wanted on the sandwich and I said I do not care it is for a duck, and she was like oh then it's free. I was not aware that ducks eat for free at Subway. It's like give me a chicken fajita sub, but don't worry about ringing it up, it is for a duck.

-- Mitch Hedberg

slow burn

end of the season, a photo by McBeth on Flickr.

Now Autumn's fire burns slowly along the woods

And day by day the dead leaves fall and melt.

-- William Allingham

bodies at rest

tree, a photo by McBeth on Flickr.

A living thing is distinguished from a dead thing by the multiplicity of the changes at any moment taking place in it.

-- Herbert Spencer

i am your opus

kelly, a photo by McBeth on Flickr.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

-- Sylvia Plath