“The stupidity and blindness of American power, which, in its own terms is perfectly ‘logical’—and yet its terms are fantastically arbitrary and respond only to the ‘reality’ of a thinking that goes on within an artificial and closed system. To defend your own reality and then impose it forcefully on the outside world is paranoia.”
Thomas Merton
more infosource: October 25, 1967 journal entry in The Other Side of the Mountain: The End of the Journey (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 5.
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category: delusion, government, paranoia, politics, reality, war
medium: Journal
“Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry…Both are very hard work. Writing something is almost as hard as making a table. With both you are working with reality, a material just as hard as wood. Both are full of tricks and techniques. Basically very little magic and a lot of hard work are involved.”
Gabriel García Márquez
more infosource: The Paris Review Interviews, vol. II (New York: Picador, 2007), 190.
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category: carpentry, craft, reality, woodworking, writing
medium: Interview
notes: Originally published in Issue 82 of The Paris Review, 1981.
via: Beverly Bader“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.”
Tom Waits
more infosource: lyrics from “Step Right Up,” Small Change (Asylum Records, 1976).
category: advertisement, print, reality
medium: lyrics
“I imagined everything. I never thought it would happen.”
Keith Richards
more infosource: Life (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2010), 32.
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category: imagination, reality
medium: memoir
notes: written with James Fox
“I do think that socializing on the Internet is to socializing what reality TV is to reality.”
Aaron Sorkin
more infosource: The Colbert Report, Comedy Central, September 30, 2010.
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category: Internet, reality, socializing, technology, television
medium: television interview
via: Elisa Zazzera“On architecture: even if we lived in Venice or a Louis Kahn house, we would still often be in a bad mood.”
Alain de Botton
more infosource: Twitter, 12:41 PM Jan 10, 2010 via mobile web
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category: architecture, Louis Kahn, mood, reality, unhappiness, Venice
medium: social media
“On what planet do you spend most of your time?…Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.”
Barney Frank
more infosource: town hall meeting, Dartmouth, NH, August 18, 2009
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category: comeback, communication, dining room table, planet, politics, reality, town hall meeting
medium: political event
notes: A constituent in the audience asked Barney Frank: “Why do you continue to support a Nazi policy?” Frank responds: “On what planet do you spend most of your time?” He calls her approach “vile, contemptible nonsense.” Frank closes with: “Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.”
“Who owns the words? Who owns the music and the rest of our culture? We do—all of us—though not all of us know it yet. Reality cannot be copyrighted.”
David Shields
more infosource: Reality Hunger: A Manifesto (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 209.
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category: copyright, culture, music, ownership, reality, words
medium: nonfiction
notes: This is a rephrasing of remarks written by the cyberpunk author William Gibson in “God's Little Toys: Confessions of a Cut and Paste Artist,” Wired, Issue 13.07, July 2005. Gibson's words: “‘Who owns the words?’ asked a disembodied but very persistent voice throughout much of Burroughs’ work. Who does own them now? Who owns the music and the rest of our culture? We do. All of us. Though not all of us know it - yet.”
reality