“The technology, architecture, and working practices of a railway system fascinated me from the outset—I can describe even today the peculiarities of the separate London Underground lines and their station layouts, the heritage of different private companies in their early years. But I was never a “trainspotter.” Even when I graduated to solitary travel on the extensive network of British Railways’ Southern Region I never joined the enthusiastic bands of anorak-clad preteenage boys at the end of platforms, assiduously noting down the numbers of the passing trains. This seemed to me the most asinine of static pursuits—the point of a train was to get on it.”

– Tony Judt, The Memory Chalet

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“Here is a truth to which all writers can attest: Readers are more interested in process than in product…

…No matter how well read the audience may be, when it comes to the Q&A, it is always the same. After a few polite interrogatory skirmishes for form’s sake come the only questions that matter to the reader.

”Do you write in longhand or on a computer?”

If longhand: ”Pencil, ballpoint or old-fashioned ink pen?”

If computer: ”PC or Mac? Which font do you prefer?”

– Steven Fry, WRITERS ON WRITING; Forget Ideas, Mr. Author. What Kind of Pen Do You Use?

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Some people fetishise the means rather than enjoying the ends.

A book is designed to be read, not collected.

Things that are used have purpose.

Our energy should be focused on the doing rather than the looking.

Look is an empty word. It suggest no purpose. To look is emotionless and uncommitted. Read, however, has rich associations. It is observing and listening.

The most fascinating process should be our own. Because it’s based on practice rather than theory.

I love to find out how writers write. But the more I write, the less in thrall I am of other’s processes. No one can do my writing for me, so I try to focus on doing that, rather than following the suggestions of a complete stranger.

After all, things are meant to be experienced not notarised.

“My taste for quotation, which I have always kept—why reproach me for it? People, in life, quote what pleases them. Therefore, in our work, we have the right to quote what pleases us.”

– David Shields, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto

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“’Cause everybody wants some hope (oh, baby)
Something they can barely know (oh, baby)
And though my heart will break, there’s more than I could take
I can never let it go

It’s in the photograph
It’s in the photograph
It’s in the photograph of love.”

– Weezer, Photograph

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Reading second hand quotes is like looking at other people’s holiday photos.

It’s nice to read a nugget of wisdom. But it’s second hand knowledge. We weren’t there.

Reading a book is travelling for ourselves. We experience all the linking events that get us to the snapshots: the atmosphere, the full sensations.

The quotes we select from our reading are the quotes of our own memories.

A quote shared to us might invite us to travel to the destination mentioned. I will pick up the book if I want to see the view myself firsthand.

I don’t want anyone else to describe it for me. Just tell me what it was like. If it’s good enough to share, let me know and I might buy a ticket and travel there myself.

However, a single quote can provide us with hope – a destination that we might reach in the future. An instant recognition of something that could change our life.

In one quote, a snapshot, that creates an image with a thousand words, all telling us to explore for ourselves!

“As I lift my groceries into my car
I turn back for a moment and catch a smile
That blows this whole fuckin’ place apart.”

– Bruce Springsteen, Queen of the Supermarket

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“And therein lay my problem. Because, as I worked through what I could possibly say, I experienced an epiphany. I didn’t give a shit. Not a single iota. There was not an atom of my being that thought this discussion had any significance whatsoever.”

– Damian Hughes, How to Change Your Life (with Jake Humphrey)

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I have a philosophy that life needs to have moments that break open the fabric of the constraints of the day to day reality of our lives.

It’s being open to the things that set your pulse racing, the things that we see that are missed by others, that help us rise above the mundane.

In the day to day we can find ourselves stuck. Stuck in line supermarket, bored. Or stuck in a meeting, waiting around in places we would rather not be.

I’m interested in those sparks that ignite the sensation of aliveness. That cause excitement and inspiration.

These moments don’t need to be shared with others. It might just be a line from a song. Or the view of early morning light through the windscreen. Perhaps a triggered memory.

It’s a connection with a pulse of energy that travels deep within.

It’s not about thrill seeking. These moments cannot be instigated. It’s a willingness to occasionally be thrilled by surprise.

“When we are collecting books, we are collecting happiness.”

– Vincent Starrett, quoted in, On Conan Doyle by Michael Dirda

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“In books I find the dead as if they were alive; in books I foresee things to come; in books warlike affairs are set forth; from books come forth the laws of peace. All things are corrupted and decay in time; Saturn ceases not to devour the children that he generates; all the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, unless God had provided mortals with the remedy of books.”

– Richard de Bury, quoted in The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction by Alan Jacobs

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I love books.

Is it entirely natural? I love my family, but that is biological and to be expected.

Books are supposed to be good for you, but are they really?

I love the search for new books. It’s almost as good as the reading.

Because I am an addict.

Do I love books, or do I depend on them? If I do, is that such a problem?

Am I going to come to great harm in my modest but unquenching hunt for the next book?

It is simple arithmetic that says that there are more books than I could ever read.

How wonderful, I can never exhaust the supply!

Book collecting is the mildest of vices, but it is still a vice nonetheless.

“If humor ever became extinct, human beings would be left without souls. Philosophically, we must start with the idea of laughter. I cannot imagine anything more horrible than a society where laughter and poetry are prohibited, where the morbid self-absorption of the rich and the powerful and the hypocrisies of our clergymen and politicians go unchecked. Protecting from ridicule those who proclaim eternal truths is where most intellectual energy is expended in our world.”

– Charles Simic, The Life of Images

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“This is because the self who laughs is greater than the self who suffers—is momentarily outside the suffering self, liberated from it, laughing at it.”

– Oliver Sacks, quoted in Lawrence Weschler, And How Are You, Dr. Sacks?: A Biographical Memoir of Oliver Sacks

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Laughter is something better experienced than described.

It’s a sensation, spontaneous rather than deliberate.

I cannot will myself to laugh from a standing start.

But I can be more receptive to it.

Every situation, interaction, proclamation, sensation can be funny.

It’s a state of mind.

I can laugh at anything, if it’s funny.

And nothing can be funnier than the seriousness and self absorption of others.

The wilful absence of humour provokes the need for it to rush in and spread some warmth.

I will be on the lookout for a good laugh.

I’ll start with myself.

“In a conversation there is always more than one voice, and one of the voices must be our own or it is no conversation at all.”

– David Whyte, Crossing the Unknkwn Sea

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“The Wart did not know what Merlyn was talking about, but he liked him to talk. He did not like the grown-ups who talked down to him like a baby, but the ones who just went on talking in their usual way, leaving him to leap along in their wake, jumping at meanings, guessing, clutching at known words, and chuckling at complicated jokes as they suddenly dawned. He had the glee of the porpoise then, pouring and leaping through strange seas.”

– T. H. White, The Sword in the Stone

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My blog posts are light splashes in shallow puddles.

Do they amount to any depth when put all together?

Do they drain into a body of water?

How large?

How deep?

I know that they are mostly the words of others, but nonetheless I’ve curated them.

I am part of the conversation.

I barged my way in, I’ve sidled up to the two writers talking and have weighed in with my opinion, even though both could justifiably say, ‘who the fuck are you?!’

Does my view matter?

It does to me.

I’ve introduced two writers who I knew would get along.

I’m a literary matchmaker.

This is a reflection of how I choose to spend my free time and my limited budget: on books, to continue these conversations.

And there is no end to them.

No Limit.

Literally an infinite number of conversations, quotes of others that I can match up.

Now let’s say I have 40 years left to live. That’s 365 posts a year, times 40.

14,600 blog posts. That’s how many days I have left to live, if I’m lucky.

Well, that doesn’t seem many.

But it does give me plenty of time to do the work. Or rather, time to play.

“I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.”

– John Cage, quoted in Hell Yeah or No: What’s Worth Doing by Derek Sivers.

__________

“I think ideas are as real as trees.”

– Jim Harrison, Conversations with Jim Harrison

__________

Having new ideas is like planting trees.

We enrich the air that we all breathe.

An idea, like a tree, is a benefit to the community.

Cutting down a tree, like disparaging the idea of another, is an act of vandalism.

I walk in a forest planted by others.

Do I want to spend time in a monoculture?

A managed forest of pine has a dead understory – nothing else can survive in the sterile sameness.

The best forests are diverse and wild.

I want to encounter multiple species on my walk.

Perhaps I can drop a few seeds of my own. Maybe there will be the shoot of a new tree.

I want the forest to enlarge, the old falling and rotting to feed the new.

The ecosystem of ideas.

“When she mentions Richard Ford, I ask if she’s heard of his dead-rabbit-swerve philosophy—of how, if one is to review books, there’s no sense in reviewing a book one doesn’t like. It’s akin to driving down the road and swerving the car in order to run over a rabbit.”

– Rick Bass, Travelling Feast

__________

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer”

– Simone Weil, quoted in EMBRACE FEARLESSLY THE BURNING WORLD: Essays, by Barry Lopez.

__________

For all the books that I’ve read, and continue to read, I’ve never written a review.

However I always leave a five star rating when I finish a book on my kindle.

And it will always be five stars.

If I’ve invested in, and chosen to spend four or five hours reading a book, it has to be five stars.

I value my time too much to read something that I don’t value.

So if I’m giving a book three stars, all I’m really doing is giving myself three stars for my attention.

I want to give everything five star attention.

A five star book, for me, is one that is the most precious, illuminating, actionable, and profound thing that I could read at that time.

My book selection is instinctive. An energy is transmitted that cannot be quantified.

And if the book doesn’t give me that feeling, I’ll stop reading, leaving it unread forever.

It’s a readers market. I can always find another great, inexpensive, book to replace the mediocre.

I only want to have positive things to say about books.

“I don’t hire experts to tell me what to do. I hire experts to tell me how to do what I want to do.”

– William Randolph Hearst, quoted in The Power of Ignorance by Dave Trott

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“I’m very secure in my ability to focus on what I want. If I have an agenda or a goal, no one is going to deter me from what I want to do. When I’m trying to make a statement or prove something, I might joke around with you, but don’t confuse that with changing my motivation.”

– Michael Jordan, Driven From Within

__________

I wish I were more decisive.

It must feel powerful to have self confidence enough to set and pursue a goal unwaveringly.

To declare that everything and everyone else is to be utilised in service of that ambition.

I imagine those focused people would see my indecisiveness as laziness.

But laziness can often be a symptom of fear.

Or more precisely, laziness might be advice whispered in my ear by fear: ‘don’t try, you’ll only fail. Don’t bother, it’ll be too hard.’

I’m sure I could read a hundred books by and about Michael Jordan and not get any more focused on what I want to do.

Is it as simple as saying: ‘this is what I want to do, and this is how I will get there.’?

Perhaps I am a little like MJ. I refuse to allow a day to pass without writing a blog post.

My goal is simple, and mine. It’s not in service of anyone else.

But I am grateful for not having to code my own website to do it.

WordPress allows me to do what I want to do.

I just don’t need anyone to tell me how to do it.

Can I extend this focus to other areas of my life?

Let’s see…

“Hard choices, easy life

Easy choices, hard life.”

– Jerzy Gregorek, as quoted in Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss

__________

“There is no school of thought that can save us from the simple fact that hard decisions are best made by good people, and that the best people can only be shaped by hard experience.”

– Eric Greitens, The Heart and the Fist

__________

It’s easy to do nothing.

But all those nothings add up to one big something.

A loosening of our internal stitches is caused by a lack of care and maintenance.

Keeping an eye on the simple things in our control every day adds up to a tighter sense of self.

Avoidance is easy today.

I’ll take care of it tomorrow means I don’t care and I never will.

I need to do that right now means this is important and will always be important.

Creating daily habits and goals builds up a rhythm of success, but it is hard to start.

These words are all advice to myself.

I need it.

It’s painful to admit to being a mañana kind of guy.

Time to add some difficulty today.

I’m in search of an easy life, the hard way.