Wander on.

I like to wander. Follow me.

Ninety-eight in New England was a summer of exquisite warmth and sunshine, in baseball a summer of mythical battle between a home-run god who was white and a home-run god who was brown, and in America the summer of an enormous piety binge, a purity binge, when terrorism—which had replaced communism as the prevailing threat to the country’s security—was succeeded by cocksucking, and a virile, youthful middle-age president and a brash, smitten twenty-one-year-old employee carrying on in the Oval Office like two teenage kids in a parking lot revived America’s oldest communal passion, historically perhaps its most treacherous and subversive pleasure: the ecstasy of sanctimony.

The Human Stain- Philip Roth

goandbemagnificent:

Bell’s Books, Downtown Palo Alto

goandbemagnificent:

Bell’s Books, Downtown Palo Alto

(via ohinsomnia)

Dream catchers passively wait for dreams to come to them. That would never work in real life.

15. Give up living your life to other people’s expectations

Way too many people are living a life that is not theirs to live. They live their lives according to what others think is best for them, they live their lives according to what their parents think is best for them, to what their friends, their enemies and their teachers, their government and the media think is best for them. They ignore their inner voice, that inner calling. They are so busy with pleasing everybody, with living up to other people’s expectations, that they lose control over their lives. They forget what makes them happy, what they want, what they need….and eventually they forget about themselves.  You have one life – this one right now – you must live it, own it, and especially don’t let other people’s opinions distract you from your path.

http://www.purposefairy.com/3308/15-things-you-should-give-up-in-order-to-be-happy/

If any tumblr followers have any interest in the state of health care in the U.S. you should definitely read Deadly Spin. It’s fascinating.  It’s written by an insurance company insider who left the industry once he realized that he played a key role in sculpting the beliefs of Americans. He was charged with painting his insurance company in a favorable light and influencing the minds of congress to pass laws beneficial to the industry, even though some of what he was saying and statistics he was presenting were clearly skewed.

Goddammit, you’re in a horse race, but you’re thinking like a sheep. Sheep don’t win horse races.

The Glass Castle

Dear Mr. Gallo:

Your letter was a little sassy but it was amusing, too, and on the whole I thought you mean well but were being awkward, and what’s the good being a writer if you must cry every time someone makes a face?

Saul Bellow

This is why I can’t get enough of Saul Bellow…

…he can summarize the most elusive emotions that seem to be impossible to put into words.

“I’m getting nowhere that I can see.  One week in Puerto Rico and my inquiring mind’s very well satisfied.  I’d be happy to return, but no, the grille is down now and I must try to wake up from this pressing, beautiful heat— everlasting summer—and the depressed sense of having come out of the movies at midday.”

Saw your old pal Blackmur at Yale last week, and he is even older. He drops lighted cigarettes in the furniture and slowly searches for them. This made good sport for the sober watchers.

Saul Bellow, Letter to John Berryman

All week I’ve felt like a man who is trying to fill a test tube under Niagara. It’s not a bad simile. The rain has bent everything double for three days and I feel very wet and peevish. But your letter this morning was a very fine stimulant.

Bellow (letter to Susan Glassman)