Travis Smith: my resume, bio and photos back to the main blog page

“This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone and that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any nan or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers or families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in ist words but in the silent lines of ist lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body. . .”

posted at 12:37 am
on Dec. 30, 2009

who said it?

“Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.”

posted at 2:16 pm
on Dec. 28, 2009

who said it?

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

posted at 10:14 am
on Dec. 28, 2009

who said it?

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

posted at 12:25 am
on Dec. 28, 2009

who said it?

“The face of Big Brother, however different from the way we originally envisioned it, is the face of Big Brother nonetheless.”

posted at 10:02 am
on Dec. 23, 2009

who said it?

“When I started out writing for the New Yorker I was living in a farmhouse in central Minnesota, because it was so cheap. It really removed a lot of the pressure of having to sell-sell-sell. I loved it there. I was desperately lonely, but that’s not a bad thing.

I was sitting in a room upstairs at a desk that was a sheet of three-quarter-inch plywood across two used file cabinets, looking at an Underwood typewriter, and typing on yellow paper. It was a contemplative life that had great, deep pleasure. I wouldn’t know how to recover it today.

This, for me, is how the world has changed, that a man sits at a desk in utter silence, and the phone line is simply the phone line. Somebody calls, and you don’t have to answer it. You sit in silence, and hours pass and you tap-tap-tap-tap at a typewriter. I will never, ever recover that life. It’s gone forever. And the college students I know will never know that life.”

posted at 9:01 pm
on Dec. 22, 2009

who said it?

“Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.”

posted at 10:52 am
on Dec. 21, 2009

who said it?

“The people we love, the gift they give us is that they’re with us forever. That’s good and bad, you know, but it’s just the way things are.”

posted at 11:41 am
on Dec. 20, 2009

who said it?

“Kismet: the idea that everything that happens to you in your life is already decided and that you cannot do anything to change or control it”

posted at 12:20 pm
on Dec. 19, 2009

who said it?

“There’s nothing you can’t be a little more relaxed about.”

posted at 10:18 am
on Dec. 18, 2009

who said it?

“Men have to pretend, to themselves as well as to women, that they are not the servants and supplicants. Women, cunning minxes that they are, have to affect not to be the potentates. This is the unspoken compromise.”

posted at 9:24 am
on Dec. 16, 2009

who said it?

“If you’re lucky, you get tons of advice in your life. And if you’re normal, only a small percentage of it is good. The key is to be able to tune out what’s not right and to act on what is right, and take responsibility for fixing the roadblocks to doing better next time.”

posted at 8:34 am
on Dec. 15, 2009

who said it?

“Having two people who give you support and company could be a good thing. But it rarely works out that way.”

posted at 7:34 pm
on Dec. 14, 2009

who said it?

“When that ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future begins to steal over you, start telling yourself that what you have is a hangover. . . . You have not suffered a minor brain lesion, you are not all that bad at your job, your family and friends are not leagued in a conspiracy of barely maintained silence about what a shit you are, you have not come at last to see life as it really is.”

posted at 5:02 pm
on Dec. 14, 2009

who said it?

“If love was easy, there would be almost no music.”

posted at 9:10 am
on Dec. 11, 2009

who said it?

“I wanted to be a Boy Scout, but I had all the wrong traits. They were looking for kids who were trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

Whereas I tended to be devious, fickle, obstructive, hostile, impolite, mean, defiant, glum, extravagant, dirty, and sacrilegious.”

posted at 8:16 am
on Dec. 10, 2009

who said it?

“Therein lies the best career advice I could possibly dispense: just DO things. Chase after the things that interest you and make you happy. Stop acting like you have a set path, because you don’t. No one does. You shouldn’t be trying to check off the boxes of life; they aren’t real and they were created by other people, not you. There is no explicit path I’m following, and I’m not walking in anyone else’s footsteps. I’m making it up as I go.”

posted at 5:39 pm
on Dec. 9, 2009

who said it?

Jack is looking at Anne, but Anne is looking at George. Jack is married but George is not. Is a married person looking at an unmarried person?

Yes /  No /    Cannot be determined

posted at 2:21 pm
on Dec. 9, 2009

who said it?

“What is pornography to one man is the laughter of genius to another”

posted at 10:22 pm
on Dec. 6, 2009

who said it?

“We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.”

posted at 9:52 am
on Dec. 3, 2009

who said it?

“You can’t trust girls. When I get a girlfriend I am not going to tell her where I live or work.”

posted at 10:49 am
on Dec. 1, 2009

who said it?

“I want to have an easy job, a job where nobody hits us or hurts us.”

posted at 9:26 am
on Dec. 1, 2009

who said it?

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