Short fictions and tall tales. Food for thought and articulations of the heart. I hunger and won’t rest until that pain in my chest has burnt through on into light. Everything will be alright, we’ll make it another night. This isn’t a promise, just a dawning fruition. If you like what I write, spread the word; return the favor, fight for that right. No, better than that, write your comeback.

All my labor here is free to read. Comments are reserved for those who put bread in my subscription jar.

Words to try on, wear out, grow with and live by

How do I know what I think until I see what I say? - E.M. Forster

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people. - Thomas Mann

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. - Simone Weil

Tell me what you pay attention to and I will tell you who you are. - José Ortega y Gasset

I listened for an echo and heard nothing but praise. - Friedrich Nietzsche

Language or “the word” tyrannizes hardest over us, because it brings up against us a whole army of fixed ideas. - Max Stirner

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free. - Baruch Spinoza

I hate everything that merely instructs me without augmenting or directly invigorating my activity. - Goethe

Everywhere I go I’m asked if I think the university stifles writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them. There’s many a bestseller that could have been prevented by a good teacher. - Flannery O’Connor

I have always liked people who can’t adapt themselves to life pragmatically. - Andrei Tarkovsky

Find what you love and let it kill you. - Charles Bukowski

Hobbies cost money, interests are free. - George Carlin

When a person tells you that you’ve hurt them, you don’t get to decide that you didn’t. - Louis C.K.

I’m a bird. - Mischief

Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. - H.L. Mencken

Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce

I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. - James Baldwin

Speak in extremes, it'll save you time. - David Bowie

But nothing is crueler than a coward, and the slaughter to come is probably beyond our imagining. - Cormac McCarthy

Fire is the only constant. - Heraclitus (Fragments, recast)

But it’s not your horse that’s dead. - Darl

Whatcha readin’ for? - Bill Hicks

What you see is what you get

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Little somethings and big nothings - without the small talk.