rabidlycurious

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Mon, 20 May 2013 17:23:13 -0400

One of the dangers of the American artist is that he finds himself almost exclusively thrown in with...

Mon, 20 May 2013 17:16:10 -0400

One of the dangers of the American artist is that he finds himself almost exclusively thrown in with persons more or less in the arts. He lives among them, eats among them, quarrels with them, marries them. I have long felt that portraits of the nonartist in American literature reflect a pattern, because the artist doesn’t really frequent. He portrays the man in the street as he remembers him from childhood, or as he copies him out of other books. So one of the benefits of military service, one of them, is being thrown into daily contact with nonartists, something a young American writer should consciously seek—his acquaintance should include also those who have read only Treasure Island and have forgotten that. Since 1800 many central figures in narratives have been, like their authors, artists or quasi artists. Can you name three heroes in earlier literature who partook of the artistic temperament?

Thornton Wilder

“I don’t think you should ever say anything that you’re going to have to apologize for later....

Mon, 15 Apr 2013 15:16:20 -0400

“I don’t think you should ever say anything that you’re going to have to apologize for later. If the heat gets hot, just let them get mad. How did somebody make you apologize? Did they literally hit you on your body? Let them be upset. It’s not the worst thing in the world. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be a pauper. It’s a desperate thing to need everybody to be really happy with everything you say. To me the way to manage is not to have 50 versions of yourself — I do this thing, and the next time you’re going to hear me is the next time I do another one. As soon as you crack your knuckles and open up a comments page, you just canceled your subscription to being a good person.”

Louis CK

Our only form of exercise.

Sun, 07 Apr 2013 19:49:30 -0400

Our only form of exercise.

“I think the most important thing is just to do what you want to do. A lot of times you get...

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 00:58:34 -0400

“I think the most important thing is just to do what you want to do. A lot of times you get derailed from making movies when you are trying to support yourself or you’re not doing the things you want to do with your day.

When I was in New York and I couldn’t support myself doing exactly what I wanted to do, I moved. I went somewhere where I could squat till I could figure out how to make what I wanted to make. So that always came first. So I just think prioritizing. If you have to do something you don’t want to do all day long, you won’t have the emotional energy to create stuff.”

Benh Zeitlin

"All her life, she subscribed to the belief that “everything is copy,” a phrase her mother, Phoebe,..."

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 22:13:29 -0400

“All her life, she subscribed to the belief that “everything is copy,” a phrase her mother, Phoebe, used to say. In fact, when Phoebe was on her deathbed, she told my mother, “Take notes.” She did. What both of them believed was that writing has the power to turn the bad things that happen to you into art (although “art” was a word she hated). “When you slip on a banana peel, people laugh at you; but when you tell people you slipped on a banana peel, it’s your laugh,” she wrote in her anthology “I Feel Bad About My Neck.” “So you become the hero rather than the victim of the joke.””

- Jacob Bernstein, Nora Ephron’s Final Act

"I prayed to the whole wide universe and hoped God would be in it, listening to me. I prayed and..."

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 19:22:34 -0500

“I prayed to the whole wide universe and hoped God would be in it, listening to me. I prayed and prayed, and then I faltered. Not because I couldn’t find God, but because suddenly I absolutely did: God was there, I realized, and God had no intention of making things happen or not, of saving my mother’s life. God was not a granter of wishes. God was a ruthless bitch.”

- Cheryl Strayed

"The trick to being truly creative, I’ve always maintained, is to be completely unselfconscious. To..."

Sun, 03 Mar 2013 16:52:09 -0500

“The trick to being truly creative, I’ve always maintained, is to be completely unselfconscious. To resist the urge to self-censor. To not-give-a-shit what anybody thinks. That’s why children are so good at it. And why people with Volkswagens, and mortgages, Personal Equity Plans and matching Lois Vutton luggage are not.”

- Linds Redding

"It was exhausting, but it was the kind of exhaustion that feeds you and makes you strong."

Wed, 27 Feb 2013 13:08:07 -0500

“It was exhausting, but it was the kind of exhaustion that feeds you and makes you strong.”

- Joss Whedon

Countdown to spring break.

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 00:00:58 -0500

Countdown to spring break.

-Ignore everything you’ve been taught.-Educate yourself-Consider the imagination as the most...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 12:21:00 -0500

-Ignore everything you’ve been taught.
-Educate yourself
-Consider the imagination as the most important source of information
-be non-conformist (pay no attention to trends). Buckminster Fuller said, “I am convinced that creativity is a priori to the integrity of the universe and that life is regenerative and conformity meaningless.”

Keri Smith

It’s a different experience, working on TV. I never even considered it before I did it. There...

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:14:44 -0500

It’s a different experience, working on TV. I never even considered it before I did it. There are times when you just need to get the thing out so you don’t even have time to necessarily be precious about your work in the same way as you might if you were making a film, which runs so counter to the way I grew up watching people make work. When you’re making features, if you’re not done, then you don’t send it to the festival. It’s much less urgent. But TV is almost like being in college, where you’ve just got to hand in your assignment whether you’ve worked on your thesis or not, because Christmas break is coming.

Lena Dunham

“The moral of these people was clear to me: if you spend your life endlessly cruising around...

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 21:58:34 -0500

“The moral of these people was clear to me: if you spend your life endlessly cruising around the world, never stopping to plant children on dry land, then when you die some Greek woman you don’t even know will become the steward of your legacy. And when she wants more room in her house, she sells your legacy in the Penny Saver. And no one wants it.”

Miranda July

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Wed, 02 Jan 2013 02:11:27 -0500

EVERYBODY HAS A REASON TO LIVE Everybody has a perspective. Everybody in your scene, including the...

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 22:17:55 -0500

EVERYBODY HAS A REASON TO LIVE

Everybody has a perspective. Everybody in your scene, including the thug flanking your bad guy, has a reason. They have their own voice, their own identity, their own history. If anyone speaks in such a way that they’re just setting up the next person’s lines, then you don’t get dialogue : you get soundbites. Not everybody has to be funny ; not everybody has to be cute ; not everybody has to be delightful, and not everybody has to speak, but if you don’t know who everybody is and why they’re there, why they’re feeling what they’re feeling and why they’re doing what they’re doing, then you’re in trouble.

Joss Whedon’s top 10 writing tips

allenwwhite: Ping Pong ball art of the lovely Karen Bolipata, a...

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 20:39:03 -0500

allenwwhite:

Ping Pong ball art of the lovely Karen Bolipata, a fellow Brandcenter student. Ping Pong is pretty big here, it’s a good non-violent way to get out the feels.

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Sat, 08 Dec 2012 19:06:32 -0500

“The question — what kind of writing do you do, what kind of films do you make, what’s...

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 01:08:52 -0500

“The question — what kind of writing do you do, what kind of films do you make, what’s your favorite book or movie — are all incredibly loaded and agonizing questions for creative people. I know they cause me a lot of anxiety because they’re supposed to define things — you — but they never do, and they never give the real picture of what someone thinks or does. Only the writing can do that.

There are times when I dodge these kinds of questions entirely. Like if I’m among people I know I can’t discuss my work with meaningfully. I don’t want to answer questions that I don’t feel are illuminating. “Feminist,” “critic,” “writer,” “film” — saying any one of those things triggers associations for people, clichés, and as a writer, you are trying to describe what you do as well as duck questions about what you do, unless the environment is conducive to answering. And I think the artist’s bio plays into all these things because one, a bio is mythology for other people. Secondly, a bio is self-mythology. And thirdly, a bio is this living organism that changes and evolves and reflects what you do and have done, and how you define and redefine the past and present of your creative trajectory. How you compress it.”

— Masha Tupitsyn

“Don’t be too precious or attached to anything you write. Let things be malleable. For sketch...

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 13:16:00 -0400

“Don’t be too precious or attached to anything you write. Let things be malleable. For sketch writers, remember they’re called sketches for a reason. They’re not called oil paintings. Some of them are going to stink. You have to let them stink.”

A lot of Tina Fey quotes you should read

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Thu, 25 Oct 2012 19:53:00 -0400