Of nineteen and of twenty-nine

“Attractive women of nineteen and of twenty-nine are alike in their breezy confidence; on the contrary, the exigent womb of the twenties does not pull the outside world centripetally around itself. The former are ages of insolence, comparable the one to a young cadet, the other to a fighter strutting after combat.

But whereas a girl of nineteen draws her confidence from a surfeit of attention, a woman of twenty-nine is nourished on subtler stuff. Desirous, she chooses her apéritifs wisely, or, content, she enjoys the caviare of potential power. Happily she does not seem, in either case, to anticipate the subsequent years when her insight will often be blurred by panic, by the fear of stopping or the fear of going on. But on the landings of nineteen or twenty-nine she is pretty sure that there are no bears in the hall.”

Tender is the Night, Chapter 56

this silence

Dracula's Guest

“He had dawdled over his cigar because he was at heart a dilettante, and thinking over a pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its realisation. This was especially the case when the pleasure was a delicate one, as his pleasures mostly were; and on this occasion the moment he looked forward to was so rare and exquisite in quality that—well, if he had timed his arrival in accord with the prima donna's stage-manager he could not have entered the Academy at a more significant moment than just as she was singing: "He loves me—he loves me not—HE LOVES ME!—" and sprinkling the falling daisy petals with notes as clear as dew.”

The Age of Innocence, Chapter 1

"Creating Controversy for its own Sake"

“But the web will still be full of arrogant, uninformed, polarizing, self-promoting, controversy-creating content that has ramifications no one wants to own up to. And consequently, the web will still be lacking in common courtesy, humility, and the admittance that most of us don’t know best. Which is sad, mostly because it’s true.”

Joshua Blankenship, from article: Creating Controversy for its own Sake (and How Humility is a Rare Bird Indeed on the Web These Days)

Solemn lullaby

“Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot? I know no speck so troublesome as self.”

“It was a lovely afternoon; the leaves from the lofty limes were falling silently across the sombre evergreens, while the lights and shadows slept side by side: there was no sound but the cawing of the rooks, which to the accustomed ear is a lullaby, or that last solemn lullaby, a dirge.”

Middlemarch, Book Four, Chapter 42

What is design? A manifesto

“Design should neither seek to impress through pretension nor condescend to a perceived baseline; rather it should use its powers of persuasion to reach new audiences. We advocate for design that translates specialized and complex knowledge into a form that is comprehensible to anyone who might be interested. Rather than vagueness, obfuscation, and visual rhetoric, this requires clarity and precision.”

“There are too many shoddy, unconsidered things in the world already. Given the widespread distribution of today's digital production tools, it's remarkably simple to make nearly anything, especially things claiming to critique design through the rejection of formal rigor. Making things well, making them beautifully, making them with craft, making them with an excess of effort, demonstrates a respect for one's own labor and an expression of love for the world that dissolves perceived categories of work and pleasure.”



Excerpts from WHAT IS DESIGN? A Manifesto for the Gwangju Design Biennale 2011

Hidden Talents

“The talented hawk hides its claws.”

Or: A wise man keeps some of his talents in reserve
Japanese proverb

You will pay

“I will solve your problem for you, and you will pay me. And you don't have to use the solution - if you want options, go talk to other people. But I'll solve your problem for you the best way I know how, and you use it or not, that's up to you - you're the client - but you pay me.”

Paul Rand

Looks matter

“Business owners need to realize that their design is a reflection of their business even if it is not intentional. If you don’t care about your design then your design is telling people that you don’t care about your business.”

Marco Suarez*

* At the time of this post, I couldn't access Marco's website. So I linked to his Etsy store instead. 

Beyond happiness

“When you talk to a parent and you ask, you know, did having a kid makes you happy? Sometimes they'll say 'no'. Then you say, would you do it again? and they always say, 'yes'. And you say, why? People usually start to talk about other things that matter to them besides their own affective state. So it may be that they become a parent because they somehow find meaning in being a parent.
If that's the case then, we need to expand our understanding: What's good beyond just happiness. And once you start thinking through this path, you can actually start to think of a whole bunch of other factors that are important to people as well: living a fulfilled spiritual life is important to some, for instance; being good to others is important to some. And so these broader objectives suggest that what society really wants - what we as individuals actually try and maximize, and what society perhaps should be trying to optimise is going to be broader than just happiness.”

Economist Justin Wolfers on NPR Planet Money: Money Buys Happiness

What is an amateur?

“A person who knows but a little will put on an air of knowledge. This is a matter of inexperience. When someone knows something well, it will not be seen in his manner.”

Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Even back in Feudal Japan they had to put up with know-it-all tiros.

The Age of Innocence, redux

“The Countess Olenska was the only young woman at the dinner; yet, as Archer scanned the smooth plump elderly faces between their diamond necklaces and towering ostrich feathers, they struck him as curiously immature compared with hers. It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes.”

The Age of Innocence, Chapter VIII

I suspect I'm beginning to form an unhealthy infatuation with this story.

Experiencing classics

“I don't think you go back to those things just to re-experience what you felt when you first encountered them. You go back because you know you haven't gotten to the bottom of the Sound and the Fury. You know that in Lincoln's second inaugural address there are rhythms, there are cadences that supersede the turns of phrase and will communicate to you like music. And the melodies will be different, the rhythms will be different each time you go back. To me that's what a classic is.
... I think all classics, at least in the way I'm trying to talk about them, are in some essential way unfinished. They're open. They do not say, 'this is the way the world is; this is how it works. And that's all there is to it.' They are alive to their own fragility, and their own unlikeness. ”

Greil Marcus

unwritten rules, unquestionable conventions

“...an unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences. This seemed as natural to Newland Archer as all the other conventions on which his life was moulded: such as the duty of using two silver-backed brushes with his monogram in blue enamel to part his hair, and of never appearing in society without a flower (preferably a gardenia) in his buttonhole.”

Chapter 1, The Age of Innocence
Image taken from the 1920 first edition. The whole scanned book can be found here.

The enterprise of marrige

"Don't you ever mind," she asked suddenly, "not being rich enough to buy all the books you want?" 

He followed her glance about the room, with its worn furniture and shabby walls.
"Don't I just? Do you take me for a saint on a pillar?"
 

"And having to work—do you mind that?"
 

"Oh, the work itself is not so bad—I'm rather fond of the law."
 

"No; but the being tied down: the routine—don't you ever want to get away, to see new places and people?"
 

"Horribly—especially when I see all my friends rushing to the steamer."
 

She drew a sympathetic breath. "But do you mind enough—to marry to get out of it?"
 

Selden broke into a laugh. "God forbid!" he declared.
 

She rose with a sigh, tossing her cigarette into the grate. 

"Ah, there's the difference—a girl must, a man may if he chooses." She surveyed him critically. "Your coat's a little shabby—but who cares? It doesn't keep people from asking you to dine. If I were shabby no one would have me: a woman is asked out as much for her clothes as for herself. The clothes are the background, the frame, if you like: they don't make success, but they are a part of it. Who wants a dingy woman? We are expected to be pretty and well-dressed till we drop—and if we can't keep it up alone, we have to go into partnership."

Excerpt from chapter 1, House of of Mirth.

Outsider

“Old friend, what are you looking for?
After those many years abroad you come
With images you tended
Under foreign skies
Far away from your own land”

George Seferis

useful design

“There are some people who come into graphic design and find it a bit ephemeral and vacuous. People who like to do useful things are attracted to information design. There is something quite useful about designing traffic signs so people don't get lost or medicine bottles that people can understand. It's a way of making a difference. It's public service.”

David Sless

From the Formspring files

After seeing your illustration for Bullets & Butterflies, I'm surprised you didn't participate in Harper Bazaar's Fashion Illustration Competition! 

It's not really for me. I'm not too keen about participating in competitions. But mainly, I already have my plate full, so I wouldn't have had the time to prepare something to submit anyway.

p.s. I'll be cross-posting some of the questions I get on Formspring here from time to time. If you have any, you can use the form on the right or head to this page to submit your Qs.

Dit le renard

“Mais tu ne dois pas l’oublier. Tu deviens responsable pour toujours de ce que tu as apprivoisé.”

  
Le Petit Prince