Thought for the Day Thought For The Day

[Paul Whybrow]

A story is not an explanation, it is a net through which the truth flows. The net catches some of the truth, but not all, never all, only enough so that we can live with the extraordinary without it killing us.

Patrick Ness

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Interestingly, Koi, when put in a fishbowl will only grow up to three inches. When the same fish is placed in a large tank, it will grow up to nine inches long. In a pond, Koi can reach lengths of eighteen inches. Amazingly, when placed in a lake, Koi can grow to three feet long. The metaphor is obvious. You are limited by how you see the world.

Vince Poscente

 

[Steve C]

This tells me you are limited by the size of your world (experiences in our case) not by how you see it.

 

[Hannah F]

I keep rereading my own book. Every time I change something. I wish I could stop.

Diddo

 

[Paul Whybrow]

The ring always believes that the finger lives for it.

Malcolm de Chazal

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Life is, in itself and forever, shipwreck.

Jose Ortega Y Gasset

 

[Steve C]

3 things come to mind.
'Life is, in itself and forever, shipwreck.'

A bit wordy. Suggest Life is a shipwreck.
Learn to swim!
It's why life jackets (insurance) sell so well.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

One is the master of what one doesn’t say and the slave of what one does.

General Franco

 

[Steve C]

I'm going to keep my mouth shut on this one.

 

[Rich.]

Yes. Thought of the day from a fascist dictator? Were you in a bad mood when you found this one @Paul Whybrow? A little insensitive, don't you think?

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Yes. Thought of the day from a fascist dictator? Were you in a bad mood when you found this one @Paul Whybrow? A little insensitive, don't you think?

Not at all. Even evil people say wise things sometimes.

 

[Rich.]

Yes, but the memory of the pain they caused often outweighs any wisdom they may have had. The words of odious human beings are intrinsically devalued in the minds of, shall we say, the more enlightened. It's how democracy works.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

True. I was shocked at how old enmities still existed in Andalusia seventy-two years after the Spanish Civil War began. There was a veteran of the conflict, a rabid supporter of Franco, who'd exiled himself on the mountainside. He came into town a couple of times a year for food supplies, but locals shunned him.

When I chose Franco's quote, I was thinking of the compromises writers are forced into when trying to sell ourselves, everything from composing blurb for the book jacket, to writing a synopsis to aid querying, on to giving interviews.

 

[Rich.]

Yes, and the words are apt for that, but you can't separate them from the man who said them. I would respectfully urge you to avoid quoting perpetrators of war crimes.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Interestingly, Koi, when put in a fishbowl will only grow up to three inches. When the same fish is placed in a large tank, it will grow up to nine inches long. In a pond, Koi can reach lengths of eighteen inches. Amazingly, when placed in a lake, Koi can grow to three feet long. The metaphor is obvious. You are limited by how you see the world.

Vince Poscente

You can grow according to the space around you, and within you, whether you find it or create it. The koi don't have that luxury of choice.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Not at all. Even evil people say wise things sometimes.

Yes they do, and things that offer an insight into their thinking. To share the quote is to access the trove in all its good and ill. Not the same as endorsement.

 

[Rich.]

Joseph Roux​

A fine quotation is a diamond in the hand of a man of wit and a pebble in the hand of a fool.​

​

Ahem.

 

[Steve C]

All famous people have their supporters and their opponents but regardless can say what they want. In this case so what if he was a fascist? The words have merit of their own in that they tell all of us to keep our opinions to ourselves. It's a shame he didn't listen to himself.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Joseph Roux​

A fine quotation is a diamond in the hand of a man of wit and a pebble in the hand of a fool.​

​

Ahem.

Franco. Hideous. Just hideous.

For the rest, let us hope we are not fools, but who are we to judge who are the fools, if they are not us.

 

[Rich.]

I am most definitely a fool. My motley is second to none.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

The Fool in his motley is actually a very serious chap

The most powerfully numinous card in the deck, say I.

I once met an old man in a tiny place in the south east of Majorca. I was on a hillside street one morning, waiting for my husband and little girls, who had gone in a tourist type shop to buy some little snorkels for swimming off rocks. I waited the other side of the street, leaning on my walking stick, nursing one leg, a bit of pain but I was enjoying the sunshine.

An old man, perhaps in his late seventies to mid eighties, came toiling up towards me and then stopped face to face, and stared right in my face without speaking.

'Buenos Dias, Senor', I said, and smiled to break the ice, and he gently took me by the arm, steering me to sit down on a low wall, then rubbed and patted my arm and carried on his way, but still without a word.

Something about me upset him, and I wondered what might be his memories. Perhaps of loved ones. Perhaps of the times under Franco, who knows.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

We write to heighten our...awareness of life...to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection.

Anaïs Nin

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.

Franz Kafka

 

[Steve C]

I still enjoy flipping the pages on my 1965 Pirelli Calendar so I must be quite young then.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

In this world, there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

Oscar Wilde

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Rock journalism is people who can’t write interviewing people who can’t talk for people who can’t read.

Frank Zappa

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark: you know what you are doing, but nobody else does.

Edgar Watson Howe

 

[Paul Whybrow]

They say that none of us exists, except in the imagination of his fellows, other than as an intangible, invisible mentality.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

 

[KateESal]

They say that none of us exists, except in the imagination of his fellows, other than as an intangible, invisible mentality.

So who the bloody hell is imagining this damn virus, eh?! I want a word with them. Tell them to imagine something else, please.

 

[Katie-Ellen]

Oh, we're real all right. We leave behind a body, to be reclaimed, subsumed, consumed or to nourish other real things.