“The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.”

— from The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan

“There’s nothing as significant as a human face. Nor as eloquent. We can never really know another person, except by our first glance at him. Because, in that glance, we know everything. Even though we’re not always wise enough to unravel the knowledge.”

— from The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

*

“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. It is real.. It is possible.. It’s yours.”

— from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

101 THINGS TO LEARN IN ART SCHOOL
by Kit White

Lessons, demonstrations, definitions, and tips on what to expect in art school, what it means to make art, and how to think like an artist.

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”№ 1 : Art can be anything.

It is not defined by medium or the means of its production, but by a collective sense that it belongs to a category of experience we have come to know as ‘art.’”

(This title is available for sale on our online store !)

“And when things get tough, this is what you should do: Make good art. I’m serious. Husband runs off with a politician? Make good art. Leg crushed and then eaten by mutated boa constrictor? Make good art. IRS on your trail? Make good art. Cat exploded? Make good art. Someone on the Internet thinks what you’re doing is stupid or evil or it’s all been done before? Make good art. Probably things will work out somehow, eventually time will take the sting away, and that doesn’t even matter. Do what only you can do best: Make good art. Make it on the bad days, make it on the good days, too.”

— from Neil Gaiman’s ‘Make Good Art’ speech

FLOATING ON A MALAYAN BREEZE
by Sudir Thomas Vadaketh

What happens after a country splits apart ? Forty-seven years ago Singapore separated from Malaysia. Since then, the two countries have developed along their own paths. Malaysia has given preference to the majority Malay Muslims—the bumiputera, or sons of the soil. Singapore, meanwhile, has tried to build a meritocracy—ostensibly colour-blind, yet more encouraging perhaps to some Singaporeans than to others. How have these policies affected ordinary people ? How do these two divergent nations now see each other and the world around them ?

Seeking answers to these questions, two Singaporeans set off to cycle around Peninsular Malaysia, armed with a tent, two pairs of clothes and a daily budget of three US dollars each. They spent 30 days on the road, cycling through every Malaysian state, and chatting with hundreds of Malaysians. Not satisfied, they then move on to interview many more people in Malaysia and Singapore. What they found are two countries that have developed economically but are still struggling to find their souls.

“Writing isn’t about making money, getting famous, getting dates, getting laid, or making friends. In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay ? Getting happy.”

— from On Writing by Stephen King

“In a relationship, one mind revises another; one heart changes its partner. This astounding legacy of our combined status as mammals and neural beings is limbic revision: the power to remodel the emotional parts of the people we love, as our Attractors activate certain limbic pathways, and the brain’s inexorable memory mechanism reinforces them.

Who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom we love.”

— from A General Theory of Love by Thomas Lewis

“What is striking about all these diverse views, from Christ to Freud, is that they all make love central to the ideal of life, but in their individual ways remind us how difficult it is to realize this ideal. In each case, love is seen in relation to a particular set of problems — the problems which each thinker sees as the most pressing or most interesting in life. But in each case the notion of love on offer is enriched because it is seen as illuminating the condition of life: it is in part thinking about love which makes us see difficulties as difficulties, because they are obstacles to the realization of love.”

— from Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy by John Armstrong

DOOR

I keep out. I keep in. I keep safe.

She never really did understand that. She doesn’t like me shut.
As a child she used to walk from one room to another,
sometimes even one house to the next, no matter that there
was no way in. She’d wait, patiently ringing the bell till
someone came. Unabashed and unruffled by the angry or
sometimes pitiful looks she’d get, she’d ask if anyone wanted
to play with her.

She’s still that way. Never learnt that people close me for a
reason, that there are walls nor meant to be walked through,
not without being invited in. She knows her house is empty
but still she keeps me open, waiting, hoping to laugh and play
in ways as yet not known. Closed, she confesses to me, is
alone. Closed behind, she adds in a terrified whisper, is worse.
It’s homeless.

I speak to her sometimes, in my wordless, creaky way. I tell
her to shut me tight, to hold on to those who sometimes come
in to look around, wondering if what is emptiness to her could
be their space. She refuses. I remain open, watching as those
who come in go out.


— from Objects of Affection by Krishna Udayasankar

(purchase your copy online now !)