Dogs think humans are nuts, quote by John Steinbeck

“I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.”

JOHN STEINBECK

PAINTING: “Green Dog No. 10″ by Zhou Chunya

Editor’s Note: Several years ago, I saw the above painting from Zhou Chunya’s Green Dog series at a Chicago art exhibition, and was awestruck by the huge canvas (18 feet wide by 23 feet high — no, that’s not a typo!). Most of the canvas was blank and the image of the dog appeared in the lower right. As I recall, this painting’s price was over $200,000. Thinking this was a typo, I asked the woman in charge of the booth the cost of the painting, and she confirmed the price. Since that time, I’ve learned more about Zhou’s Green Dog paintings and his touching relationship with his dog Hei Gen (Black Root), who died in 1999. Find out more about this fascinating artist and series of paintings here.

John Gardner and Persistence

“…the true novelist is the one who doesn’t quit. Novel-writing is not so much a profession as a yoga, or ‘way,’ an alternative to ordinary life-in-the-world. Its benefits are quasi-religious — a changed quality of mind and heart, satisfactions no non-novelist can understand — and its rigors generally bring no profit except to the spirit. For those who are authentically called to the profession, spiritual profits are enough.” JOHN GARDNER, On Becoming a Novelist

Find On Becoming a Novelist by John Gardner at Amazon.com.

Writing is something…that happens, quote by Charles Bukowski

Writing is something that you don’t know how to do. You sit down and it’s something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It’s beyond me, because you yourself don’t even know if you’re going to be able to…Sometimes I’ll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don’t go up there to write. The typewriter’s up there. If it doesn’t start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.” CHARLES BUKOWSKI

Illustration: Portrait of Charles Bukowski by Bradley Wind (ALL RIGHTS RESERVED). Visit the artist at bradleywind.com.

I write to find out what I’m thinking, quote by Joan Didion

“I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.”  JOAN DIDION

The importance of style, quote by Gustave Flaubert

There are neither good nor bad subjects. From the point of view of pure Art, you could almost establish it as an axiom that the subject is irrelevant, style itself being an absolute manner of seeing things.” GUSTAVE FLAUBERT

Photo: John Payne

The sublime is limitless, quote by Immanuel Kant, photo by Ansel Adams

“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt” IMMANUEL KANT, A Critique of Pure Reason

Photo: “Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park, Montana, 1942″ by Ansel Adams

Writing is flying, quote by Neil Gaiman, photo by Stefano Unterthiner

“Writing is flying in dreams. When you remember. When you can. When it works. It’s that easy.” NEIL GAIMAN

Photo: “Whooper Swans, Japan” by Stefano Unterthiner (National Geographic). The photo appears in the White Gallery on the National Geographic website devoted to Life in Color, a 504-page book of 245 photos, divided into 11 color-based chapters. Find the book at Amazon.com.

Contemplating nature, quote by Jane Austen, photo by Fred An

“When I look out on such a night as this, I feel as if there could be neither wickedness nor sorrow in the world; and there certainly would be less of both if the sublimity of Nature were more attended to, and people were carried more out of themselves by contemplating such a scene.” JANE AUSTEN

Photo: “Great Japanese maple tree in the Portland Japanese Gardens” by Fred An, winning shot in 2012 National Geographic Traveler Photo Contest

Venice Blues, National Geographic photograph by Jodi Cobb, quote by Truman Capote

A costumed tourist poses before a view of San Marco Basin in Venice, Italy. Photograph by Jodi Cobb, National Geographic

This and other “blue” images appear in LIFE IN COLOR, a 504-page book of 245 photographs, essays, and inspirational quotes.The book is available at Amazon.com. To see more images, visit the National Geographic Life in Color Blue Gallery.

“Venice is like eating an entire box of chocolate liqueurs in one go.”  TRUMAN CAPOTE

How can you teach anybody how to write?…quote by Charles Bukowski

“Writing is something that you don’t know how to do. You sit down and it’s something that happens, or it may not happen. So, how can you teach anybody how to write? It’s beyond me, because you yourself don’t even know if you’re going to be able to…Sometimes I’ll sit at that typewriter for fifteen minutes, you know. I don’t go up there to write. The typewriter’s up there. If it doesn’t start moving, I say, well this could be the night that I hit the dust.” CHARLES BUKOWSKI

Illustration: Portrait of Charles Bukowski by Bradley Wind, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED