“Short words, short sentences, short paragraphs. There’s nothing that can’t be improved by making it shorter and better.”

Charles Osgood (1933-2024)

I have owned and used a paper bookmark, produced by the Salvation Army, for maybe 20 years or more. It quotes Hebrews 11:1 from the Bible:

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”

Mystical, beautiful and profound, whenever I stop to read my little bookmark I go off into other worlds for awhile, contemplating faith.

“Dream as if you’ll live forever. Live as if you’ll die today.”

James Dean

“Of course I’m respectable. I’m old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough.”

John Huston as Noah Cross in the movie Chinatown (1974)

A man who would not defend his father’s grave is worse than a wild beast.

Chief Joseph

“The most beautiful journeys are taken through a window.”

Last line from the movie King of Hearts (1966)

“Smooth seas do not make good sailors.”

Original source unknown, attributed to several people and proverbs

“Reality is that thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it.”

“The Z Man”

“I know of no country where, in general, there reigns less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion than in America,” Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Volume 2, Chapter 7, of Democracy in America. “In America, the majority draws a formidable circle around thought. Within these limits, the writer is free; but woe to him if he dares to go beyond them. It isn’t that he has to fear an auto-da-fé, but he is exposed to all types of distasteful things and to everyday persecutions.”

The following quote is from a magazine article about the actor William Hurt. Younger folks will remember him from some Marvel movies late in his career playing the role of General Ross. I would encourage them, and anyone else, to travel back to 1980 and watch the movie “Altered States.” Then make your way through the rest of his movies from the 80’s and 90’s and continue as far as you are still interested. He reminds me of Dennis Hopper and Philip Seymour Hoffman in that you might not like everything they were in, but you would watch it just the same because if they were good, they were usually outstanding. Hurt died in 2022.

Make no mistake, Hurt was dedicated to his craft. “I never explain my movies — it just ruins the emotion,” he told the Post. “I love saying that line. There is a point to explaining what I do, but at some point you just have to do it. The work is the best that I have to offer. That’s what I want to be eloquent at.”