“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.”

“And yet our struggles are intrinsically meaningful, and perhaps more important than our goals. Speaking for myself, anyway, I generally find that the satisfaction I get from an accomplishment—whether it’s a good piece of writing or winning a basketball game—is relatively brief and somewhat anticlimactic. The process, the striving, the struggle—that is the main thing, for that is what fills up our days and gives them a forward drive, something to live, to fight, and even to die for.”

– Christopher DeGroot –

“If there’s someone you love but haven’t said so in a while, say it now. Always, always, say it now.”

Mike Royko

“To create is to live twice.”

Albert Camus

“It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.”

Gabriel García Márquez

“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”

William Faulkner

“Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.”

John D. Rockefeller

“It is a poor sort of man who is content to be spoon-fed knowledge that has been filtered through the canon of religious or political belief, and it is a poor sort of man who will permit others to dictate what he may or may not learn.”

Louis L’Amour

From “The Walking Drum”

“The life which is unexamined is not worth living.”

Socrates