09.11.04 - 4:21 p.m.

The last of the things from my apartment are in the trunk of my car and on my front porch. This weekend, I'm sorting through them, parsing them out, and shoving them into various kitchen cabinets with the thought that I'll REALLY REALLY organize the stuff later. I need to pick up some woolite to wash my stuffed animals and I need to drop one of my nice suits off at the dry cleaners.

Among the things I'm sorting through and throwing away are old notebooks. In one of them, among entirely useless stuff left over from an old job, I found a list of quotes I wanted to keep. Having no use for the rest of the notebook, I'm keeping the quotes here and throwing the notebook away.

You can always tell when a genius appears for he is surrounded by a confederacy of dunces.
      -- Jonathan Swift

And, obviously, that's the source for the title of Confederacy of Dunces by Johnathan Kennedy Toole, one of the best books ever written.

My candle burns at both ends
It will not last the night.
But oh my foes and ah my friends
It casts a lovely light.
     -- Edna St. Vincent Millay

I only regret my economies.

Art is passion given form and structure.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of men of old. Seek what they sought.
     -- Matsuo Basho

The people do not exist to serve the economy. The economy exists to serve the people.

I don't remember where I found that quote, but it strikes me as an extraordinarily important lesson, one we easily forget especially in a global multinational age. Does it change anything on a practical level? Only one's attitude, perhaps, but that, too, affects almost ever functional thing we do.

All art aspires to the condition of music.
     -- Walter Pater

To the dreams, and those who put their faith in dreams as the only reality.
      -- Edgar Allen Poe

The difference between generations isn't 30 years, it's 300.
      --Stendhal

We've decided to give up conventional thought and rely solely on clich�.

...and that was as far as I managed to get.