QOTD: Giving help...

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original Posting 18 April 1994

"I remember asking him once how he could be so generous. Every theory about writing, every trick he'd discovered, he was willing to share. Wasn't he worried about revealing trade secrets? Wasn't his advice to other writers the same as aiding and abetting his professional competition? He seemed amused by the question. 'So what if someone else does well? That doesn't affect me or my work.' He felt that writing about his own experiences forced him to crystallize his thoughts and allowed him new insights that were invaluable to him."

Telling Lies for Fun and Profit by Lawrence Block (copyright 1981)
From the Introduction by Sue Grafton (copyright 1994)
William Morrow and Co.

QOTD: The Play of Art

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

Original posting 25 April 1994

"And of course, as everybody knows who has ever played at games, the ones that are the most fun - to lose as well as to win - are the ones that are the hardest, with the most complicated, even dangerous, tasks to accomplish. ... The artist seeks the challenge, the difficult thing to do; for his basic approach to life is not of work but of play.
...
"Life as an art and art as a game - as action for its own sake, without thought of gain or loss, praise or blame - is the key, then to the turning of life itself into a yoga, and art into the means to such a life."

Myths To Live By
Joseph Campbell

Does he mean life is like a yoyo - it has its ups and downs?

[OWC: compare life with other toys - frisbee, surfboard, whatever - in a humorous way (I would say ironic, but I can't quite pin it down:-)]