The Thing About A Hero

“The thing about a hero, is even when it doesn’t look like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, he’s going to keep digging, he’s going to keep trying to do right and make up for what’s gone before, just because that’s who he is.”
― Joss Whedon

Dragon Park Dallas, "Texas

Dragon Park
Dallas, “Texas

The Gods Are Concerned Mostly About Trees

“If lightning is the anger of the gods, then the gods are concerned mostly about trees.”
― Lao Tzu

tree1

A Blessing Or A Curse

“The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse.”
― Carlos Castaneda

fencing1

Book With Wings

“If we listened to our intellect, we’d never have a love affair. We’d never have a friendship. We’d never go into business, because we’d be cynical. Well, that’s nonsense. You’ve got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.”
― Ray Bradbury

(click to enlarge) Book With Wings Anselm Kiefer Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

(click to enlarge)
Book With Wings
Anselm Kiefer
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Anyone With the Sensitivity of an Armadillo, or Even You

“Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist–a master–and that is what Auguste Rodin was–can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is . . . and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be . . . and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body.”

—-Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

To Photograph People Is To Violate Them

“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed. Just as a camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a subliminal murder – a soft murder, appropriate to a sad, frightened time.”
― Susan Sontag, On Photography

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth Fort Worth, Texas

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Fort Worth, Texas

Dreams Tonight Will Shelter You

“Dream tonight of peacock tails,
Diamond fields and spouter whales.
Ills are many, blessings few,
But dreams tonight will shelter you.”
—-Thomas Pynchon

Dallas, Texas

Dallas, Texas

Simply Look At Its Biggest Buildings

“If you want to understand what’s most important to a society, don’t examine its art or literature, simply look at its biggest buildings.”
― Joseph Campbell

Architectural Detail, Dallas, Texas

Architectural Detail,
Dallas, Texas

In Dialogue With Pain

“It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. Acquaintance with grief turns out to be one of the more unusual prerequisites of architectural appreciation. We might, quite aside from all other requirements, need to be a little sad before buildings can properly touch us.”
― Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

Arts District Dallas, Texas

Arts District
Dallas, Texas

“Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design. It is an example expressed through materials of the same tendencies which in other domains will lead us to marry the wrong people, choose inappropriate jobs and book unsuccessful holidays: the tendency not to understand who we are and what will satisfy us.”
― Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

Not the Shadow Of the Past Nor the Shadow Of the Future

“Have you also learned that secret from the river; that there is no such thing as time?” That the river is everywhere at the same time, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the current, in the ocean and in the mountains, everywhere and that the present only exists for it, not the shadow of the past nor the shadow of the future.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

Trinity River Dallas, Texas

Trinity River
Dallas, Texas