Last night at dinner Cristina -a wonderful woman I met- mentioned E. B. White and a quote that I was very impressed by.
The quote: “No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky” is true to me in every possible way as I am a firm believer that one does not only need the “chance or luck” in life but the eye and the attitude, to see it, to accept it, and to make it happen. IT is whatever, just name it: whatever you want to create, to have, every wish you have, that will always need chance+opportunity. One needs to embrace, to be ready and receive that.
“Charlotte’s web”, one of his books is about how a little pig becomes best friend with a spider. I read it many years ago in Mexico City, where I used to spend long periods of time when my sister Nany used to live there. This small and amazing book was recommended to me by a little boy Rodriguito, my nephew, who’s now 18 yrs old. A book that many children read and one that should be read by lots of adults, because of its freshness, beauty and sweetness.
So here I will give you some of the quotes I have found, many about New York, the city I love the most.
This lecture today gave me a lot of inspiration to write, to create, to make things happen.
“There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.
…Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. ”
“Writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar.”
“One of the most time-consuming things is to have an enemy.”
“If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”
“A poem compresses much in a small space and adds music, thus heightening its meaning. The city is like poetry: it compresses all life, all races and breeds, into a small island and adds music and the accompaniment of internal engines. The island of Manhattan is without any doubt the greatest human concentrate on earth, the poem whose magic is comprehensible to millions of permanent residents but whose full meaning will always remain elusive.”
“Be obscure clearly.”
