"Sometimes I think creativity is a matter of seeing, or stumbling over, unobvious similarities between things- like composing a fresh metaphor, but on a more complex scale."

David Mitchell

"It was as if with time he had transposed everything he was capable of saying and writing to the realm of his poetry, to rhythmical language or perfected prose, and in the process had turned mute in the world of everyday speech, of dialect, of screams and fragmented sentences and phrases."

from The Last World by Christoph Ransmayr

from the sketchbook-

N.E. corner of Patterson Park Ave. & Madison St.

"She looked up at me, and the whole world disappeared. Like there was just us, like there would always be just us, and we didn't need magic for that. It was sort of happy and sad, all at the same time. I couldn't be around her without feeling things, without feeling everything."
from Beautiful Creatures Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

harbor blossoms
now in the collection of Jim & Alley Tierney

22x16"

"...he failed to say the words that normal, heartsick people want to hear: life is not a cosmic accident, not evidence of a punishing al powerful god. Instead he ground his teeth against his desire to tell them the truth: god is helpless. We are at the mercy of our own radical freedom, and all god can do is take into god’s self the grief, the violence, the sublime acts of kindness, the good sex. God comes to us from the future, and has only one gift: the lure. We are lured toward truth, beauty and goodness...the lure is pulling at our hearts like some lucid joy inside every actual occasion and all we have to do is ... say yes."

from The Solace of Leaving Early by Haven Kimmel

from the sketchbook- fireflies in the park

"When love has fused and mingled two beings in a sacred and angelic unity, the secret of life has been discovered so far as they are concerned; they are no longer anything more than the two boundaries of the same destiny; they are no longer anything but the two wings of the same spirit. Love, soar."

Victor Hugo

positive thinking (1402 N. Milton St.)

22x16"

now in the collection of Dave and Rebecca Pille