John Steinbeck on Falling in Love: A 1958 Letter Nobel laureate John Steinbeck (February 27, 1902–December 20, 1968) might be best-known as the author of East of Eden, The Grapes of Wrath, and Of Mice and Men, but he was also a prolific letter-writer. Steinbeck: A Life in Letters (public library) constructs an alternative biography of the iconic author through some 850 of his most thoughtful, witty, honest, opinionated, vulnerable, and revealing letters to family, friends, his editor, and a circle of equally well-known and influential public figures. Among his correspondence is this beautiful response to his eldest son Thom’s 1958 letter, in which the teenage boy confesses to have fallen desperately in love with a girl named Susan while at boarding school. Steinbeck’s words of wisdom — tender, optimistic, timeless, infinitely sagacious — should be etched onto the heart and mind of every living, breathing human being. New York November 10, 1958Dear Thom:We had your letter this morning. via Letters of Note
Soulmates, Twin Flames and Kindred Spirits — What’s the Difference? Photo by: Cameron Gray Love. It exists within all people, places and things. It is inextricably linked to God or Spirit. It is the most powerful force in the universe. In the grand scheme of things, Love encompasses all, so why is there a need to distinguish one type of love from another? Before you continue please know that all unconditional forms of love are no better or worse than each other. Soulmates, twin flames and kindred spirits are all phrases that have been used to describe relationships that touch our souls and change our lives forever. Kindred Spirits Kindred spirits are individuals that resonate at the same level, or frequency, as us. Physically, a kindred spirit could be anything: a close friend, a confidant, a family member, a teacher, a lover, a pet, or even a land form. Kindred spirits often play a very passive role in our lives. Soulmates Soulmates are people in our lives whom we connect with on a deep level. There are a few different types of soulmate. Twin Flames
7 Bunk Lines From 'The Wire' That Will Help You Get Your Swagger On William Moreland (Wendell Pierce), better known as Bunk, was the sharp-dressed and smooth-talking detective who stuck to his beat in homicide. Throughout five seasons on HBO’s The Wire (which you can stream anytime on HBO Now), Bunk proved time and again that he was a tried and true murder police in a city that had more than 300 murders per year. While Bunk lived by his code, he also took his own advice and never let the politics of the department get him down. Unlike his on-again, off-again partner Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West), who never quite figured that one out. So, to celebrate the effortlessly smooth and (almost) always even tempered detective who also respected the chain of command, here are Bunk’s best lines for when you need to find your inner swagger. “I knew it was your first time. Related: 5 Characters From ‘The Wire’ You Didn’t Know Were Based On Real People
The Greatest Definition of Love Literary history is as strewn with colorful attempts to define love — including some particularly memorable ones — as modern psychology is with attempts to dissect its inner workings. But perhaps the most powerful and profoundly human definition I’ve ever encountered comes from Czech-born British playwright Tom Stoppard’s 1982 play The Real Thing (public library) — a masterwork of insight on the heart’s trials and triumphs in human relationships. In the second act, when the protagonist’s cynical teenage daughter probes what falling in love is like, he offers a disarmingly raw, earnest, life-earned answer: It’s to do with knowing and being known. Complement this gem from the altogether brilliant The Real Thing with the stirring 1958 letter of advice on falling in love that John Steinbeck sent to his teenage son, Susan Sontag’s lifetime of reflections on love, and Sherwin Nuland on what everybody needs.
For When You Think That No One Will Love You You can never quite remember the actual moments when someone says that they love you for the first time. You wait for it so long, practice how you will respond, prevent yourself from saying it before them (you wouldn’t want to look desperate), and then it happens, and it’s like you go temporarily deaf. There is a ringing, like a TV show that has cut off to go to an emergency announcement. Besides, everyone who has ever said that to you before has left, so you might as well not even listen. “I love you” will mean nights staying up watching someone sleep next to you, wondering why they haven’t left you already, wondering when they will. So you have chosen aloneness. And if you need to get laid, you can. Sometimes, you think that no one has ever loved you. Sometimes, you wonder if everyone is faking it, even the people who seem to have it all down to a science. You think that no one ever will, because how could they?
In Conversation With Quentin Tarantino -- Vulture In Conversation: Midway through postproduction on his eighth movie, the Western THE HATEFUL EIGHT — about a band of outlaws trapped in a saloon during a blizzard — the director discusses the country’s legacy of white supremacy, Obama, and why he doesn’t worry about a Transformers future. THIS INTERVIEW was condensed and edited from two conversations, the first conducted July 29 and the second August 7. Photograph by Amanda Demme We’re five months from the release of The Hateful Eight. We’ve got a little bit more than an hour finished right now. Are you happy with it? I’m not committing suicide yet. Every movie I’ve ever done, there has always been some date we were trying to meet, whether it was with Reservoir Dogs, trying to meet the Sundance date, or Pulp Fiction, meeting the Cannes date. So you don’t get notes from the studio anymore? Is it different now, coming off Django Unchained and Inglourious Basterds? I don’t think so, as far as me making the story I want to tell. I know. Excited?
Albert Camus on Happiness and Love, Illustrated by Wendy MacNaughton In this new installment of the Brain Pickings artist series, I’ve once again teamed up with the wonderfully talented Wendy MacNaughton, on the heels of our previous collaborations on famous writers’ sleep habits, Susan Sontag’s diary highlights on love and on art, Nellie Bly’s packing list, Gay Talese’s taxonomy of New York cats, and Sylvia Plath’s influences. I asked MacNaughton to illustrate another of my literary heroes’ thoughts on happiness and love, based on my highlights from Notebooks 1951–1959 (public library) — the published diaries of French author, philosopher, and Nobel laureate Albert Camus, which also gave us Camus on happiness, unhappiness, and our self-imposed prisons. The artwork is available as a print on Society6 and, as usual, we’re donating 50% of proceeds to A Room of Her Own, a foundation supporting women writers and artists. Enjoy! If those whom we begin to love could know us as we were before meeting them … they could perceive what they have made of us.
Formula for Love: How Long Should You Wait to Text Back? A few years ago there was a woman in my life—let’s call her Tanya—and we had hooked up one night in Los Angeles. We’d both attended a birthday party, and when things were winding down, she offered to drop me off at home. We had been chatting and flirting a little the whole night, so I asked her to come in for a drink. At the time, I was subletting a pretty nice house up in the Hollywood Hills. I wanted to see Tanya again and was faced with a simple conundrum that plagues us all: How and when do I communicate next? Eventually I decided to text her, because she seemed to be a heavy texter. Here was my text: “Hey—don’t know if you left for NYC, but Beach House playing tonight and tomorrow at Wiltern. Also in Sociology Famous For Being Indianapolis By Jonathon Keats When Kim Kardashian was 4 years old, a University of California economist named Moshe Adler wrote a six-page paper explaining the means by which she would eventually attain worldwide renown. Hmmm ... I’m so stupid!
Four Charles Bukowski Poems Animated The poetry of Charles Bukowski deeply inspires many of its readers. Sometimes it just inspires them to lead the dissolute lifestyle they think they see glorified in it, but other times it leads them to create something compelling of their own. The quality and variety of the Bukowski-inspired animation now available on the internet, for instance, has certainly surprised me. At the top of the post, we have Jonathan Hodgson’s adaptation of “The Man with the Beautiful Eyes,” which puts vivid, colorful imagery to Bukowski’s late poem that draws from his childhood memories of a mysterious, untamed young man in a run-down house whose very existence reminded him “that nobody wanted anybody to be strong and beautiful like that, that others would never allow it.” Without any words spoken on the soundtrack and only the title seen onscreen — a challenging creative restriction for a poetry-based short — Umba depicts the narrator’s “bluebird in my heart that wants to get out.” Related Content: