37 Days

“For many people, an excuse is better than an achievement because an achievement, no matter how great, leaves you having to prove yourself again in the future but an excuse can last for life.” - Eric Hoffer


“When Nabokov was asked, "Who is your ideal reader?"--he said, "My ideal reader is someone who reads with a dictionary and a pencil." A very literal way of keeping alive our inner student lives, I think, is that simple habit of making marginal notations. When we do that, our pencil acts as a kind of seismograph—to register the mental tremors we're feeling as we read. I'm not talking about the yellow highlighters—that’s a device easily abused—because there is a physical, I think, almost erotic pleasure in just doing that—and, so, there's a tendency to just fill the book and just make it yellow. I'm talking about a slightly more judicious kind of notation that might go on, in which we create a dialogue with the author, and our reading becomes an interaction with that person. Such jottings are a sign of our presence, and the book we hold in our hands becomes, not just The Heart of Darkness, but my reading of The Heart of Darkness—the silent communication and conversation that took place between me and Joseph Conrad.”


"Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." - Albert Einstein

"Insist on yourself; never imitate." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson