time

" The only reason for time is so that everything doesn't happen at once. "

probably, Albert Einstein.

Rib

Adam was hanging around the garden of Eden feeling very lonely. So, God asked him, "What's wrong with you?" Adam said he didn't have anyone to talk to. God said that He was going to make Adam a companion and that it would be a woman. He said, "This pretty lady will gather food for you, she will cook for you, and when you discover clothing, she will wash it for you. She will always agree with every decision you make and she will not nag you, and will always be the first to admit she was wrong when you've had a disagreement. She will praise you! She will bear your children and never ask you to get up in the middle of the night to take care of them. "She will NEVER have a headache and will freely give you love and passion whenever you need it." Adam asked God, "What will a woman like this cost?" God replied, "An arm and a leg." Then Adam asked, "What can I get for a rib?"

As Orwell points out in his indispensable essay "Politics and the English Language," bad writers write in prepared phrases, not in words, and the most they do with a prepared phrase is vary it to show that they know what it is. When Pope called genius an infinite capacity for taking pains, that was what he meant. The greatly gifted have almost everything by nature, but by bending themselves to the effort of acquirement, they turn a great gift into great work. Their initial arrogance is necessary and even definitive: Heinrich Mann was right to say that the self-confidence of young artists precedes their achievement and is bound to seem like conceit while it is still untried. But there is one grain of humility that they must get into their cockiness if they are ever to grow: They must accept that one of the secrets of creativity is an unrelenting self-criticism. "My dear friend," said Voltaire to a young aspirant who had burdened him with an unpublished manuscript, "you may write as carelessly and badly as this when you have become famous. Until then, you must take some trouble."

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg: Lessons on how to write. By Clive James.
http://www.slate.com/id/2160969/pagenum/3/

One, two, three.

Oboist H. David Meyers' betting business ends on a sour note as he faces the music.

"If I go to jail," says Meyers, "my playing days are over. Itzhak Perlman once said: 'If I miss one day of practice, I know the difference. If I miss two days, my fellow musicians know. Three days, and the entire world knows.' "

Boredom

Boredom, the sociologist Robert Nisbet wrote, is among the universal and insistent forces driving human behavior. Mankind's nervous system evolved during millions of dangerous years (saber-toothed tigers, etc.). Now, however, mankind has suddenly, in a few millennia, encountered the monotony of orderly life, which bothers human brains formed by and for hazardous circumstances.
Among the cures of boredom that Nisbet listed are war, murder, revolution, suicide, alcohol, narcotics and pornography. He might have added presidential politics.

George F. Will, Sunday, March 4, 2007; washingtonpost.com