the micro-blog version of “Taking Thoughts Captive” with brief quotes, fleeting thoughts, and other ephemera from the cutting room floor...
“Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don't use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand. And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. “
— Ray Bradbury
“Let you alone! That’s all very well, but how can I leave myself alone? We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
“The best ideas make things simpler without breaking what works. They are efficient and direct, finding that sweet spot where thinking just enough turns effort into ease. Too much detail slows you down, too little loses the point, but the right balance makes the whole system click into place.”
“Enjoy the little things in life because one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things.”
— Kurt Vonnegut
“For me, it is impossible to be a faithful follower of Jesus Christ while remaining a member of the Democratic Party as it exists today. I cannot reconcile that platform with Scripture...I have compromised my relationship with Jesus for too long, and I’m grateful God did not give up on me. He gave me time to repent, turn, and be fully devoted to Him...That conviction includes the issues I cannot reconcile with Scripture: abortion, the normalization of the gay lifestyle, and the push to redefine gender...I understand these are personal for many families, because your son, daughter, cousin, aunt, or uncle may be one. But personal proximity does not change God’s definition of right and wrong. Love for people does not require agreement with sin, and compassion does not give us permission to rewrite Scripture.”
— Michigan State Representative Karen Whitsett, 2 March 2026 (source)
“For in this world of lies, Truth is forced to fly like a scared white doe in the woodlands; and only by cunning glimpses will she reveal herself, as in Shakespeare and other masters of the Great Art of Telling the Truth—even though it be covertly, and by snatches.”
— Herman Melville, from Hawthorne and His Mosses (h/t: The Hammock Papers)
“I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study and the passionate possession of all Texans.”
— John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley: In Search of America.
“I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach.”
— Glenn Gould