In Lieu of Today’s Manifesto

Recently someone suggested I write a manifesto. Maybe. Part of me is resistant to explaining work, that it should stand alone and if it can’t is it successful? Also why guide interpretation? If you define the meaning isn’t it more artifact than art?

So no manifesto today (not for artistic work anyway). In lieu of that here are a few favorite author observations:

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.  –James Baldwin

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery.–Octavia Butler

. . . make a virtue of your peculiarities.–Ursula K. LeGuin

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.–Kurt Vonnegut

They’ve said it so well. So for now at least let’s just leave it at that.