Cited: Don Blanding

When I have a house… / as I sometime may…/

I’ll suit my fancy in every way. / I’ll fill it with things that have caught my eye /

In drifting from Iceland to Molokai.

- Don Blanding

Cited:Joan Didion

You have to pick the places you don’t walk away from.

- Joan Didion

home & tiny memoir

“The local is not a place but a place in a given man — what part of it he has been compelled or else brought by love to give witness to his own mind. And that is THE form, that is, the whole thing, as whole as it can get.”  (Robert Creeley, “a Note on the Local” in A Quick Graph)

i found this quote on rob mclennan’s blog, where it’s part of the kick-off for his memory project “house: a (tiny) memoir” (he’s been working on these short pieces for a while, but i only just discovered them.)

in his intro to the project, rob writes: “What makes up home? Home is a series of recollections, of distances, as easily remembered as mis-remembered, and a blending of events that can sometimes never be confirmed.”

Cited: Rybczynski

“I was not a willful designer, and attempted to accomodate my clients’ demands, but I usually did so with a vague sense of unsettled compromise. It was only when my wife and I built our own home that I discovered at first hand the fundamental poverty of modern architectural ideas. I found myself turning again and again to memories of older houses, and older rooms, and trying to understand what had made them feel so right, so comfortable.”

- Witold Rybczynski

Cited: Thoreau

What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?

-Henry David Thoreau