Bender Best Quotes

Men who find themselves late are never sure. They are all the things the civics books tell us the good citizen should be: partisans but never zealots, respectors of the facts which attend each situation but never benders of those facts, uncomfortable in positions of leadership but rarely unable to turn down a responsibility once it has been offered . . . or thrust upon them. They make the best leaders in a democracy because they are unlikely to fall in love with power.

It was like we were exchanging codes, on how to be a father and a daughter, like we'd read about it in a manual, translated from another language, and were doing our best with what we could understand.

Life is just there, to be made the best of, until it isn't. And that's all right, too.

My soup arrived. Crusted with cheese, golden at the edges. The waiter placed it carefully in front of me, and I broke through the top layer with my spoon and filled it with warm oniony broth, catching bits of soaking bread. The smell took over the table, a warmingness. And because circumstances rarely match, and one afternoon can be a patchwork of both joy and horror, the taste of the soup washed through me. Warm, kind, focused, whole. It was easily, without question, the best soup I had ever had, made by a chef who found true refuge in cooking.

The best way I can think to describe it, she said, ' is the way, when you're driving on the freeway at night how everyone can see the moon in their window. Every car on the road. Every car feels the moon is following that car, even in the other direction, right? Everyone in that entire hemisphere can see the moon and think it is there for them, is following where they go.

The room filled with the smell of warming butter and sugar and lemon and eggs, and at five, the timer buzzed and I pulled out the cake and placed it on the stovetop. The house was quiet. The bowl of icing was right there on the counter, ready to go, and cakes are best when just out of the oven, and I really couldn't possibly wait, so I reached out to the side of the cake pan, to the least obvious part, and pulled off a warm spongy chunk of deep gold. Iced it all over with chocolate. Popped the whole thing into my mouth.

At least, that is how he strikes me. Men who find themselves late are never sure. They are all the things the civics books tell us the good citizens should be: partisans but never zealots, respecters of the facts which attend each situation but never benders of those facts, uncomfortable in positions of leadership but rarely able to turn down a responsibility once it has been offered … or thrust upon them. They make the best leaders in a democracy because they are unlikely to fall in love with power.

Talent is 98% hard work - even Brel said so. The best signal for lack of talent is therefore quite simply low production. That does of course not mean high production guarantees talent, so something does exist that needs to be present - what is that? Talent and Drive - both are quite useless without the other, but what exactly is 'talent'? I would say its a form of the unconditioned: in some people it survives, even unto old age. Some learn to focus it on a particular craft. But without drive, it still goes nowhere.

Men who find themselves late are never sure. They are all the things the civics books tell us the good citizens should be: partisans but never zealots, respecters of the facts which attend each situation but never benders of those facts, uncomfortable in positions of leadership but rarely able to turn down a responsibility once it has been offered … or thrust upon them. They make the best leaders in a democracy because they are unlikely to fall in love with power. Quite the opposite. And when things go wrong … when a Mrs Vollman dies …

My favorite of all was still the place on Vermont, the French cafe, La Lyonnaise, that had given me the best onion soup on that night with George and my father. The two owners hailed from France, from Lyon, before the city had boomed into a culinary sibling of Paris. Inside, it had only a few tables, and the waiters served everything out of order, and it had a B rating in the window, and they usually sat me right by the swinging kitchen door, but I didn't care about any of it. There, I ordered chicken Dijon, or beef Bourguignon, or a simple green salad, or a pate sandwich, and when it came to the table, I melted into whatever arrived. I lavished in a forkful of spinach gratin on the side, at how delighted the chef had clearly been over the balance of spinach and cheese, like she was conducting a meeting of spinach and cheese, like a matchmaker who knew they would shortly fall in love. Sure, there were small distractions and preoccupations in it all, but I could find the food in there, the food was the center, and the person making the food was so connected with the food that I could really, for once, enjoy it.

Before he could answer, it started. It sounded like a murmur, and then someone said it out loud, and the whisper became outright laughter. “Is eht Gaylord?” said a rat-faced boy at the front. The room erupted. “Big Bobby Bender?” said another. Shuggie tried to talk over them. His face burned red. “It’s Shuggie, sir. Hugh Bain. I’m transferred here from Saint Luke’s.” “Listen tae that voice!” said another boy, with tight curly hair. He opened his eyes wide like he had hit the bullying jackpot. “Ere, posh boy. Whaur did ye get that fuckin’ accent? Are ye a wee ballet dancer, or whit?” This went down the best of all. It was a divine inspiration to the others. “Gies a wee dance!” they squealed with laughter. “Twirl for us, ye wee bender!” Shuggie sat there listening to them amuse themselves. He took the red football book and dropped it into the dark drawer of this strange school desk. He was glad, at least, to be done with that. It was clear now: nobody would get to be made brand new.

Why do most people write poems about nature? For the same reason that every community center is propped up with industrious, self painted landscapes: you have no need of any imagination to simply describe what is around you, and the amateur naturally thinks an idyllic picture is best, not the dirty city around him. What makes van de Waarsenburg special is that he crams a hundred idyllic scenes into a single poem, as if he does not trust a single boathouse would be poetic enough for the reader.

What does it mean to be an 'open source' society? What does one mean when one says one has an 'open mind'? Open source means that its a society everybody can work on improving. It has a synergy that allows the best minds to float on top, since there is no entropical hierarchy of mediocrity - once everything stays fluid there is the odd chance for genius elements to actually lead. Such is the case now in Turkey. The protesters are a fluid synergy that have no entropical leadership, and thus the most brilliant PR moves are made by the resistance, who are opposed by the worst sort of mediocrity that is totally at odds with reality. An 'open mind' follows a similar process, but in this case the entropy hides in the hierarchy of ideas that is implanted in the brain: once a person follows mediocre ideas - such as the 'idea' that 'marriage is the meaning of life' or 'having a job is the purpose of existence' etc - then the phenomenon of the 'open mind' becomes already impossible, for there is an internal hierarchy of entropy present that will prevent any sort of original impulse to have the meaning it truly has. Hence, the only way to escape the mediocrity of ones own mind is to allow anything to build and revise it.

In the evenings, my father and I ate dinner quietly in front of the TV together. Wednesday night, Thursday. Frozen dinners I'd picked out at the grocery store, greatest hits by my favorite factories. One of the best ones, in Indiana, prided itself on a no touch food assembly, which meant every step was monitored by robotic arms, ones that placed the tortillas into the dish, layered them with cheese, dropped dollops of tomato sauce on top, and shoved it all into the giant oven, thus producing an utterly blank enchilada.

Die 'power grab' van Netflix heeft alleen maar geleid tot ontstellend veel afgrijselijke middelmatigheid. Ze hadden moeten focussen op gewoon de beste series ter wereld verzamelen, in plaats van ze zo nodig zelf te moeten gaan maken. Het is alsof een of andere bloemlezer ineens meent dat ie zelf veel beter de uitgever kan spelen. Cut out the middle men, but what if those middle men are you?

That 'power grab' of Netflix has only led to an incridible amount of horrendous mediocrity. They should simply have focussed on collecting the best series in the world instead of producing them. Its as if a poetry collector suddenly thinks he should become the biggest publisher in the world. Cut out the middle men, but what if those middle men are you?

Ook valt er nogal wat af te dingen op het 'poëzielesje' dat Arjan Peters de VK lezer voorschotelt. Buiten dat het nogal gemakzuchig is het slechtste gedicht van dichter 1 naast het beste van dichter 2 te zetten - wees dan een vent en pak van beide de sterkste werken, denk ik dan - nee, buiten dat is dat gedicht van Jellema eigenlijk helemaal niet zo ontzettend sterk. Triestig wordt het als Peters beweert dat 'uit veewagens staken soms bleke handen' een of andere subtiele boodschap is, welke hij wel begreep en de tijdgenoten van Jellema niet. Wat is dat nu voor een aftandse kletspraat? Is er een mens op deze wereld die dat beeld niet weet te duiden? Nee, de holocaust referentie is glashelder, maar dat maakt het nog geen goed gedicht. Jellema moet nota bene zelfs vermelden dat het hier om oorlogstijd gaat, een al even overbodige melding als Michels lantaarnpaal.

De beste organisatoren vind ik altijd die organisatoren die een politiek statement willen maken door niet bijvoorbeeld die mensen te programmeren die de beste bundels van het jaar schreven (want dat is maar iemands mening) maar op radicaal politieke wijze te kiezen voor naamsbekendheid. Zo word je poëziefestival jaar in jaar uit een geheid succes, zonder dat je je conformeert aan meninkjes uit het veld. En aan hen die wanstaltig beweren dat poëziefestivals en prime time praatprogrammas niet hetzelfde zijn: think again. Het gaat om de radicale keuze voor de familiestructuur. Genadeloos de BN laag weerspiegelen. Tegendraads je eigen DWDDtje draaien, tegen de publieke opinie in, ten dienste van de grote roem en het grote publiek. Zodat uiteindelijk, een paar honderd jaar later, iemand zal zeggen: nou nou. Wat een radicale beweging, daar in het begin van de 21e eeuw, die do-it-yourself Matthijs van Nieuwkerk is het toch maar mooi gelukt een flinke stempel op de canon te drukken door nooit naar de plebejische kritieken te luisteren.

De literaire prijs als middel om gedrag te straffen of belonen. Wie zich als actief burger inzet voor de goegemeente maakte vroeger ook al meest kans op een prijs, dus wat dat betreft is er geen enkel verschil: jaren en jaren actief zijn in de poëziegemeenschap, tomeloze inzet ten gunste van mede-sekteleden, en elke jury en systeemcriticus zal je ten lange leste met moeite eruit geperste bundeltje met toegeknepen oogjes lezen: deze poëziedienaar dient beloond, dat hij niet echt kan schrijven, ach, hij doet toch zelfs daar gewoon zijn best?

K.Schippers is een oplichter, begrijp ik uit de brief van Arjan Peters aan Ellen Deckwitz. Maar waarom legt hij die casus voor aan Deckwitz? Is dat omdat ze de beste bundels schreef afgelopen jaren, of omdat ze een keer op televisie is geweest? En wie is er dan precies de oplichter? Peters doet me altijd denken aan die vent met veren op de hoed uit een liedje van Brel, de vent die voltairrrrre citeert aan je sterfbed.

Think about it. Look at what it took for intelligence to emerge in Nature. Today is Monday. If the 3.8 billion years life has thrived on Earth equated to 38 days, then for over a month all we had around here were microbes. “Complex, multicellular life arose last Wednesday. Dinosaurs came in on Friday. Sometime this morning, around 1am, a meteor struck and the best part of an entire phylogenetic clade was pushed to extinction. Those few avian dinosaurs that did survive went on to supply us with deep fried chicken and scrambled eggs.” I can’t help but smile at Avika’s compressed take on the history of life on Earth. “Mammals have been around at least since Sunday, but they were little more than rodents most of the time. That rock from space cleared out vast swathes of the ecosystem, and mammals rushed to fill the gap. “Every multicellular creature has some degree of intelligence, or at least instinct, but it wasn’t until some point in the last hour that the wisest of men, Homo sapiens arose, and yet even then, intelligence was little more than a desperate struggle for survival. “For the last seven minutes, or roughly two hundred thousand years, our intelligence extended little further than chipping at rocks to make stone knives. “In the last thirty seconds, we’ve been on a bender. We’ve built pyramids, sailed the oceans and landed on the Moon!” I say, “So your point is, human intelligence is the pinnacle of evolution?” “Oh, no. Not at all. There’s plenty of intelligence in the animal kingdom, especially among mammals, birds and cephalopods, but it took 3.8 billion years before intelligence could exploit its own ingenuity and blossom in its own right. “If all our intellectual accomplishments are the result of the last thirty seconds, then perhaps creating artificial intelligence isn’t quite as easy as busting out some Perl scripts.” I

Here’s a mind bender: What if we canceled the children’s ministry and put that effort into building up the men of the church? I firmly believe that such an approach would, in the long run, win more youth to Christ. It would also save more marriages and produce happier women. Children’s ministry and youth ministry are good things—but spiritually healthy male role models are the best thing.

I started seeing poetry from a strictly consumerist perspective as poets serving up beverages. Most, maybe like 97 percent or something, serve lemonade. You can consume their work and it will teach you nothing, and it will leave a sticky unpleasant feeling in your mouth and a slight nausea in your stomach. There are all kinds of home-made lemonades, milky lemonade, watery lemonade, some throw pepper in it or even puke in the lemonade, but its still lemonade, just a puky sort. Then there are a few that offer stronger drinks. Some say the secret is the cellar, but I think that's just a propaganda story. If you leave a bottle of lemonade in the cellar for 10 years it won't turn into wine. But some of these fools are doing exactly that. Stinky old lemonade full of dust. And then there's those that think the problem is the Lemonade isn't smooth enough and they start filtering it with a sieve, imagining to be gold-diggers or something. No no no, the secret isn't cellars. The secret is rather a sincere hate for lemonade. As long as you don't hate lemonade with every pore in your body, as long as a part of you accepts the lemonade, then forget about the cellars. But if your soul says 'Fuck the Lemonade' then it starts to search. You will find that a small percentage of poetry offered is like a strong beverage. Most then, again, are like cheap beer or wine. To find a wine that's actually good or even a decent whiskey you have to sift to tuns of poems, and then you find some. There are just a few people. Just a few. I dont know if the secret of the cellar applies here either. It might. It might not. I often suspect all these blokes with distilleries are fooling the hell out of everyone. Think about it. Twenty years on a barrel of whiskey and it will sell like gold. Anyone with a sense of business would want to speed that shit up. And yet they're all flaunting the secret of their cellars, I don't believe a word of it. There's simply too much whiskey in these world and too few cellars. So I sincerely believe that the road to great poetry is to say 'Fuck the Cellars' in your soul, and start to search. There's a minute speck of poems out there that are beverages, but of a different, narcotic kind. They are almost impossible to find or create. Poetry clubs and societies do their utter best to ignore it, ban it, destroy it. These are poems that by nature make the reader say 'Fuck Beverages!' in his soul. I wish i never used this shit. Fucking hell, whats wrong with the guy who made this? That's the sort of poetry I would call a honorable beverage. But you have to ditch Lemonade, Cellars, and Beverages to get there. And you can't do that because you have not enough thirst in your soul. That's what it all starts with: thirst. And the secret of thirst is very simple: it requires a desert in your heart.

My Latin girlfriend sees me read, snigger, read on intensily and said "you look like someone who is attacked by a butterfly "" mails one of the first recipients of the complete Wold, Wold, Wold! book. It's a guy i know who lives in South America. I think it's one of the best descriptions I have ever seen about what i really want to accomplish: to write books that attack one like a giant butterfly.

In 2009 i was nominated for the 'best dutch poetry debute' called 'the buddingh award'. It's supposed to be the most important debut price. However the event proved rather hallucinogenic. It started with my publisher expressing 'great surprise' that 'I still managed to get nominated'. The surprise was out of place, since my book simply got the best reviews of all books that year. I went to Poetry International and noticed only 2 of the 3 jury members where present, and the female one kept looking at me in sort of a guilty fashion. Then the award was granted to Misscha Andriessen, which was sort of weird since his book was not seen as universally the best by critics. 'Too lightweight' one review of an important critic read. Later on I read that jurymember Wim Brands one year prior to the price already made clear that 'he is a big fan of Mischa Andriessen'. I always assumed that they were friends somehow but this morning I solved the mystery: they are from the same little village, so it had nothing to do with poetry, just tribal culture at its best. Kind of a relief to know that.

Nog een nadeel van de populariteit van vrouwenvoetbal: dat er ineens dubbel zoveel voetbal op teevee is. Het lijkt me daarom niet meer dan redelijk het mannenvoetbal gewoon van de buis te halen, dat heeft gewoon zijn beste tijd gehad.

Oprah created a mantra: “Live your best life.” Which surely meant I wasn’t living mine. None of us were, presumably. Just a big world full of humans not living up to our potential.