Highlights And Sketchy Advice From Another Sketchbook

 August 30, 2026

   Finished another sketchbook today. I believe this is in the neighborhood of 177 sketchbooks I have filled with Daily Whip Outs and ideas. Celebrated by going for a walk while it's still in the mid-eighties out.

Nice sunrise this morning

   In the Contradiction Zone, I have come to realize it pays to be hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time. Why? I'll tell you why.

   The biggest risk of all is to play it safe.

   Everything you want is on the other side of fear.

   Fame is nothing. Solitude is everything.

   History without discomfort is propaganda.

   Where you are standing was once the goal.

   It's not the end. It's the start of something NEW!

   And, here are a few of my favorite quotes I found while working in the sketchbook (and I wrote them down in the margins):

"If you feel pain you're alive. If you feel the pain of others, you're human."

—Leo Tolstoy

"History sighs, repeats itself."

—The Onion

"If you give them a lot of film, the committee takes over."

—John Ford

"The best kind of cinema is where action is long and dialogue short."

—John Ford

"His cinema, so clean and direct and naive, so human and dignified, has left an indelible mark on the cinema that has followed."

—Sergio Leone, on John Ford

"I grew up with half the outlaws in Mohave County and I'm proud to say I am related to the other half."

—BBB

"People who hate each other love Dolly Parton."

—Fran Lebowitz

"Art, like morality, consists of drawing the line somewhere."

—G. K. Chesterton

"The only people who see the whole picture are the ones who step outside the frame."

—Salmon Rushdie

"What was true in the morning, at evening has become a lie."

—Old Vaquero Saying

"Honor the living. The dead can take care of themselves."

—Old Vaquero Saying

"Up there, he's my sidekick. Down here, it's the other way 'round."

—Jake Kidder, Arizona Ranger

"Water wouldn't sound so beautiful without rocks in its way."

—Marcus Aurelius/ Old Vaquero Saying

"The only truth is music."

—Jack Kerouac

Self-editing too soon can break the mystery."

—Rodney Crowell

"The most dangerous form of blindness is believing your perspective is the only reality."

—Fridrich Nietzsche

"Everything Put Together Falls Apart"

—Paul Simon (1972)

Best Advice Yet

   Stay weird. Eventually they will call it art.

On The Bad Headline Front

   Boomers are leaving behind more art than anyone wants.

   Ouch!

   A sneak peek at one of the Westerns I'd sure like to see:

Three Rode Together.

Barely.

Strange But True

   Ironically the only place left without ads is in a book.

"People have beautiful things to say about you, but you must die first."

—Fyodor Dostoevsky