Quote of the Day (Edgar Allan Poe, on What We See As ‘A Dream Within a Dream’)

“All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep.” —American short-story writer, poet, literary critic, and editor Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), “A Dream Within a Dream,” first published in The Flag of Our Union, March 1849, reprinted in Edgar Allan Poe: Poetry and Tales, edited by Patrick Quinn (1984)

TV Quote of the Day (‘All in the Family,’ Anticipating Today’s Left-Right Divide)

Archie Bunker (played by Carroll O’Connor): “We got civil war, Maude! We got riots in the streets!” 

Maude Findley (Edith Bunker’s visiting cousin, played by Bea Arthur): “Because of poverty and unemployment.”

Archie: “No! Because of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the first creepin' socialist.”

Maude: “He brought the country back from the Depression.”

Archie: “And dumped us right into the middle of World War II.”

Maude: “Which he won as our commander in chief.”

Archie: “No! That's a lie! General MacArthur won that war. And Roosevelt fired him for it.”

Maude: “That was Truman.”

Archie: “Under secret sealed orders from F.D.R.!”

Maude: “Oh, come on!” 

Archie: “That's a fact, Maude! Just like that other fact-- that he sold us out to Joe Stalin at Gibraltar.”

Maude: “They met at Yalta!”

Archie: “He sold us out there too!”—All in the Family, Season 2, Episode 12, “Cousin Maude’s Visit,” original air date Dec. 11, 1971, teleplay by Phil Mishkin, Michael Ross, and Bernard West, directed by John Rich

Song Lyric of the Day (John Mayer, on ‘The Real World’)

“I just found out there's no such thing as the real world

Just a lie you've got to rise above.” —“No Such Thing,” written by John Mayer, Clay Cook, Douglas Clay Cook, performed by John Mayer from his Room for Squares CD (2002)

(Photo of John Mayer by Julio Enriquez taken at the Mile High Music Festival, July 2008.)

Quote of the Day (Truman Capote, on ‘Reflected Reality’)

“Reflected reality is the essence of reality, the truer truth. When I was a child I played a pictorial game. I would, for example, observe a landscape: trees and clouds and horses wandering in grass; then select a detail from the overall vision–say, grass being in the breeze–and frame it with my hands. Now this detail became the essence of the landscape and caught, in prismatic miniature, the true atmosphere of a panorama too sizable to encompass otherwise….All art is composed of selected detail, either imaginary or…a distillation of reality.” —Truman Capote (1924-1984), “Ghosts in Sunlight: The Filming of In Cold Blood” (1967), in Portraits and Observations: The Essays of Truman Capote (2007)