Mark Twain (1835–1910)
In the 1870s and ’80s, the Twain family spent their summers at Quarry Farm in New York, about two hundred miles west of their Hartford, Connecticut, home. Twain found those summers the most productive time for his literary work, especially after 1874, when the farm owners built him a small private study on the property. That same summer, Twain began writing The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. His routine was simple: he would go to the study in the morning after a hearty breakfast and stay there until dinner at about 5:00. Since he skipped lunch, and since his family would not venture near the study—they would blow a horn if they needed him—he could usually work uninterruptedly for several hours. “On hot days,” he wrote to a friend, “I spread the study wide open, anchor my papers down with brickbats, and write in the midst of the hurricane, clothed in the same thin linen we make shirts of.”
Whether or not he was working, he smoked cigars constantly. One of his closest friends, the writer William Dean Howells, recalled that after a visit from Twain, “the whole house had to be aired, for he smoked all over it from breakfast to bedtime.”
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”
― Mark Twain
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Herman Melville (1819–1891)
"I rise at eight—thereabouts—& go to my barn—say good-morning to the horse, & give him his breakfast. (It goes to my heart to give him a cold one, but it can’t be helped.) Then, pay a visit to my cow—cut up a pumpkin or two for her, & stand by to see her eat it—for it’s a pleasant sight to see a cow move her jaws—she does it so mildly & with such a sanctity."
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
“I would prefer not to.”
― Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener
“A smile is the chosen vehicle of all ambiguities.”
― Herman Melville, Pierre; or, The Ambiguities
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Nikola Tesla (1856–1943)
After he had started his own company, Tesla arrived at the office at noon. Immediately, his secretary would draw the blinds; Tesla worked best in the dark and would raise the blinds again only in the event of a lightning storm, which he liked to watch flashing above the cityscape from his black mohair sofa.
Tesla ate alone, and phoned in his instructions for the meal in advance. Upon arriving, he was shown to his regular table, where eighteen clean linen napkins would be stacked at his place. As he waited for his meal, he would polish the already gleaming silver and crystal with these squares of linen, gradually amassing a heap of discarded napkins on the table. And when his dishes arrived—served to him not by a waiter but by the maître d’hôtel himself—Tesla would mentally calculate their cubic contents before eating, a strange compulsion he had developed in his childhood and without which he could never enjoy his food.
- From Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey
“Of all things, I liked books best.”
― Nikola Tesla
“One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.”
― Nikola Tesla
#dailyrituals #inktober #NikolaTesla @masoncurrey
