Recommended Reading / 21.

Every Monday, words to start the week. 

This week, a snippet from Alan Light's interview with Patti Smith on Medium: "The thing that bothered me the most was when I had to return to the public eye in ’95 or ’96 when my husband died. We lived a very simple lifestyle in a more reclusive way in which he was king of our domain. I don’t drive, I didn’t have much of an income, and without him, I had to find a way of making a living. Besides working in a bookstore, the only thing I knew how to do was to make records—or to write poetry, which isn’t going to help put your kids through school. But when I started doing interviews, people kept saying 'Well, you didn’t do anything in the 80s,' and I just want to get Elvis Presley’s gun out and shoot the television out of their soul. How could you say that? The conceit of people, to think that if they’re not reading about you in a newspaper or magazine, then you’re not doing anything...It makes me understand why some human beings question their worth if they’re not making a huge amount of money or aren’t famous, and that’s not right." (Image by Annie Leibovitz.)

Find the rest of the interview, here.

A few more, just because:
-On girls and the color pink.
-Advice from Haruki Murakami.
-Play-Doh photos and Legos made of wood.
-From Alain de Botton's The Architecture of Happiness: "It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things."

More recommended reading, here. Have a happy Monday!