January 2012
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“So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the...”
– Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild
[I’ve posted this before, but it is so worth another look!]
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“You know, it’s hard work to write a book. I can’t tell you how many...”
– Ellen DeGeneres; The Funny Thing Is…
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“He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the...”
– Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Habits of a Reader
whispering-literature:
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“Writers don’t merely write words. They take existing words put them...”
– TBV
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“Speaking personally, you can have my gun, but you’ll take my book when you pry...”
– Stephen King
“Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable...”
– Carl Jung (via dewdropsoflove)
“Books are both our luxuries and our daily bread.”
– Henry Stevens (via fsgbooks)
W. W. Norton: First Lines from New Books Out... →
wwnorton:
“More than forty years ago, a wave of popular fascination with a musical group distinguished by youth, charm, great talent, and exceptional hair was dubbed a form of ‘mania’ by the press. We have not seen such a case of mania again…until recently, with the emergence of ‘Dudamania,’ which…
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“The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion,...”
– Dave Barry; Dave Barry Turns Fifty
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David Foster Wallace's 10 favorite books →
[I’ve read various literary critics declare that they thought Wallace gave this list as tongue in cheek or that perhaps he was trying to make a point about what we read. I’m not sure any of these suggestions are warranted. I do know, after a year or so of listening to interviews, reading Wallace, and hearing him make various statements about how some popular authors and their work are...
“And it is this, I think, that makes Kafka’s wit inaccessible to children whom...”
– David Foster Wallace (via musicwordscolourslights)
[Why did DFW have to die? He was so crucial to literary thinking!]
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“Writing is a form of therapy; sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write,...”
– Graham Greene
The success of failure: Pulitzer winner's... →
marynelson8:
When Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan writes a novel, it may go through 50 or 60 drafts.
The first one begins simply. She sits down with a legal pad and an open mind, deliberately creating by hand. She attempts to write about a half-dozen pages a day. At some point, the first draft is done.
Then comes, as she puts it, the “unpleasant tasks.”
From a CNN weekly series on...
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“Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things...”
– Julian Barnes; Flaubert’s Parrot
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“When Dostoevsky met Dickens in 1862 — a meeting that is hard to imagine —...”
– Verlyn Klinkenborg, “The Whirling Sound of Planet Dickens” (via fwriction)
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“If you ask me what I came to do in this world, I, an artist, will answer you: I...”
– Émile Zola
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“Human ignorance will eventually enslave humanity. If we don’t know or...”
– TBV in response to PIPA/SOPA.