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- 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
- “I don’t represent anything.” — Liz Phair
- “I don’t really know why, but danger has always been an important thing in my life – to see how far I could lean without falling, how fast I could go without cracking up.” — William Holden
- “Some syllables are swords.” — Metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan
- “To me, music is no joke and it’s not for sale.” — Ian MacKaye
- “All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl.” — Charlie Chaplin
- “As a cinematographer, I was always attracted to stories that have the potential to be told with as few words as possible.” — Reed Morano
- “Even though I’m writing about very dark material, it still feels like an escape hatch.” — Olivia Laing
- “It’s just one of the mysteries of filmmaking that sometimes you do something that you don’t even think it’s important, then it turns out to be.” — Lili Horvát
- “Ballet taught me to stay close to style and tone. Literature taught me to be concerned about the moral life.” — Joan Acocella
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- sheila on “For I am of the seed of the WELCH WOMAN and speak the truth from my heart.” — Christopher Smart
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- Bryce on The Books: “Nine Stories”- ‘The Laughing Man’ (J.D. Salinger)
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Category Archives: writers
“That’s the Irish People all over – they treat a serious thing as a joke and a joke as a serious thing.” — Seán O’Casey, Shadow of a Gunman
“You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea; you cannot put an idea up against the barrack-square wall and riddle it with bullets; you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell your slaves could ever build.” … Continue reading
It’s the birthday of “The Woman Who Wouldn’t Forget”: Iris Chang
Iris Chang’s research into the atrocities committed by the Japanese on the Chinese people – particularly Chinese women – during the “rape of Nanking” in 1937 – much of it dug out of buried archives and brought to light for … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged China, Iris Chang, Japan, nonfiction, war, WWII
1 Comment
“As an outsider I was free to pick my own literary traditions, to build my own system of literary values.” — Dubravka Ugrešić
“Retouching is our favourite artistic device. Each of us is a curator in his own museum…Uncover A, cover up B. Remove all spots. Keep your mouth shut. Think of your tongue as a weapon. Think one thing and say another. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Croatia, Dubravka Ugrešić, fiction, nonfiction, war, Yugoslavia
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“Attention equals Life.” — Frank O’Hara
“I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.” – poet Frank O’Hara It’s his birthday today. First up: I launched my column at Film Comment with a piece about American poet Frank O’Hara’s love of … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, Elizabeth Bishop, Frank O'Hara, Joan Acocella, Lana Turner, Michael Schmidt
18 Comments
“Make voyages! — Attempt them! — there’s nothing else …” — Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier Williams) was born on this day in Columbus, Mississippi in 1911. Will you do a total stranger the kindness of reading his verse? Thank you! Thomas Lanier Williams — Tennessee Williams, letter to editor Harriet Monroe, … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, Theatre, writers
Tagged A Streetcar Named Desire, Elia Kazan, Glass Menagerie, Laurette Taylor, Marlon Brando, scripts, Tennessee Williams
25 Comments
“Too many poets delude themselves by thinking the mind is dangerous and must be left out. Well, the mind is dangerous, and must be left in.” — Robert Frost
“[The poem] begins in delight, it inclines to the impulse, it assumes direction with the first line laid down, it runs a course of lucky events, and ends in a clarification of life–not necessarily a great clarification, such as sects … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Elizabeth Bishop, Ezra Pound, Harold Bloom, Marianne Moore, Michael Schmidt, poetry, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens
5 Comments
“I did not begin to write poetry in earnest until the really emotional part of my life was over.” — poet A.E. Housman
OUCH. He was born in 1859 and he died in 1936. His generation saw so much change it boggles the mind, and I say that as a member of a generation who grew up sans internet – I didn’t get … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged England, George Orwell, Harold Bloom, Hugh MacDiarmid, Lanford Wilson, Michael Schmidt, Philip Larkin, poetry, William Faulkner
1 Comment
“The worst enemy of truth and freedom in our society is the compact majority.” — Henrik Ibsen
It’s his birthday today. Some posts from my archive: This is a doozy, an excerpt from an amazing book made up of transcribed lectures on Ibsen, Chekhov and Strindberg, by legendary actress and acting teacher Stella Adler. It’s a great … Continue reading
Posted in James Joyce, On This Day, Theatre, writers
Tagged Clifford Odets, Henrik Ibsen, Lee Strasberg, Norway, scripts, Stella Adler
4 Comments
“In the beginning I never found poems in the American literary pantheon about the things I knew best. I decided that I would at least do my part and try to put some of those poems in there.” — Rhode Island’s first poet laureate, Michael Harper
“My poems are rhythmic rather than metric; the pulse is jazz; the tradition generally oral; my major influences musical; my debts, mostly to the musicians who taught me to see about experience, pain and love, and who made it artful … Continue reading
“Life was bitter and I was not. All around me was poverty and sordidness but I refused to see it that way. By turning it into jokes, I made it bearable.” — Max Shulman
It’s Max Shulman’s birthday. Who the hell is Max Shulman, some of you may ask? He was one of the most popular humorists of his day, who reached his peak of popularity in the 1950s. He’s the guy who created … Continue reading