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- “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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Category Archives: writers
“I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.” — Jack Kerouac
It’s his birthday today. In Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe paints a pretty brutal picture of Jack Kerouac, at a party in New York, when the Hippie Bus rolled into town. (Robert Stone was also at that party. He … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, fiction, Jack Kerouac, James Salter
4 Comments
“Silence is necessary to tyrants and occupiers, who take pains to have their actions accompanied by quiet.” — Ryszard Kapuściński
It’s the birthday today of one of my favorite writers, Polish journalist and author Ryszard Kapuściński. His death in 2007 was devastating to me. I went to the memorial tribute at the New York Public Library, hosted by his close … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Ethiopia, Iran, nonfiction, Poland, politics, Russia, Ryszard Kapuściński, war
7 Comments
“I was going upstream, against the current. I was coming from the North before the North had broken”. — John Montague
It’s his birthday today. John Montague has great sentimental value to me. He was one of my father’s favorite poets. I remember being at home – some years ago, it had to be pre-covid (sob) – and Mum pulled out … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Ireland, Irish poetry, John Montague, poetry
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“What a writer asks of his reader is not so much to like as to listen.” — poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“He suffered excessive popularity; he has now suffered three quarters of a century of critical neglect.” – Michael Schmidt, Lives of the Poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was born on this day in 1807, in Portland, Maine. He was the first … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Harold Bloom, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, L.M. Montgomery, Michael Schmidt, Paul Revere, poetry, Walt Whitman
6 Comments
“I recognize no rights but human rights.” — Angelina Weld Grimké
“The ground upon which you stand is holy ground: never never surrender it.” — Angelina Weld Grimké Poet/playwright Angelina Weld Grimké, born on this day in 1880, had a powerful familial legacy. Her paternal grandparents were a white slave owner … Continue reading
“Everything I’ve ever let go of has claw marks on it.” — David Foster Wallace
“Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it’d find a way both to depict this world and to illuminate the possibilities for being alive and human in it.” — David Foster Wallace It’s his … Continue reading
“I love humanity but I hate people.” — poet Edna St. Vincent Millay
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on this day in 1892 in Rockland, Maine. “Boys don’t like me anyway because I won’t let them kiss me. It’s just like this: let boys kiss you and they’ll like you but you … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elinor Wylie, Elizabeth Bishop, poetry
16 Comments
“Never write from your head; write from your cock.” — Wystan Hugh Auden
W.H. Auden was born on this day in York, England, 1907. I first encountered Auden in my “Humanities” class, senior year in high school. I got a lot out of that class, and I remember we analyzed Auden’s famous most-anthologized … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, Christopher Hitchens, Dylan Thomas, Elizabeth Bishop, England, George Orwell, Hamlet, Harold Bloom, Hugh MacDiarmid, J.R.R. Tolkien, Lord Tennyson, Louis MacNeice, Marianne Moore, Michael Schmidt, Philip Larkin, poetry, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes, Thomas Hardy, W.H. Auden, William Shakespeare
23 Comments