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- 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
- “I don’t represent anything.” — Liz Phair
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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
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- “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 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
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- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
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- sheila on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
- Mike Molloy on 2026 Shakespeare Reading Project: Much Ado About Nothing
- sheila on March 2026 Snapshots
- sheila on “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
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- Helen Erwin Schinske on “To me, music is no joke and it’s not for sale.” — Ian MacKaye
- Maddy on “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
- sheila on “To me, music is no joke and it’s not for sale.” — Ian MacKaye
- Helen Erwin Schinske on “To me, music is no joke and it’s not for sale.” — Ian MacKaye
- Joseph Pedulla on Susan Hayward Sleeps Raw
- sheila on “For I am of the seed of the WELCH WOMAN and speak the truth from my heart.” — Christopher Smart
- P Nickel on “The realization of ignorance is the first act of knowing.” — Jean Toomer
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- Bryce on The Books: “Nine Stories”- ‘The Laughing Man’ (J.D. Salinger)
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Tag Archives: Evelyn Waugh
A Handful of Dust, by Evelyn Waugh
Poor Tony Last. All he wants to do is live the life of a country squire, the life his father lived, his grandfather, and so on, puttering about the massive garden, going to church, and sitting across from his wife … Continue reading
Waugh Is Me
The generous James Wolcott at Vanity Fair has used my post on Brideshead Revisited as a launching-off point for his own revisitation of that Waugh classic. Speaking of Waugh, yesterday I finished the wacky and terribly sad (and also terribly … Continue reading
Brideshead Revisited, By Evelyn Waugh: “My Theme Is Memory, That Winged Host”
Edmund Wilson said of Evelyn Waugh: His style has the desperate jauntiness of an orchestra fiddling away for dear life on a sinking ship. I have been on a big Waugh kick over the last couple of years, reading Scoop, … Continue reading
Intimidation
Before I went to Block Island I was given some advice by a very wise man: 1. Don’t drink. He told me, “I did a winter-beach-writing thing too and you lose track of time, so I’d pour myself a scotch … Continue reading
Some Island snapshots
— “I cannot imagine how a casual reference to Suetonius and Petronius Arbiter can be construed into evidence of a desire to impress by an assumption of superior knowledge. I should fancy that the most ordinary of scholars is perfectly … Continue reading
Posted in Personal
Tagged Andrei Tarkovsky, Block Island, Christopher Walken, Deborah Kerr, E.E. Cummings, Emily Dickinson, Evelyn Waugh, Frank Capra, Gary Cooper, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Hope, In a Lonely Place, Keri Hulme, Oscar Wilde, Patricia Neal, snapshots, T.S. Eliot, The Bone People
10 Comments
Book Meme: Pick One
Hard to pick one answer for each. Got this from Ted. One book youâre currently reading: I am only reading one. I cannot read fiction right now. I can barely read, if you want to know the truth, but I … Continue reading
Posted in Books
Tagged Charlotte Bronte, Crime and Punishment, Evelyn Waugh, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Geek Love, Harriet the Spy, Helter Skelter, Jane Eyre, Katherine Dunn, Leo Tolstoy, Louise Fitzhugh, Mating, Norman Rush, Nureyev, Scoop, Villette, Vincent Bugliosi, War and Peace, William Shakespeare
14 Comments
Snapshots
— Shoeshine guy called out at a passerby, a middle-aged man with greying hair, “Young man! You are in a sorry situation, my friend!” I glanced at the man’s shoes, and saw that they were brown and horribly scuffed. It … Continue reading
The New Brideshead And the Whole Waugh Thing in General
Really interesting article about the so-far-unsuccessful attempts to bring Evelyn Waugh’s various books to the screen (big and small). I remember the Brideshead miniseries – anyone who was alive at that time HAD to be aware of it – it … Continue reading
Family: What We All Are Reading
Bren: re-reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (with bonus content): A Novel Jean: reading The End of the Affair, and also Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli Dad: reading The Far Side of the World (he finished Treason’s Harbour) Siobhan: … Continue reading

