Categories
Archives
-
-
-
Recent Posts
- “Where am I coming from? Where am I going? A fusillade of question marks.” — Belfast Poet Ciarán Carson
- September 2024 Viewing Diary
- “I grew up believing that I was fundamentally powerless.” — Thom Yorke
- Dynamic Duo #41
- “I want to live, not pose!” — Carole Lombard
- “When I get into that studio, I’m in another world. I love it. When I’m performing, that’s the real me.” — Billy Lee Riley
- “If someone spends his life writing the truth without caring for the consequences, he inevitably becomes a political authority in a totalitarian regime.” — Václav Havel
- “All my life I have been happiest when the folks watching me said to each other, `Look at the poor dope, wilya?” — Buster Keaton
- Temporary
- “The problem with taking amps to a shop is that they come back sounding like another amp.” — Stevie Ray Vaughan
Recent Comments
- Dan on The Books: “At Swim-Two-Birds” (Flann O’Brien)
- Claire Voyanci on “I hold back nothing.” – Anne Sexton
- sheila on Temporary
- Melissa Sutherland on Temporary
- sheila on “I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.” — Truman Capote
- kristen on “I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.” — Truman Capote
- Kimberly McNair on “I put my soul through the ink.” — Proof
- sheila on “I didn’t think then, and I still don’t, that I was actually sick.” — Frances Farmer
- sheila on “I didn’t think then, and I still don’t, that I was actually sick.” — Frances Farmer
- sheila on “I didn’t think then, and I still don’t, that I was actually sick.” — Frances Farmer
- sheila on R.I.P. Maggie Smith
- Gemstone on “I didn’t think then, and I still don’t, that I was actually sick.” — Frances Farmer
- Gemstone on “I didn’t think then, and I still don’t, that I was actually sick.” — Frances Farmer
- Aisha Sharma on R.I.P. Maggie Smith
- sheila on “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” — Stephen King
- sheila on “I didn’t think then, and I still don’t, that I was actually sick.” — Frances Farmer
- sheila on “I didn’t think then, and I still don’t, that I was actually sick.” — Frances Farmer
- Matheus on Two Eminem News Items
- Gemstone on “If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.” — Stephen King
- Lyrie on “I didn’t think then, and I still don’t, that I was actually sick.” — Frances Farmer
-
Tag Archives: England
July 2024 Viewing Diary
Anyone But You (2023; d. Will Gluck) The fascination with Glen Powell continues. I’ve seen this maybe four times now? The NY Times did a whole ROUNDTABLE about Glen Powell, like: what is going on with this guy? It’s like … Continue reading
Posted in Monthly Viewing Diary, Movies, Television
Tagged action movies, Ben Gazzara, coming of age, documentary, drama, England, France, Gena Rowlands, Glen Powell, historical drama, horror, Ireland, Italy, Joan Blondell, John Cassavetes, Mary Shelley, Opening Night, romantic comedy, sci-fi
Leave a comment
“Poets, the best of them, are a very chameleonic race.” — Percy Bysshe Shelley
Drive my dead thoughts over the universe Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth! And, by the incantation of this verse, Scatter, as from an unextinguish’d hearth Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind! Be through my lips to … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, Dorothy Parker, England, Ernest Hemingway, Gerard Manley Hopkins, H.L. Mencken, Harold Bloom, John Keats, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Matthew Arnold, Michael Schmidt, Percy Bysshe Shelley, poetry, Robert Graves, T.S. Eliot, Tennessee Williams, W.B. Yeats, W.H. Auden, William Carlos Williams
14 Comments
Happy Birthday, Emily Brontë: “a solitude-loving raven, no gentle dove”
“My sister Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; — out of a sullen hollow in a livid hill-side, her mind could make an Eden. She found in the … Continue reading
“I do not write for the public.” — poet Gerard Manley Hopkins
“I shall shortly have some sonnets to send you, five or more. Four of these came like inspirations unbidden and against my will. And in the life I lead now, which is one of a continually jaded and harassed mind, … Continue reading
“The behavior of any bureaucratic organization can best be understood by assuming that it is controlled by a secret cabal of its enemies.” –Robert Conquest
“I think once you accept that you have the answer to everything, you can do anything to bring it about because your enemies are trying to stop you, are enemies of reason, of truth of everything – enemies of the … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged England, Kirov, politics, Robert Conquest, Russia, Stalin, The Great Terror, war
4 Comments
“I knew that I had a facility with words and a power of facing unpleasant facts.” — George Orwell
Orwell was born on this day. When Animal Farm was released in a new edition, Christopher Hitchens (one of THE people you need to read if you want to understand Orwell, besides Orwell himself), wrote specifically about the quote from … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged 1984, Animal Farm, England, George Orwell, politics, Russia, war
6 Comments
“Language most shows a man. Speak that I may see thee.” — Ben Jonson
“O rare Benn Johnson.” — Jonson’s incorrectly-spelled epitaph in Westminster Abbey It’s his birthday today. Ben Jonson did everything. Plays, poems, satires, elegies, epigrams. His talent was wide and flexible. Everything he wrote feels inevitable. However, as Michael Schmidt writes … Continue reading
“Literature is the written expression of revolt against expected things.” Happy Birthday to the least happy man ever, Thomas Hardy
“A certain provincialism of feeling is invaluable. It is the essence of individuality, and is largely made up of that crude enthusiasm without which no great thoughts are thought, no great deeds done.” — Thomas Hardy That quote above from … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Camille Paglia, D.H. Lawrence, England, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Harold Bloom, Lord Tennyson, Michael Schmidt, Philip Larkin, poetry, Seamus Heaney, Stephen King, T.S. Eliot, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy, W.H. Auden
4 Comments
“My dear child, I’m sure we shall be allowed to laugh in Heaven!” — Edward Lear
Edward Lear (the “father of nonsense”) was born on this day in 1812 in London. I could recite from memory a lot of his stuff when I was pretty close to the age I was in the “candid” photo above. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Edward Lear, England, George Orwell, poetry
15 Comments