Categories
Archives
-
-
-
-
Recent Posts
- Review: The Chronology of Water (2025)
- Review: Come Closer (2025)
- “Even to this day, I watch The Wizard of Oz like I did when I was five years old. I get really involved in it.” — Lynne Ramsay
- “Elvis may be the King of Rock and Roll, but I am the Queen.” — Little Richard
- “The ability to think for one’s self depends upon one’s mastery of the language.” — Joan Didion
- NYFCC 2025 winners
- A Streetcar Named Desire: That’s What Williams Wrote. Deal With It.
- “Intellect and taste count, but I cut with my feelings.” — legendary editor Dede Allen
- “My aesthetic is that of the sniper on the roof.” — Jean-Luc Godard
- “I have trouble working off things that are too preconceived, like storyboards.” — Terrence Malick
Recent Comments
- mutecypher on Review: The Chronology of Water (2025)
- Krsten Westergaard on “I thought girls in their teens might like to read [Anne of Green Gables], that was the only audience I hoped to reach.” — L.M. Montgomery
- Gemstone on “Well, if I can’t be happy, I can be useful, perhaps.” — Louisa May Alcott
- Jincy Willett on The Books: “Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on My Life, Love, and Leading Roles” (Kathleen Turner)
- Son on Boyhood (2014); directed by Richard Linklater
- Matheus on “I’m not the person I was at 28. The passion is still there but the rage mostly isn’t.” — Marshall Mathers
- mutecypher on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- mutecypher on “There’s nothing you can tell me about guilt.” — Martin Scorsese
- sheila on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- Mike Molloy on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- sheila on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- Mike Molloy on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- sheila on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- sheila on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- sheila on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- Lyrie on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- Mike Molloy on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- Lyrie on Frankenstein, Mary Shelley, and Guillermo del Toro: a live event
- Melissa Sutherland on Review: Die My Love (2025)
- Gale on For John Wayne’s Birthday: Hondo (1953) at MoMA: John Wayne in 3D
-
Tag Archives: nonfiction
“The ability to think for one’s self depends upon one’s mastery of the language.” — Joan Didion
It’s her birthday today. Someone said that Didion’s (seemingly) simple sentences are like a perfect puzzle. If you remove one line from a paragraph, everything falls apart. Her writing is that well-constructed. She was a notoriously painstaking self-editor. She would … Continue reading
“People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don’t need politics, they have jobs.” — P.J. O’Rourke
It’s his birthday today. P.J. O’Rourke’s sentences were masterpieces. Airtight. For example: “Wherever there’s injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it’s happening.” Or: “Sloths move at the speed … Continue reading
“A mind which really lays hold of a subject is not easily detached from it.” — journalist Ida Tarbell
It’s a good day to think about unchecked power. Power needs people out there to check it. It’s a good day to acknowledge that the world – its money and resources – is dominated by a multi-national cadre of fat … Continue reading
“Given as much to the gutter as to the gods” — Nick Tosches
“He was born alone. He would die alone. These truths, he, like every punk, took to heart. But in him they framed another truth, another solitary, stubborn stone in the eye of nothing. There was something, a knowing, in him … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged Dean Martin, Elvis Presley, essays, Jerry Lee Lewis, Jerry Lewis, Nick Tosches, nonfiction
8 Comments
“I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.” — Truman Capote
It’s his birthday today. In Cold Blood put him on the map for all time. His journalism/literature hybrid told the terrifying story of a random murder in Holcomb, Kansas, where an entire family was annihilated in their own home, for … Continue reading
“Paper, tobacco, food, and a little whiskey.” — William Faulkner on his writing requirements
“The writer’s only responsibility is to his art. He will be completely ruthless if he is a good one. He has a dream. It anguishes him so much he must get rid of it. He has no peace until then. … Continue reading
Posted in Books, Movies, On This Day, writers
Tagged nonfiction, Robert Duvall, William Faulkner
12 Comments
“Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” — H.L. Mencken
“You know what H.L. Mencken said one time about religious people? He said he’d been greatly misunderstood. He said he didn’t hate them. He simply found them comical.” – Kurt Vonnegut Today is the birthday of one of the greatest … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged A Mencken Chrestomathy, essays, H.L. Mencken, nonfiction
12 Comments
“You can understand a lot about yourself by working out which fairytale you use to present your world to yourself in.” — A.S. Byatt
I didn’t mark the passing of A.S. Byatt last year when it happened. I was overwhelmed with work at the time. But I did take a moment … a very still and silent moment … to reflect on her, on … Continue reading
Posted in Books, On This Day, writers
Tagged A.S. Byatt, fiction, George Eliot, nonfiction, Possession
Leave a comment
“Free Enterprise. The American Dream. Horatio Alger gone mad on drugs in Las Vegas. Do it now. Pure Gonzo journalism.” — Hunter S. Thompson
One of my favorite writers of all time. It’s his birthday today. Here he is on his favorite meal of the day: “I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon; anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs … 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, nonfiction, politics, Robert Conquest, Russia, Sergei Kirov, Stalin, The Great Terror, war
3 Comments