July 2012
86 posts
“The economic pressures have also turned into intellectual pressures. When humans...”
– One university professor’s poignant meditation on leaving academia.
The above excerpt explains a tragic lot today, well beyond education, including the precarious non-future of space exploration.
“I had lines inside me, a string of guiding lights. I had language. Fiction and...”
– Jeanette Winterson (via writersrelief)
Someone told me that when you write fiction, you should tell the story of the worst thing that could happen to you.
On the surface, that’s good advice, but what it really it’s asking the writer to do is come up with a worst-case scenario, craft it a well a possible and hope that the truly worst thing never comes true: That you have no story worth reading.
“If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type...”
– Isaac Asimov
1 tag
“The Last Reconciliation
The girl was sitting on the front steps, next to the...”
“The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe...”
– Ernest Hemingway (via irisblasi)
“I have one book I’d like to write, and the rest will have to be done to pay the...”
– Hunter S. Thompson, Interview with High Times, 1977 (via briankeene)
“Would you want to read a war novel called Love Is One Fervent Fire? Or Death...”
– 47 Endings Can’t Ruin A Great Novel: Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms by Michael Bourne (via millionsmillions)
“You can’t have profanity if there are no prudes left to be shocked by it.”
– Geoff Nunberg, “Swearing: A Long And #$%#$% History” (via nprfreshair)
“There is a great deal that either has to be given up or be taken away from you...”
– 15 years of Susan Sontag’s thoughts on writing, culled from her newly released diaries. (via explore-blog)
“A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not...”
– Tchaikovsky on work ethic vs. inspiration, a must-read for any creator. (via explore-blog)
“Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the...”
– T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men (via cloudedpages)
Dawson's Geek: Thoughts on Grief →
undergeekdawson:
I don’t think we ever heal. Not really. These things…these big, real things. Death, heartbreak. The grieving process isn’t a healing process…it’s a scarring process. These things mark you forever, become part of you. Tough, thick scars marking up your insides. Reshaping what’s inside you. Whatever…
“Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some...”
– Orhan Pamuk, The New Life (via bookoasis)
what do you want for your birthday?: books
what do you want for christmas?: books
what do you want for valentines day?: books
what do you want from the grocery?: books
what do you want to buy if you won the lottery?: books
“Before we can find the answer — before we can even know the question — we must...”
– Jonah Lehrer on the importance of frustration in the creative process, animated by NYPL artist-in-residence Flash Rosenberg. (via explore-blog)
1 tag
Still Life with Guinness
“So, this is Davey Byrnes?” I asked. I looked around the crowded old pub at the bronze birds and the stained glass and the rugby on TV. I looked anywhere, anywhere but at him.
“Yes. Here you go, Dublin’s finest stout. Not quite the burgundy and goat cheese sandwich that Leopold Bloom had, but quite nice, just the same.” He set the pint glasses on the...
“Show me a published writer, and I will show you a person who has kept on writing...”
– Richard Laymon, A Writer’s Tale
“I’d wish the reader, in the course of falling into one of my stories, to grow...”
– Steven Millhauser from this excellent interview by Marc Chénetier. I’ve been reading and re-reading his masterful short stories lately. (via crashinglybeautiful)
“The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because...”
– French polymath Henri Poincaré, who has previously shared keen insights on how the inventor’s mind works.
(↬ It’s Okay To Be Smart)
“Of course anyone who truly loves books buys more of them than he or she can hope...”
– David Quammen (via thelifeofabookjunky)
Yes.
“Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to...”
– Francis Bacon on studies – timeless and timelier than ever.
3 tags
What will you do?
What will you do to prove your grit, your intent, your Love to the universe, the Buddhas, the Almighty, the deities of your choice? Because if you want it bad enough, you’ll have to bleed for it. Not for me, or your 9th grade composition teacher, or even your parents. You answer to a higher authority.
And eventually, you will come to realize that you answer to no one but the harshest and...
“Reading, almost as much as breathing, is our essential function.”
– from A HISTORY OF READING by Alberto Manguel
“The useless days will add up to something….These things are your becoming.”
– Tiny Beautiful Things – advice on love and life from the inimitable Dear Sugar of The Rumpus fame.
“The person who wins the Nobel Prize is not the person who read the most journal...”
– Noam Chomsky on the purpose of education
“The text is not in control. Certainly the writer is not in control of what the...”
– China Miéville
“It always shocked me when I realised that I wasn’t the only person in the world...”
– John Green (via saddest-summer)
