Authors on Deadlines

Six Bits of Wisdom

“Are you aware that rushing toward a goal is a sublimated death wish? It’s no coincidence we call them deadlines.” -Tom Robbins-
“One forges one’s style on the terrible anvil of daily deadlines.” -Emile Zola-
“Going off the grid is always good for me. It’s the way I’ve started books and finished books and gotten myself out of deadline dooms and things.” -Neil Gaiman-

“With the movies, people are not going to wait around. The deadline is a deadline. In publishing it’s more a polite suggestion.” -David Benioff-
“Like all writers, my greatest inspiration, my ultimate muse is a deadline.” -Dave Barry-
“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” -Douglas Adams-

-K-

16 Sep 2022 0

Wisdom of Walker Percy

Six Points to Ponder

“I have discovered that most people have no one to talk to, no one, that is, who really wants to listen.”

“There is a difference between the way things are and saying the way things are.”

“Everydayness is the enemy.”

Walker Percy (Bern and Franke Keating Collection)

“No doubt human brotherhood is better than a depersonalized society. But a depersonalized society is better than one threatened by violence.”

“But envy is not merely sorrow at another’s good it is also joy at another’s misfortune.”

“The enduring is something which must be accounted for. One cannot simply shrug it off.”

-K-

15 Aug 2022 0

Authors on Coffee and Cigarettes II

Another Nickel’s Worth of Wisdom

“It is inhumane, in my opinion, to force people who have a genuine medical need for coffee to wait behind people who apparently view it as some kind of recreational activity.”-Dave Barry-

“Cigarettes are a classy way to commit suicide.” -Kurt Vonnegut

“Don’t stir all the warmth out of your coffee; drink it.” -Kate Chopin-

“Some very considerable part of the gestural language of public places that had once belonged to cigarettes now belonged to phones.” -William Gibson-

“I like coffee exceedingly…” -H.P. Lovecraft-

-K-

20 Jul 2022 0

Authors on Vanishing II

Five More Pieces of Fleeting Advice

“I cannot help vanishing and disappearing and dissolving. It is my foremost trait. -Stephen Crane-
“One way or another, it seems, we all perform vanishing tricks, effacing history, locking up our lives and slipping day by day into the graying shadows.” -Tim O’Brien-
“I do have a sense, and I’ve never not had it, of how easily things can vanish.” -Doris Lessing-

“I have a sense of melancholy isolation, life rapidly vanishing, all the usual things. It’s very strange how often strong feelings don’t seem to carry any message of action.” -Phillip Larkin-
“The past itself, as historical change continues to accelerate, has become the most surreal of subjects-making it possible…to see a new beauty in what is vanishing.” -Susan Sontag-

-K-

15 Jun 2022 0

Authors on Night

Six Bits of Wisdom

“What hath night to do with sleep?” -John Milton-

“No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this windy place.” -Edna St. Vincent Millay-

“At night we are all strangers, even to ourselves.” -Alexander McCall Smith

“No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and dear his heart and eye the morning can be.” -Bram Stoker-

“Night, the mother of fear and mystery, was coming upon me.” -H.G. Wells-

“Beware the night, child. All cats are black in the dark.” -Jean Genet-

-K-

1 Jun 2022 0

Going Home: The Mix Tape

1. “I Wanna Drive You Home”—ZZ Top

2. “I’m Going Back Home”—Nina Simone

4. “Long Way Home”—Scrapomatic

3. “Darling Be Home Soon”—Joe Cocker

5. “Sweet Home Chicago”—The Blues Brothers

6. “Midnight Train to Georgia”—Gladys Knight and The Pips

7. “Country Girl”—Carolina Chocolate Drops

8. “Coney Island”—Van Morrison

9. “Departure Bay”—Diana Krall

10. “Daddy Played the Banjo”—Steve Martin

-K-

6 Apr 2022 0

Authors on Home

Six Bits of Wisdom

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” -Robert Frost-

“You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you can never go back.” -James Baldwin-

“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.” -William Faulkner-

“Home is the nicest word there is.” -Laura Ingalls Wilder

“A home without a cat–and a well-fed, well-petted and properly revered cat–may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?” -Mark Twain-

“Home may well be where the heart is but it’s no place to spend Wednesday afternoon.” -Walker Percy-

-K-

30 Mar 2022 0

Wisdom of James Joyce

Five Bits to Ponder for St. Patrick’s Day

“There’s no friends like old friends.”
“…and yet her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.”
“The light music of whisky falling into glasses made an agreeable interlude.”

“I wanted real adventures to happen to myself. But real adventures do not happen to people who remain home: they must be sought abroad.”
“One by one they were all becoming shades. Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion than fade and wither dismally with age.”

-K-

17 Mar 2022 0