[B]ooks are objects of beauty, not just information. Those who appreciate that beauty–in the cover, in the deckle edge, in the smell of the paper–may be the ones to save paper books.
Category Archives: Quotes
The way people speak without listening
How to define the timeless, seductive allure of Chekhov? Part of it lies in his elusiveness, subtlety, adroit dialogue, precise descriptions and confident use of understatement. Unlike Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, there is no sermonising, no extremes. He never tells us what to think. There are no heroes. There is little action. Chekhov instead makes telling use, as Eudora Welty once noted, of the way people speak without listening to each other. No one grasps the relevance of the untidy present better than Chekhov.
By-products
I was having a conversation with a writer the other day, and he stated that the best things are always by-products. Happiness is a by-product, and I loved that he said that. You can plot your journey to success or happiness or wealth or whatever it is you’re looking for, but if you’re too focused on the end result, you’re going to miss anything good going on around you.
A part of the story
[C]reative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exist more interesting and, often, more accessible.
…
In creative nonfiction, writers can be poetic and journalistic simultaneously. Creative nonfiction writers are encouraged to utilize literary and even cinematic techniques, from scene to dialogue to description to point of view, to write about themselves and others, capturing real people and real life in ways that can and have changed the world. What is most important and enjoyable about creative nonfiction is that it not only allows but also encourages the writer to become a part of the story or essay being written. The personal involvement creates a special magic that alleviates the suffering and anxiety of the writing experience; it provides many outlets for satisfaction and self-discovery, flexibility and freedom.
Heroes
2. ” Heroes” are just people you haven’t trashed on the internet yet. [ALTERNATIVELY: “HEROES” ARE JUST PEOPLE WHO HAVEN’T TRASHED YOU ON THE INTERNET YET. YOU CAN CHOOSE.]
1. Don’t read the comments.
Rebound
When a book I love is ending—no matter how devastating the final pages, no matter how desperate I am to know how things will turn out, and what the very last line will say to me—I slow down. Like a kid on a bike heading downhill, I use both my brakes and my feet, let the rubber soles burn off, will the book to magically grow longer before my eyes.
One musn’t wait too long before committing to the next book, though: this is how reading ruts begin. …
What I need is a rebound book, a palate cleanser. Maybe today I’ll search for a thick-but-lightweight, no-strings-attached thriller, something that can rope me in quickly, make me forget, at least temporarily, the heartbreak I felt over the last book leaving me.
Jam Sandwiches
I am a bad blogger. Or what could be more kindly termed an indifferent blogger. I only turn up when the fancy takes me and if I were being paid by the hour for this, then my family would be living on jam sandwiches.
Regardless of what story you believe
Personality is not who you think you are, it’s who you are. Some people think by definition that we are the experts on our personality because we get to write the story, but personality is not the story – it’s the reality. So, you do get to write your own story about how you think you are, and what you tell people about yourself, but there still is reality out there, and, guess what? Other people are going to see the reality, regardless of what story you believe.
Somebody Somewhere
I just love this story:
[O]ne week ago today, when the snow was thick and the sky was gray (again), I received the loveliest surprise: an email from a woman who’d been on the editorial staff at Quarterly West 15 years ago, when QW published my little flash piece, “In Theory.”
Currently teaching college workshops in creative writing, she wrote: “I have managed to always keep a copy of that issue close-by so as to teach it, but somewhere in one of my moves, I misplaced my copy.” She wondered if I had a spare I could send.
Who knew? You see, you might think your work falls into a pool and just lies at the dark bottom of the pond like littering leaves, rotting away, but somebody somewhere might have been teaching it for 15 years! You just gotta keep the faith.
Stories have formed us all
I was reminded of Carolyn Heilbrun yesterday when someone mentioned writers who committed suicide.
What matters is that lives do not serve as models; only stories do that. And it is a hard thing to make up stories to live by. We can only retell and live by the stories we have read or heard. We live our lives through texts. They may be read, or chanted, or experienced electronically, or come to us, like the murmurings of our mothers, telling us what the conventions demand. Whatever their form or medium, these stories have formed us all; they are what we must use to make new fictions, new narratives.
—Carolyn Heilbrun
Writing a Woman’s Life (1988, p.37)
The Remainder Table 