August
3, 1920
British
mystery writer and
Conservative
life peer in the House of Lords
“It
was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more
frequently in memory than in life.”
“What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.”
“In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.”
“Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.”
“God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest.”
“What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.”
“There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.”
“We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.”
“I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.”
“If our sex life were determined by our first youthful experiments, most of the world would be doomed to celibacy. In no area of human experience are human beings more convinced that something better can be had only if they persevere.”
“Perhaps it's only when people are dead that we can safely show how much we cared about them. We know that it's too late then for them to do anything about it.”
“We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.”
“Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.”
“Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.”
“What do you mean by sound government?'
Good public order, no corruption in high places, freedom from fear and war and crime, a reasonably equitable distribution of wealth and resources, concern for the individual life.'
Then we haven't got sound government.”
“All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.”
“All Jane Austen novels have a common storyline: an attractive and virtuous young woman surmounts difficulties to achieve marriage to the man of her choice. This is the age-long convention of the romantic novel, but with Jane Austen, what we have is Mills & Boon written by a genius.”
“Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though practicing constantly. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and learn to express that experience in words.”
“The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven't a chance of getting.”
“Bad writing is contagious.”
“All the motives for murder are covered by four Ls: Love, Lust, Lucre and Loathing.”
“What mattered at fifty-eight was what had mattered at eighteen: breeding and good bone structure.”
“What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.”
“In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.”
“Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.”
“God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest.”
“What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.”
“There comes a time when every scientist, even God, has to write off an experiment.”
“We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.”
“I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.”
“If our sex life were determined by our first youthful experiments, most of the world would be doomed to celibacy. In no area of human experience are human beings more convinced that something better can be had only if they persevere.”
“Perhaps it's only when people are dead that we can safely show how much we cared about them. We know that it's too late then for them to do anything about it.”
“We can experience nothing but the present moment, live in no other second of time, and to understand this is as close as we can get to eternal life.”
“Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.”
“Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.”
“What do you mean by sound government?'
Good public order, no corruption in high places, freedom from fear and war and crime, a reasonably equitable distribution of wealth and resources, concern for the individual life.'
Then we haven't got sound government.”
“All fiction is largely autobiographical and much autobiography is, of course, fiction.”
“All Jane Austen novels have a common storyline: an attractive and virtuous young woman surmounts difficulties to achieve marriage to the man of her choice. This is the age-long convention of the romantic novel, but with Jane Austen, what we have is Mills & Boon written by a genius.”
“Learn to write by doing it. Read widely and wisely. Increase your word power. Find your own individual voice though practicing constantly. Go through the world with your eyes and ears open and learn to express that experience in words.”
“The secret of contentment is never to allow yourself to want anything which reason tells you you haven't a chance of getting.”
“Bad writing is contagious.”
“All the motives for murder are covered by four Ls: Love, Lust, Lucre and Loathing.”
“What mattered at fifty-eight was what had mattered at eighteen: breeding and good bone structure.”
~
August
8 -
Author
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
(1896
- 1953)
“A
woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life, to be
thankful for a good one.”
“We cannot live without the Earth or apart from it, and something is shrivelled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men.” ― Cross Creek
“Madness is only a variety of mental nonconformity and we are all individualists here.” ― Cross Creek
“Somewhere beyond the sink-hole, past the magnolia, under the live oaks, a boy and a yearling ran side by side, and were gone forever.” ― The Yearling
“Good" is what helps us or at least does not hinder. "Evil" is whatever harms us or interferes with us, according to our own selfish standards.” ― Cross Creek
“Who owns Cross Creek? The red-birds, I think, more than I, for they will have their nests even in the face of delinquent mortgages..It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed, but not bought. It may be used, but not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its seasonal flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers, and not masters. Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time...” ― Cross Creek
“We were bred of earth before we were bred of our mothers. Once born, we can live without mother or father, or any other kin, or any friend, or any human love. We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shriveled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men.” ― Cross Creek
“Now he understood. This was death. Death was a silence that gave back no answer.” ― The Yearling
“This, then, was hunger. This was what his mother had meant when she had said, “We'll all go hongry.” He had laughed, for he had thought he had known hunger, and it was faintly pleasant. He knew now that it had been only appetite. This was another thing.” ― The Yearling
“We cannot live without the Earth or apart from it, and something is shrivelled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men.” ― Cross Creek
“Madness is only a variety of mental nonconformity and we are all individualists here.” ― Cross Creek
“Somewhere beyond the sink-hole, past the magnolia, under the live oaks, a boy and a yearling ran side by side, and were gone forever.” ― The Yearling
“Good" is what helps us or at least does not hinder. "Evil" is whatever harms us or interferes with us, according to our own selfish standards.” ― Cross Creek
“Who owns Cross Creek? The red-birds, I think, more than I, for they will have their nests even in the face of delinquent mortgages..It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed, but not bought. It may be used, but not owned. It gives itself in response to love and tending, offers its seasonal flowering and fruiting. But we are tenants and not possessors, lovers, and not masters. Cross Creek belongs to the wind and the rain, to the sun and the seasons, to the cosmic secrecy of seed, and beyond all, to time...” ― Cross Creek
“We were bred of earth before we were bred of our mothers. Once born, we can live without mother or father, or any other kin, or any friend, or any human love. We cannot live without the earth or apart from it, and something is shriveled in a man's heart when he turns away from it and concerns himself only with the affairs of men.” ― Cross Creek
“Now he understood. This was death. Death was a silence that gave back no answer.” ― The Yearling
“This, then, was hunger. This was what his mother had meant when she had said, “We'll all go hongry.” He had laughed, for he had thought he had known hunger, and it was faintly pleasant. He knew now that it had been only appetite. This was another thing.” ― The Yearling
~
August
8 -
U.S.
poet Sara
Teasdale
(1884
- 1933)
“I
found more joy in sorrow than you could find in joy.”
“Of my own spirit let me be in sole though feeble mastery.”
“Wisdom is not acquired save as the result of investigation.”
“It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the years can make it wise.”
“Though I know he loves me, tonight my heart is sad; his kiss was not so wonderful as all the dreams I had.”
“A hush is over everything, Silent as women wait for love; The world is waiting for the spring.”
“Life is but thought.”
“I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.”
“When I can look life in the eyes, grown calm and very coldly wise, life will have given me the truth, and taken in exchange - my youth.”
“Life has loveliness to sell, all beautiful and splendid things, blue waves whitened on a cliff, soaring fire that sways and sings, and children's faces looking up, holding wonder like a cup.”
“I have no riches but my thoughts. Yet these are wealth enough for me.”
“Call him wise whose actions, words, and steps are all a clear because to a clear why.”
“No one worth possessing can be quite possessed.”
“There's nothing half so real in life as the things you've done... inexorably, unalterably done.”
“Oh who can tell the range of joy or set the bounds of beauty?”
“Beauty, more than bitterness, makes the heart break.”
“look for a lovely thing and you will find it, it is not far, it never will be far”
“Child, child, love while you can
The voice and the eyes and the soul of a man;
Never fear though it break your heart-
Out of the wound new joy will start;
Only love proudly and gladly and well,
Though love be heaven or love be hell.
Child, child, love while you may,
For life is short as a happy day;
Never fear the thing you feel-
Only by love is life made real;
Love, for the deadly sins are seven,
Only through love will you enter heaven.”
“Of my own spirit let me be in sole though feeble mastery.”
“Wisdom is not acquired save as the result of investigation.”
“It is strange how often a heart must be broken before the years can make it wise.”
“Though I know he loves me, tonight my heart is sad; his kiss was not so wonderful as all the dreams I had.”
“A hush is over everything, Silent as women wait for love; The world is waiting for the spring.”
“Life is but thought.”
“I make the most of all that comes and the least of all that goes.”
“When I can look life in the eyes, grown calm and very coldly wise, life will have given me the truth, and taken in exchange - my youth.”
“Life has loveliness to sell, all beautiful and splendid things, blue waves whitened on a cliff, soaring fire that sways and sings, and children's faces looking up, holding wonder like a cup.”
“I have no riches but my thoughts. Yet these are wealth enough for me.”
“Call him wise whose actions, words, and steps are all a clear because to a clear why.”
“No one worth possessing can be quite possessed.”
“There's nothing half so real in life as the things you've done... inexorably, unalterably done.”
“Oh who can tell the range of joy or set the bounds of beauty?”
“Beauty, more than bitterness, makes the heart break.”
“look for a lovely thing and you will find it, it is not far, it never will be far”
“Child, child, love while you can
The voice and the eyes and the soul of a man;
Never fear though it break your heart-
Out of the wound new joy will start;
Only love proudly and gladly and well,
Though love be heaven or love be hell.
Child, child, love while you may,
For life is short as a happy day;
Never fear the thing you feel-
Only by love is life made real;
Love, for the deadly sins are seven,
Only through love will you enter heaven.”
~
August
12 -
the
author of America
the Beautiful
Katharine
Lee Bates (1859
- 1929)
- O beautiful for spacious skies,
- For amber waves of grain,
- For purple mountain majesties
- Above the fruited plain!
- America! America!
- God shed His grace on thee,
- And crown thy good with brotherhood
- From sea to shining sea!
~
August
12 -
U.S.
mythology writer
Edith
Hamilton
(1867
- 1963)
German-American educator and author who
was“recognized
as the greatest woman Classicist.”
She was sixty-two years old when The
Greek Way,
her first book, was published in 1930. It was instantly successful,
and is the earliest expression of her belief in "“the
calm lucidity of the Greek mind”
and “that
the great thinkers of Athenswere
unsurpassed in their mastery of truth and enlightenment.”
“A people's literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can.”
“Civilization...is a matter of imponderables, of delight in the thins of the mind, of love of beauty, of honor, grace, courtesy, delicate feeling. Where imponderables, are things of first importance, there is the height of civilization, and, if at the same time, the power of art exists unimpaired, human life has reached a level seldom attained and very seldom surpassed.”
“There are few efforts more conducive to humility than that of the translator trying to communicate an incommunicable beauty. Yet, unless we do try, something unique and never surpassed will cease to exist except in the libraries of a few inquisitive book lovers.”
“To be able to be caught up into the world of thought-that is educated.”
“Theories that go counter to the facts of human nature are foredoomed.”
“When the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”
“When the mind withdraws into itself and dispenses with facts it makes only chaos.”
“None but a poet can write a tragedy. For tragedy is nothing less than pain transmuted into exaltation by the alchemy of poetry.”
“Great art is the expression of a solution of the conflict between the demands of the world without and that within.”
~
August
12 -
U.S.
mystery writer
Mary Roberts Rinehart
(1876
– 1958)
author
of The Circular Staircase
“To be kind to all, to like many and love a few, to be needed and wanted by those we love, is certainly the nearest we can come to happiness.”
“The world doesn't come to the clever folks, it comes to the stubborn, obstinate, one-idea-at-a-time people.”
“Love is like the measles. The older you get it, the worse the attack.”
“A little work, a little sleep, a little love and it's all over.”
“I never saw a lawyer yet who would admit he was making money.”
“Women are like dogs really. They love like dogs, a little insistently. And they like to fetch and carry and come back wistfully after hard words, and learn rather easily to carry a basket.”
“I hate those men who would send into war youth to fight and die for them; the pride and cowardice of those old men, making their wars that boys must die.”
“The writing career is not a romantic one. The writer's life may be colorful, but his work itself is rather drab.”
~
August
12
Zerna Sharp (1889
- 1981)
born
in Indiana and the creator of
the
Dick and Jane readers for children
~
August
15 -
Writer Edna Ferber
(1887
- 1968)
Novelist
and playwright Edna Ferber began her writing career as a reporter in
her native Michigan. She soon started to write fiction, and in 1924,
she won the Pulitzer Prize for her novel So
Big.
Ferber was very popular––her book Show
Boat (1926)
became a musical, and Giant (1952)
was made into a movie (James
Dean's
final film). Her plays include Dinner
at Eight and Stage
Door.
“Being an old maid is like death by drowning, a really delightful sensation after you cease to struggle.”
“I never go to weddings. Waste of time. Person can get married a dozen times. Lots of folks do. Family like ours, know everybody in the state of Texas and around outside, why, you could spend your life going to weddings. But a funeral, that's different. You only die once.” - Giant
“Perhaps too much of everything is as bad as too little.”
“Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death – fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.”
“Big doesn't necessarily mean better. Sunflowers aren't better than violets.”
“Whoever said love conquers all was a fool. Because almost everything conquers love - or tries to.” ― Giant
“But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and burgundy, chrysoprase and prophyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that.” ― So Big
“If it's freedom you want, come to Texas. No one there tells you what to do and how you have to do it.” ― Giant
“Any piece of furniture, I don't care how beautiful it is, has got to be lived with, and kicked about, and rubbed down, and mistreated..., and repolished, and knocked around and dusted and sat on or slept in or eaten off of before it develops its real character," Selina said.” ― So Big
“Some day I'll probably marry a horny-handed son of a toil, and if I do it'll be the horny hands that will win me. If you want to know, I like 'em with their scars on them. There's something about a man who has fought for it - I don't know what it is - a look in his eye - the feel of his hand. He needn't have been successful - thought he probably would be. I don't know. I'm not very good at this analysis stuff. I know he - well, you haven't a mark on you. Not a mark. You quit being an architect, or whatever it was, because architecture was an uphill disheartening job at the time. I don't say that you should have kept on. For all I know you were a bum architect. But if you had kept on - if you had loved it enough to keep on - fighting, and struggling, and sitcking it out - why, that fight would show in your face to-day - in your eyes and your jaw and your hands and in your way of standing and walking and sitting and talking. Listen. I'm not critcizing you. But you're all smooth. I like 'em bumpy.” ― So Big
“For equipment she had youth, curiosity, a steel strong frame...four hundred ninety-seven dollars; and a gay adventuresome spirit that was never to die, though it led her into curious places and she often found, at the end, only a trackless waste from which she had to retrace her steps, painfully. But always, to her, red and green cabbages were to be jade and Burgundy, crysoprase and porphyry. Life has no weapons against a woman like that.” ― So Big
“Life cannot defeat a writer who is in love with writing - for life itself is a writer's love until death.”
“He sat looking down at his hands--his fine strong unscarred hands. Suddenly and unreasonably he thought of another pair of hands--his mother's--with the knuckles enlarged, the skin broken--expressive--her life written on them. Scars. She had them.” ― So Big
“Many earnest young writers with a flow of adjectives and a passion for detail have attempted to describe the quiet of a great city at night, when a few million people within it are sleeping, or ought to be. They work in the clang of a distant owl car, and the roar of an occasional "L" train, and the hollow echo of the footsteps of the late passer-by. They go elaborately into description, and are strong on the brooding hush, but the thing has never been done satisfactorily.” ― Buttered Side Down: Stories
~
August
19 -
British
children's writer
Edith Nesbit (1858
- 1924 )
“This
is why I shall not tell you in this story about all the days when
nothing happened. You will not catch me saying, 'thus the sad days
passed slowly by'--or 'the years rolled on their weary course'--or
'time went on'--because it is silly; of course time goes on--whether
you say so or not. So I shall just tell you the nice, interesting
parts--and in between you will understand that we had our meals and
got up and went to bed, and dull things like that.” ― The
Story of the Treasure Seekers
“When you are young so many things are difficult to believe, and yet the dullest people will tell you that they are true--such things, for instance, as that the earth goes round the sun, and that it is not flat but round. But the things that seem really likely, like fairy-tales and magic, are, so say the grown-ups, not true at all. Yet they are so easy to believe, especially when you see them happening.”
“There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read - unless it be reading while you eat. Amabel did both: they are not the same thing, as you will see if you think the matter over.”
“...Albert-next-door doesn't care for reading, and he has not read nearly so many books as we have, so he is very foolish and ignorant, but it cannot be helped... Besides, it is wrong to be angry with people for not being so clever as you are yourself.” ― The Story of the Treasure Seekers
“Ladylike is the beastliest word there is, I think. If a girl isn't a lady, it isn't worth while to be only like one, she'd better let it alone and be a free and happy bounder.” ― The New Treasure Seekers
“Time is but a mode of thought.”
“It is all very wonderful and mysterious, as all life is apt to be if you go a little below the crust, and are not content just to read newspapers and go by the Tube Railway, and buy your clothes ready-made, and think nothing can be true unless it is uninteresting.” ― The House of Arden
“They call it love," said Vernon. "I don't know what they mean by it. What do you mean [by love]?"
"I don't exactly know," said Temple slowly. "I suppose it's wanting to be with a person, and thinking about nothing else. And thinking they're the most beautiful and all that. And going over everything that they've ever said to you, and wanting— Well, I suppose if it's really love you want to marry them.”
― The Incomplete Amorist
“everything has an end, and you get to it if you only keep all on.” ― The Railway Children
“There is no bond like having read and like the same books.” ― Der verzauberte Garten / The wonderful garden
“When you are young so many things are difficult to believe, and yet the dullest people will tell you that they are true--such things, for instance, as that the earth goes round the sun, and that it is not flat but round. But the things that seem really likely, like fairy-tales and magic, are, so say the grown-ups, not true at all. Yet they are so easy to believe, especially when you see them happening.”
“There is nothing more luxurious than eating while you read - unless it be reading while you eat. Amabel did both: they are not the same thing, as you will see if you think the matter over.”
“...Albert-next-door doesn't care for reading, and he has not read nearly so many books as we have, so he is very foolish and ignorant, but it cannot be helped... Besides, it is wrong to be angry with people for not being so clever as you are yourself.” ― The Story of the Treasure Seekers
“Ladylike is the beastliest word there is, I think. If a girl isn't a lady, it isn't worth while to be only like one, she'd better let it alone and be a free and happy bounder.” ― The New Treasure Seekers
“Time is but a mode of thought.”
“It is all very wonderful and mysterious, as all life is apt to be if you go a little below the crust, and are not content just to read newspapers and go by the Tube Railway, and buy your clothes ready-made, and think nothing can be true unless it is uninteresting.” ― The House of Arden
“They call it love," said Vernon. "I don't know what they mean by it. What do you mean [by love]?"
"I don't exactly know," said Temple slowly. "I suppose it's wanting to be with a person, and thinking about nothing else. And thinking they're the most beautiful and all that. And going over everything that they've ever said to you, and wanting— Well, I suppose if it's really love you want to marry them.”
― The Incomplete Amorist
“everything has an end, and you get to it if you only keep all on.” ― The Railway Children
“There is no bond like having read and like the same books.” ― Der verzauberte Garten / The wonderful garden
~
August
22, 1935
Author
Annie Proulx
“You
know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no
background music.”
“And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.” ― The Shipping News
“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.”
“There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.” ― Brokeback Mountain
“Everybody that went away suffered a broken heart. "I'm coming back some day," they all wrote. But never did. The old life was too small to fit anymore.” ― The Shipping News
“... there are four women in every man’s heart. The Maid in the Meadow, the Demon Lover, the Stouthearted Woman, the Tall and Quiet Woman.”
“Was love then like a bag of assorted sweets passed around from which one might choose more than once? Some might sting the tongue, some invoke night perfume. Some had centers as bitter as gall, some blended honey and poison, some were quickly swallowed. And among the common bull's-eyes and peppermints a few rare ones; one or two with deadly needles at the heart, another that brought clam and gentle pleasure. Were his fingers closing on that one?” ― The Shipping News
“We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.” ― The Shipping News
“What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, 'Write what you know.' It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. We don't develop any facility for languages, or an interest in others, or a desire to travel and explore and face experience head-on. We just coil tighter and tighter into our boring little selves. What one should write about is what interests one.”
“We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.” ― The Shipping News
“I would rather be dead than not read.”
“All the travelin I ever done is going around the coffeepot looking for the handle.” ― Brokeback Mountain
“And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.” ― The Shipping News
“You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.”
“There was some open space between what he knew and what he tried to believe, but nothing could be done about it, and if you can't fix it you've got to stand it.” ― Brokeback Mountain
“Everybody that went away suffered a broken heart. "I'm coming back some day," they all wrote. But never did. The old life was too small to fit anymore.” ― The Shipping News
“... there are four women in every man’s heart. The Maid in the Meadow, the Demon Lover, the Stouthearted Woman, the Tall and Quiet Woman.”
“Was love then like a bag of assorted sweets passed around from which one might choose more than once? Some might sting the tongue, some invoke night perfume. Some had centers as bitter as gall, some blended honey and poison, some were quickly swallowed. And among the common bull's-eyes and peppermints a few rare ones; one or two with deadly needles at the heart, another that brought clam and gentle pleasure. Were his fingers closing on that one?” ― The Shipping News
“We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.” ― The Shipping News
“What I find to be very bad advice is the snappy little sentence, 'Write what you know.' It is the most tiresome and stupid advice that could possibly be given. If we write simply about what we know we never grow. We don't develop any facility for languages, or an interest in others, or a desire to travel and explore and face experience head-on. We just coil tighter and tighter into our boring little selves. What one should write about is what interests one.”
“We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.” ― The Shipping News
“I would rather be dead than not read.”
“All the travelin I ever done is going around the coffeepot looking for the handle.” ― Brokeback Mountain
~
August
22 -
Dorothy
Parker
(1893
– 1967)
“I
don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t
true.”
“Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.”
“You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.”
“I’m never going to accomplish anything; that’s perfectly clear to me. I’m never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don’t do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don’t even do that any more.”
“I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound — if I can remember any of the damn things.”
“Four be the things I’d have been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles and doubt.”
“I require only three things of a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid.”
“Take care of luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.”
“Money cannot buy health, but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.”
“The two most beautiful words in the English language are ‘cheque enclosed.’”
“Wit has truth in it; wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words.”
“You can’t teach an old dogma new tricks.”
“I’m never going to accomplish anything; that’s perfectly clear to me. I’m never going to be famous. My name will never be writ large on the roster of Those Who Do Things. I don’t do anything. Not one single thing. I used to bite my nails, but I don’t even do that any more.”
“I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound — if I can remember any of the damn things.”
“Four be the things I’d have been better without: Love, curiosity, freckles and doubt.”
“I require only three things of a man. He must be handsome, ruthless and stupid.”
“Take care of luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.”
“Money cannot buy health, but I’d settle for a diamond-studded wheelchair.”
“The two most beautiful words in the English language are ‘cheque enclosed.’”
~
August
23 –
Russian
born American
Abstract
Expressionist Sculptor
Louise
Nevelson
(1899
– 1988)
“I
never feel age ... If you have creative work, you don't have age or
time.”
“A woman may not hit a ball stronger than a man, but it is different. I prize that difference.”
“The freer that women become, the freer men will be. Because when you enslave someone, you are enslaved.”
“I think most artists create out of despair. The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it's a painful, difficult search within.”
“True strength is delicate.”
“What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable.”
“It is as hard to take success as it is failure.”
“From the first day in school until the day I graduated, everyone gave me one hundred plus in art. Well, where do you go in life? You go to the place where you got one hundred plus.”
“I see no reason why I should tickle stones or waste time on polishing bronze.”
“You must create your own world. I'm responsible for my world.”
“A woman may not hit a ball stronger than a man, but it is different. I prize that difference.”
“The freer that women become, the freer men will be. Because when you enslave someone, you are enslaved.”
“I think most artists create out of despair. The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it's a painful, difficult search within.”
“True strength is delicate.”
“What we call reality is an agreement that people have arrived at to make life more livable.”
“It is as hard to take success as it is failure.”
“From the first day in school until the day I graduated, everyone gave me one hundred plus in art. Well, where do you go in life? You go to the place where you got one hundred plus.”
“I see no reason why I should tickle stones or waste time on polishing bronze.”
“You must create your own world. I'm responsible for my world.”
~
August 24, 1936 -
British
Author A. S. Byatt
Dame
Antonia Susan Duffy, DBE, known as A. S. Byatt, is an English
novelist, poet and Booker Prize winner for her novel Possession.
In 2008, The Times
newspaper named her on its list of the 50 greatest British writers
since 1945.
“There
are things that happen and leave no discernible trace, are not spoken
or written of, though it would be very wrong to say that subsequent
events go on indifferently, all the same, as though such things had
never been.”
“Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by.”
“What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.”
“Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.”
“The individual appears for an instant, joins the community of thought, modifies it and dies; but the species, that dies not, reaps the fruit of his ephemeral existence.”
“…words have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew….”
― Possession
“I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.” ― Possession
“She didn't like to be talked about. Equally, she didn't like not to be talked about, when the high-minded chatter rushed on as though she was not there. There was no pleasing her, in fact. She had the grace, even at eleven, to know there was no pleasing her. She thought a lot, analytically, about other people's feelings, and had only just begun to realize that this was not usual, and not reciprocated.” ― The Children's Book
“An odd phrase, "by heart," he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream.” ― Possession
“It is good for a man to invite his ghosts into his warm interior, out of the wild night, into the firelight, out of the howling dark.” ― The Biographer's Tale: A Novel
“Creative Writing was not a form of psychotherapy, in ways both sublime and ridiculuous, it clearly was, precisely that.”
“Try to avoid falseness and strain. Write what you really know about. Make it new. Don’t invent melodrama for the sake of it. Don’t try to run, let alone fly, before you can walk with ease.”
“He was beautiful, that was always affirmed, but his beauty was hard to fix or to see, for he was always glimmering, flickering, melting, mixing, he was the shape of a shapeless flame, he was the eddying thread of needle-shapes in the shapeless mass of the waterfall. He was the invisible wind that hurried the clouds in billows and ribbons. You could see a bare tree on the skyline bent by the wind, holding up twisted branches and bent twigs, and suddenly its formless form would resolve itself into that of the trickster.”
― Ragnorak: The End of the Gods
“History, writing, infect after a time a man's sense of himself...”
“You did not so much mind being -conventionally- betrayed, if you were not kept in the dark, which was humiliating, or defined only as a wife and dependent person, which was annihilating.” ― The Children's Book
“I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)”
“That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them.” ― Possession
“Vocabularies are crossing circles and loops. We are defined by the lines we choose to cross or to be confined by.”
“What literature can and should do is change the people who teach the people who don't read the books.”
“Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.”
“The individual appears for an instant, joins the community of thought, modifies it and dies; but the species, that dies not, reaps the fruit of his ephemeral existence.”
“…words have been all my life, all my life--this need is like the Spider's need who carries before her a huge Burden of Silk which she must spin out--the silk is her life, her home, her safety--her food and drink too--and if it is attacked or pulled down, why, what can she do but make more, spin afresh, design anew….”
― Possession
“I am a creature of my pen. My pen is the best of me.” ― Possession
“She didn't like to be talked about. Equally, she didn't like not to be talked about, when the high-minded chatter rushed on as though she was not there. There was no pleasing her, in fact. She had the grace, even at eleven, to know there was no pleasing her. She thought a lot, analytically, about other people's feelings, and had only just begun to realize that this was not usual, and not reciprocated.” ― The Children's Book
“An odd phrase, "by heart," he would add, as though poems were stored in the bloodstream.” ― Possession
“It is good for a man to invite his ghosts into his warm interior, out of the wild night, into the firelight, out of the howling dark.” ― The Biographer's Tale: A Novel
“Creative Writing was not a form of psychotherapy, in ways both sublime and ridiculuous, it clearly was, precisely that.”
“Try to avoid falseness and strain. Write what you really know about. Make it new. Don’t invent melodrama for the sake of it. Don’t try to run, let alone fly, before you can walk with ease.”
“He was beautiful, that was always affirmed, but his beauty was hard to fix or to see, for he was always glimmering, flickering, melting, mixing, he was the shape of a shapeless flame, he was the eddying thread of needle-shapes in the shapeless mass of the waterfall. He was the invisible wind that hurried the clouds in billows and ribbons. You could see a bare tree on the skyline bent by the wind, holding up twisted branches and bent twigs, and suddenly its formless form would resolve itself into that of the trickster.”
― Ragnorak: The End of the Gods
“History, writing, infect after a time a man's sense of himself...”
“You did not so much mind being -conventionally- betrayed, if you were not kept in the dark, which was humiliating, or defined only as a wife and dependent person, which was annihilating.” ― The Children's Book
“I worry about anthropomorphism as a form of self-deception. (The Christian religion is an anthropomorphic account of the universe.)”
“That is human nature, that people come after you, willingly enough, provided only that you no longer love or want them.” ― Possession
~
August
27, 1932 -
mystery
writer, historian, and biographer
Antonia
Fraser
“Lives in previous centuries for women are largely a matter of class. It would have been fun to have been a rich, privileged woman in the 18th century, but no fun at all to be her maid.”
“After Mary Queen of Scots, I turned to the farthest subject possible: Cromwell.”
“We are privileged. There are poor people out there. We must to do something to make them privileged.”
“That is my major concern: writers who are in prison for writing.”
“People in my books tend to get their just deserts, even if not at the hands of the police.”
“My mother was a politician in my formative years.”
“As long as you persecute people, you will actually throw up terrorism.”
August 30 -
Author of Frankenstein
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
(1797
- 1851)
“I
do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.”
“Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!”
“But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be - a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself.”
“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.”
“I am very averse to bringing myself forward in print, but as my account will only appear as an appendage to a former production, and as it will be confined to such topics as have connection with my authorship alone, I can hardly accuse myself of a personal intrusion.”
“It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.”
“My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free.”
“The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized.”
“Teach him to think for himself? Oh, my God, teach him rather to think like other people!”
“But I am a blasted tree; the bolt has entered my soul; and I felt then that I should survive to exhibit what I shall soon cease to be - a miserable spectacle of wrecked humanity, pitiable to others and intolerable to myself.”
“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.”
“I am very averse to bringing myself forward in print, but as my account will only appear as an appendage to a former production, and as it will be confined to such topics as have connection with my authorship alone, I can hardly accuse myself of a personal intrusion.”
“It is justice, not charity, that is wanting in the world.”
“My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed - my dearest pleasure when free.”
“The same energy of character which renders a man a daring villain would have rendered him useful in society, had that society been well organized.”
~
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