November 16, 2009
Writing: a field where the consequences of mediocrity are considerably more serious than in banking or the law.
@alaindebotton
1:53pm
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Nervous Breakthrough:  Carrie Fisher on Wishful Drinking

November 14, 2009
The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.
George Bernard Shaw (via devilduck)
November 13, 2009
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Zadie Smith on Changing My Mind, her new collection of essays (NPR)

12:36pm
I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity.
Edgar Allan Poe (via quote-book) (via upcloseandoutoffocus)(via labarceloneta)
November 11, 2009
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
Sylvia Plath (via projectlyric) (via 24storyloveaffair) (via iampoetry) (via labarceloneta)
5:24pm
I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it’s what Yeats called the fascination with what’s difficult. I’m only trying to do what I can’t do.
Lucien Freud, to Michael Kimmelman, quoted in a smart essay by writer Samantha Peale, whose novel, The American Painter Emma Dial, I am reading now and thoroughly enjoying. Whew. (via rach)
5:13pm
sometimesagreatnotion: slaughterhouse90210: “This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.” — Carol Shields, Unless I disapprove of the book he’s reading in the picture, but entirely agree with this quote.  Unrelenting monologue! Agreed.

sometimesagreatnotion:

slaughterhouse90210:

“This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.”
— Carol Shields, Unless

I disapprove of the book he’s reading in the picture, but entirely agree with this quote.  Unrelenting monologue!

Agreed.

11:35am
last year in Berlin:  we had to store the smelly cheese between the windowpanes.

last year in Berlin:  we had to store the smelly cheese between the windowpanes.

November 10, 2009