“I love when you talk dirty.”
- js
“The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an eye for resemblance.” — From Aristotle’s De Poetica. via Lapidarium (via viafrank)
(via viafrank)
“Literature is the next best thing to God. Joyce would disagree. He would say literature is, in essence, God.” — Edna O’Brien, from an interview with The Paris Review, 1984
“Look here — what if I love you?” — Vladimir Nabokov, “Spring in Fialta” (via scout)
“I’m one of those who never finished Moby-Dick. I couldn’t get through the thick Shakespearean stuff. I would have advocated for editing that. If it had been, it’d be accessible and great. The purists want to read all that fucking cetology, man. You know, though, I love the water and fish. I should adore the whale and fish. Maybe I should try again.” — Barry Hannah, from his interview with Wells Tower in the last issue of the Believer. (via mcnallyjackson)
Wonderful. I’ll have three, dawg.
INTERVIEWER
I end up putting you and Alice Munro together. In each of you there’s an attachment to the physical world and the details of life—almost like you are reveling in them—whether they’re bad, good, painful, or whatever else. Does that seem right to you?
CARSON
I recognize that. Reveling is good. A good word for it. But she and I are very different. What we have in common is perhaps an attitude that however bad life is, the important thing is to make something interesting out of it. And that has a lot to do with the physical world, with looking at stuff, snow and light and the smell of your screen door and whatever constitutes your phenomenal existence from moment to moment. How consoling—that this stuff goes on and that you can keep thinking about it and making that into something on a page.
isay:
Bibliochase
Note to self. Get shit together and make something like this for the Cowgirl to recline in, drinking tea and reading Ray Bradbury.
chairboner
(via isay)
An inscription in a copy of Andrea Barrett’s Ship Fever:
.
Katie-
These stories are very quiet and beautiful, I think. You’ll like them. I bought a copy for myself after I saw the author on PBS. She seemed like someone who really loved writing, and cared for her stories like children. I liked her a lot.
Merry Christmas
From
Scott
12/96
“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” —
Ira Glass (via Rabbit Write’s interview on Gala Darling)
This is going to be all over our dashboards but I needed to be reminded of it too.
(via healywu)
(Source: nancylicious, via khealywu)