August 2010
19 posts
4 tags
Experimental Writers vs. Conceptual Writers →
Economist David Galenson posits that there are two types of writers: experimenters, a group that includes Dickens, Twain, and Virginia Woolf; and visionaries, such as Melville, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway…. Galenson’s research is fascinating and feels dead-on to me. I am very much an “experimental” writer. No lightning bolts, no visionary insights, no “Eureka!” Only gradual, uncertain,...
4 tags
“People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point,...”
– Flannery O’Connor (via junkbondtrader) (via keremmermutlu) (via booklover)
3 tags
“No Woman No Cry” (Bob Marley cover) -...
1 tag
3 tags
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think...”
– Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood (via 500daysofkissingmypillow) (via thehomeiswherethebooksare)
1 tag
“One of the most surprising things about getting older is how unresolved and...”
– Alain de Botton
4 tags
The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut →
Salander opened the door a crack and spent several paragraphs trying to decide whether to let Blomkvist in. Many italic thoughts flew through her mind. Go away. Perhaps. So what. Etc.
(via jstn)
1 tag
4 tags
The habit of being great →
Paul Graham on what he looks for in a YCombinator application:
We don’t look for any particular thing. We just look for people who have a habit of being great. Just so long as when they do things, they tend to do them well.
That and “be succinct; don’t just blather on ad infinitum,” he points out.
Not unlike what Jim Coudal has emphasized about interviews with two candidates when both are...
2 tags
“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”
– Ann Tyler (via thehomeiswherethebooksare) (via booklover)
2 tags
“I can resist anything except temptation.”
– Lady Windermere’s Fan, Oscar Wilde (via fuckyeahliteraryquotes)
2 tags
“The very essence of romance is uncertainty.”
– The Importance of Being Earnest and Other Plays, Oscar Wilde (via fuckyeahliteraryquotes)
4 tags
“Dream big, implement small.”
– twitter.com/simplebits (via simplebits)
2 tags
“Eventually I discovered for myself the utterly simple prescription for...”
– Ralph Steiner (via hrrrthrrr)
3 tags
2 tags
2 tags
2 tags
“When I write, I aim in my mind not toward New York but a vague spot a little...”
– John Updike
2 tags
“As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to...”
– President Obama. It’s astounding that this even has to be said — but it does. 