#essay

There are some fine books and essays about that. Lewis Hyde has written about alcoholism and poets and the role that society gives its writers - encouraging them to die. ↗

— Sharon Olds

#alcoholism #books #die #encouraging #essays

I am waiting impatiently for the day when beleaguered, like-minded academics can order James Wolcott's collected essays for their classes. ↗

— Camille Paglia

#am #classes #collected #day #essays

I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist. ↗

— Jose Saramago

#better #essayist #i #i am #novelist

It's the only way anything will change. Because we are both mother and child, cause and effect, villain and victim ↗

— Jason Najum

#culture-critique #essay #humor #inspirational #memoir

The emotion of art is impersonal. And the poet cannot reach this impersonality without surrendering himself wholly to the work to be done. And he is not likely to know what is to be done unless he lives in what is not merely the present, but the present moment of the past, unless he is conscious, not of what is dead, but of what is already living. ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#emotion #essay #expression #poetry #talent

For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain, crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to this agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails…and when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever.” — Anonymous Curse on Book Theives from the Monaster of San Pedro, Barcelona, Spain ↗

— Anatole Broyard

#essays #literature #quotes-to-live-by #change

Claim whatever you want. Say you only want a happy family or a successful career or a big house. I say: no, that's not what you want. You'll settle for those things, but you really want a monkey that does your evil bidding. Pullman is a genius just for this. ↗

— Maureen Johnson

#humor #monkeys #family

Our family was nearly torn apart on several occasions by arguments started when the refrigerator door was open for what my father deemed as ‘too long. ↗

— Weston Locher

#comedy #essay #funny #humor #family

the world produces more than enough food for all of us to thrive. ↗

— Francis Lappe

#food

Why do we write? "To make suffering endurable To make evil intelligible To make justice desirable and . . . to make love possible ↗

— Roger Rosenblatt

#inspiration-for-writers #writing-instruction #art