December 2011
18 posts
4 tags
For posterity, I suppose, though all the real mediations go into my personal, paper journal: 2011 rather unexpectedly turned out to be one of the best years of my life. 2012 will be even better, according to my horoscope (I believe these things, okay?) A new life stage is beginning and I can feel it happening - everything is happening, it seems. I hope. We’ll see.
Dec 31st
4 notes
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Margaret Atwood On Writing
1. Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can’t sharpen it on the plane, because you can’t take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils. 2. If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type. 3. Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do....
Dec 29th
10 notes
1 tag
Dec 29th
82 notes
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“Women cannot be expected to struggle alone against the forces of discrimination...”
– Benazir Bhutto in a 1995 speech in Beijing at the World Conference of Women. This is a beautiful speech, go read all of it.  (via thepoliticalnotebook)
Dec 27th
1,134 notes
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Dec 27th
111 notes
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“Cerebral Biographical Tortured-Genius Movies” This is the most specific and accurate suggestion list that Netflix has ever given me.
Dec 22nd
3 notes
5 tags
WatchWatch
Yeah, this was essentially my summer - Ploughshares, Battlestar Galactica, and kale. How does Portlandia capture everything so perfectly?
Dec 22nd
2 notes
3 tags
How to Write an Important Novel
wwnorton: “But can you?” “Can I what?” “Write an important novel.” “Of course I can. All you have to do is cut out the plot and shove in plenty of misery.” -P.G. Wodehouse, Ice in the Bedroom
Dec 20th
328 notes
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Dec 20th
3 notes
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Listen“I Wonder Why,” Dion & the...
Dec 20th
11 notes
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“Through the word - already a presence made of absence - absence itself gives...”
– Lacan
Dec 18th
17 notes
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“I simply want to be dead… no grove [ ] no dance no sound”
– Sappho, fragment translated by Anne Carson in If Not, Winter (via proustitute)
Dec 18th
127 notes
8 tags
“Another major aspect of this contemporary paradigm is the acceptance of contests as being the only possible means by which to publish a book. “I know people who have recently been in classes in MFA programs whose teachers stated very bluntly, “you must enter contests in order to publish.” This is unacceptable and writers as a whole should not accept this as fact. If the...
Dec 17th
4 notes
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“We shall have to adapt ourselves to the shadowy screen and to the cold machine....”
– Leo Tolstoy, in a letter to a friend on the advent of cinema.
Dec 13th
206 notes
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Dec 12th
235 notes
7 tags
Dec 12th
20 notes
5 tags
I identified myself passionately with Jo, the intellectual. Brusque and bony, Jo clambered up into trees when she wanted to read; she was much more tomboyish and daring than I was, but I shared her horror of sewing and housekeeping and her love of books. She wrote: in order to imitate her more completely, I composed two or three short stories … But the thing that delighted me most of all was...
Dec 11th
14 notes
3 tags
“Writing is a deeper sleep than death. Just as one wouldn’t pull a corpse from...”
– Franz Kafka (via qbfquickbrownfox)
Dec 2nd
17 notes