Category: Writing

Then Things Changed

“I was prepared actually never to be translated, never to be known, to remain a Yiddish writer.” –Isaac Bashevis Singer, quoted in Janet Hadda, Isaac Bashevis Singer: A Life, 88

Effort

A professor had a wife who never had dinner ready on time and every day he had to sit around waiting.  Suddenly it occurred to him that he could utilize this time and he began…

Up to Marcel

I knew that my brain  was like a mountain landscape rich in minerals, wherein lay vast and varied ores of great price.  But should I have time to exploit them?  For two reasons I was…

Today’s One-Liner (#172)

The basic function of literature, as far as I can say, is to entertain the spirit in a very big way. —Isaac Bashevis Singer: Conversations, edited by Grace Farrell, p. 75.

Writing Daily

Often quoting Stendhal to the effect that one should “write every day, whether inspired or not,” Alain encouraged his students to sit down at a desk and write prolifically, as he did, at least two…

Today’s One-Liner (#95)

I feel very rich when I have time to write and very poor when I get a regular paycheck and no time to work at my real work. –Natalie Goldberg, Writing down the Bones

Genres

[Alexander Kluge’s two books] are sobering inventories of a catastrophe, cool, dry and therefore more gripping.  A card index of all imaginable inhumanities.  Kluge’s books consist of excerpts from diaries, telegrams, official reports, sermons of…