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…
Category: World Literature
Today’s One-Liner (#176)
Friends boasted that Proust could declaim whole pages of Balzac by heart. –Josef Czapski, Lost Time: Lectures on Proust in a Soviet Prison Camp, trans. Eric Karpeles, p. 33.
Today’s One-Liner (#174)
Whenever I was in love I always felt there was a telegraphic esprit between the person and me. –—Isaac Bashevis Singer: Conversations, edited by Grace Farrell, p. 206
Nadezhda
Why, at the dawn of the new era, at the very beginning of the fratricidal twentieth century, was I given the name Nadezhda [“Hope” ] ? All I now heard from our friends and acquaintances…
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.
Proust Was Obviously before Your Time…
When he wrote— L’artiste qui renonce à une heure de travail pour une heure de causerie avec un ami sait qu’il sacrifie une réalité pour quelque chose qui n’existe pas.—Le temps retrouvé [The artist who…
The Greatest Message
When readers ask me about the message of my works, I tell them that the greatest message we’ve got is the Ten Commandments. They are short, precise, clear. We don’t need new messages, and they…
Today’s One-Liner (#171)
My life is botched-up because, at 26, I’ve yet to earn a steady income, I’ve yet to really help anyone in the world, including really taking care of myself, and I’ve yet to love a…
Confronting Mystery
Obviously great art must be an exceptional thing. It cannot be the sort of thing anyone can do after a few hours’ practice. It must be the result of some exceptional faculty, strength, or perception….
Today’s One-Liner (#165)
These are only hints and guesses, Hints followed by guesses; and the restIs prayer, observance, discipline, thought, and action. –T. S. Eliot, Dry Salvages