"It is impossible to discourage the real writers - they don’t give a damn what you say, they’re going to write."
— Sinclair Lewis. (via nihilnoetia)
Girls reading outside a bookstore, New York or New Jersey, 1890-1910 (via The Henry Ford)
“Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.” Gustave Flaubert
"Every word born of an inner necessity - writing must never be anything else."
— Etty Hillesum. (via nihilnoetia)
"I want you to be everything that’s you, deep at the center of your being."
— Confucius (via kari-shma) (via quote-book)
"To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music the words make."
— Truman Capote. (via nihilnoetia)
"Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them."
— Nathaniel Hawthorne. (via nihilnoetia)
edt:
The Library of Congress Manuscripts Division has two containers of Vladimir Nabokov’s papers under seal. Tomorrow, June 23, 2009, the restrictions set by his son are scheduled to expire, meaning that this set of papers will be completely available to the public. To see the papers, you must go to the Library’s Manuscript Reading Room. (via Books Are People, Too)
"The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it."
"A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal."
— Oscar Wilde (via booktumbling)
![booktumbling:
printedandbound:
Edgar Allan Poe birthplace - Carver Street, Boston, Mass.
[story here]](http://18.media.tumblr.com/2OKRmQCRYowyh33aoh2Guru0o1_500.jpg)
Edgar Allan Poe birthplace - Carver Street, Boston, Mass.
The Mad Hatter, The Queen Of Hearts, and The White Queen. Depp, Bonham Carter, and Hathaway, respectively.
Including: To Kill a Mockingbird, Great Expectations, and The Historian.
"A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer."
— Karl Kraus. (via nihilnoetia)
I am in Kentucky:) (via Samantha Lamb)
Marion Blackburn“Jack Kerouac. Design for front cover of proposed paperback edition of On the Road, 1952. NYPL, Berg Collection, Jack Kerouac Archive. Reproduced courtesy of John G. Sampas, legal representative of the estates of Jack and Stella Kerouac.”
I love this. via Diane Bergeron Interiors
This painting can be found at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Still Life with Bible, 1885, compares two world views. The “bulky States Bible belonging to van Gogh’s recently-deceased father” is contrasted with the “realistic, contemporary novel” beside it, Emile Zola’s La Joie de Vivre. The father led a strict, Christian life as a Protestant pastor. The novel belonged to his son, the artist.
"
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” Yossarian observed.
“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.
"
— Joseph Heller, Catch-22 (via mastodonstorm) (via libraryland)
"Live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find eternity in each moment."
— Henry David Thoreau (via tiresome) (via libraryland)
Jonathan Callan
For Stuart Callan, 1962-2005, 2005.from the Mattress Factory
(via tiresome)
This movie made me cry…a few minutes after the credits started rolling my brother told me that it was based off a true story and that made me cry harder.
There are images at the link where you can move your mouse around and explore different scenes from the film. Stunning!
"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it."
— Hannah Arendt. (via nihilnoetia)
"Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves."
— Jeremy Collier (via bookshelves)
reveries:discuss
they are indeed amazingness :)
"Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves."
"The Internet? Don’t get him started. “The Internet is a big distraction,” Mr. Bradbury barked from his perch in his house in Los Angeles, which is jammed with enormous stuffed animals, videos, DVDs, wooden toys, photographs and books, with things like the National Medal of Arts sort of tossed on a table."
skylinesandshipwrecks:thedecisivemoment:nerdshares:pandorasmittens:
Graphs explain anything and everything.
"There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more."
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more."
"I see too deep and too much."
— Henri Barbusse (via kari-shma) (via restartmyheart) (via spinninglights) (via iwillgiveyouspringasagift) (via rainclown) (via out-of-my-dreams)
"Songs are as sad as the listener."
— Jonathan Safran Foer (via aksamala) (via maver) (via kathleenjoy) (via pennysjustalane) (via out-of-my-dreams)
"Writing is both mask and unveiling."
— E.B White. (via nihilnoetia)
1. Verbs HAS to agree with their subjects.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. And don’t start a sentence with a conjunction.
4. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
5. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat)
6. Also, always avoid annoying alliteration.
7. Be more or less specific.
8. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are (usually) unnecessary.
9. Also too, never, ever use repetitive redundancies.
10. No sentence fragments.
11. Contractions aren’t necessary and shouldn’t be used.
12. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
13. Do not be redundant; do not use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
14. One should NEVER generalize.
15. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
16. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
17. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
18. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
19. The passive voice is to be ignored.
20. Eliminate commas, that are, not necessary. Parenthetical words however should be enclosed in commas.
21. Never use a big word when a diminutive one would suffice.
22. Use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
23. Understatement is always the absolute best way to put forth earth-shaking ideas.
24. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
25. If you’ve heard it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: Resist hyperbole; not one writer in a million can use it correctly.
26. Puns are for children, not groan readers.
27. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
28. Even IF a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
29. Who needs rhetorical questions?
30. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
And the last one…
31.
"A poet’s autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote."
— Yergeny Yentushenko (via allthenight-tide) (via libraryland)
