Saturday

Aug. 16, 1997

One of the Lives

by W. S. Merwin

SATURDAY 8/16

Today's Reading:"One of the Lives" by W.S. Merwin from THE VIXEN, published by Alfred A. Knopf.

The 19th annual Maine Highland Games take place today in Brunswick, Maine.

The Maryland State Chili Cook-Off Championship will be held today in Cumberland, Maryland.

Ballet dancer Suzanne Farrell, who joined George Balanchine's New York City Ballet when she was 16, was born in Cincinnati, in 1945.

Australian film director Bruce Beresford (BREAKER MORANT; CRIMES OF THE HEART; DRIVING MISS DAISY) was born in Sydney, in 1940.

English poet Ted Hughes was born in Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire, in 1930.

Jazz pianist Bill Evans was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, in 1929.

Poet and tough-guy novelist Charles Bukowski (POEMS WRITTEN BEFORE JUMPING OUT OF AN EIGHT-STORY WINDOW), was born in Andernach, Germany, in 1920.

Gold was discovered in the Klondike in Canada's Yukon Territory in 1896, setting off the Klondike Gold Rush.

Publisher, writer and inventor Hugo Gernsback, who coined the term "science fiction" and founded the first science fiction magazine, AMAZING STORIES, was born in Luxembourg, in 1884.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

 

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  • “Writers end up writing stories—or rather, stories' shadows—and they're grateful if they can, but it is not enough. Nothing the writer can do is ever enough” —Joy Williams
  • “I want to live other lives. I've never quite believed that one chance is all I get. Writing is my way of making other chances.” —Anne Tyler
  • “Writing is a performance, like singing an aria or dancing a jig” —Stephen Greenblatt
  • “All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald
  • “Good writing is always about things that are important to you, things that are scary to you, things that eat you up.” —John Edgar Wideman
  • “In certain ways writing is a form of prayer.” —Denise Levertov
  • “Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.” —E.L. Doctorow
  • “Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” —E.L. Doctorow
  • “Let's face it, writing is hell.” —William Styron
  • “A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.” —Thomas Mann
  • “Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials.” —Paul Rudnick
  • “Writing is a failure. Writing is not only useless, it's spoiled paper.” —Padget Powell
  • “Writing is very hard work and knowing what you're doing the whole time.” —Shelby Foote
  • “I think all writing is a disease. You can't stop it.” —William Carlos Williams
  • “Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.” —Iris Murdoch
  • “The less conscious one is of being ‘a writer,’ the better the writing.” —Pico Iyer
  • “Writing is…that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.” —Pico Iyer
  • “Writing is my dharma.” —Raja Rao
  • “Writing is a combination of intangible creative fantasy and appallingly hard work.” —Anthony Powell
  • “I think writing is, by definition, an optimistic act.” —Michael Cunningham
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