Friday

Dec. 11, 1998

Familial

by William Matthews

FRIDAY 12/11

Poem: "Familial," by William Matthews, from SELECTED POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS (Houghton Miflin).

Novelist and screenwriter TOM MCGUANE, author of The Sporting Club and The Bushwacked Piano, was born in Wyandotte, Michigan, in 1939.

Novelist and poet JIM HARRISON, best known for his novel Legends of the Fall, was born in Grayling, Michigan, in 1937.

Britain's KING EDWARD VIII abdicated the throne on this day in 1936 so he could marry American Wallis Warfield Simpson.

Short-story writer GRACE PALEY was born in the Bronx on this day in 1922.

Novelist ALEKSANDR SOLZHENITSYN, author of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, was born in Kislovodsk, Russia, in 1918.

Egyptian novelist NAGUIB MAHFOUZ, winner of the 1988 Nobel Prize and best known for his Cairo Trilogy, was born in Cairo in 1911.

The first performance in a theater lit by incandescent electric lights took place in 1882 at BOSTON'S BIJOU THEATRE with a production of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Iolanthe."

Physician ROBERT KOCH, who discovered the bacteria that cause anthrax, tuberculosis and cholera, was born in Clausthal, Germany, in 1843.

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

 

«

»

  • “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
Current Faves - Learn more about poets featured frequently on the show