Sunday

May 30, 1999

In the Place of the Creator

by Czeslaw Milosz

Broadcast Date: SUNDAY: May 30, 1999

Lyrics: "In the Place of the Creator," by Czeslaw Milosz, from Road-side Dog (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998).

It's the birthday in Adis Ababa, Ethiopia, 1955 of the writer and physician ABRAHAM VERGHESE, best known for his 1994 book, My Own Country: A Doctor's Story of a Town and Its People in the Age of AIDS.

It's the birthday in Volcano, Hawaii, 1951, of poet GARRET HONGO.

It's the birthday in Chicago, 1909, of Benjamin David Goodman — BENNY GOODMAN — the king of swing.

It's the birthday in Louisville, Kentucky, 1903, of poet COUNTEE CULLEN, a member of the Harlem Renaissance, that flowering of black music and painting and literature that came out of New York in the 1920s.

The FIRST AMERICAN DAILY NEWSPAPER went on sale this day, 1783, the Philadelphia Evening Post and Daily Advertiser.

It was on this day in 1431 that JOAN OF ARC was burned at the stake.

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
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  • “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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