“Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.”
~ Salman Rushdie, b. 19 June 1947
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Anita Loos (b. April 26): “I love high style in low company.”
26 Apr
Anita Loos (born 26 April 1889, died 18 August 1981) was an American screenwriter, playwright and author, best known for her blockbuster comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Nine Quotes:
- Fate keeps on happening.
- Memory is more indelible than ink.
- I’ve always loved high style in low company.
- It isn’t that gentlemen really prefer blondes, it’s just that we look dumber.
- A kiss on the hand may feel very, very good, but a diamond and sapphire bracelet lasts forever.
- On a plane you can pick up more and better people than on any other public conveyance since the stagecoach.
- The rarest of all things in American life is charm. We spend billions every year manufacturing fake charm that goes under the heading of public relations. Without it, America would be grim indeed.
- There is a serious defect in the thinking of someone who wants – more than anything else – to become rich. As long as they don’t have the money, it’ll seem like a worthwhile goal. Once they do, they’ll understand how important other things are – and have always been.
- I can never take for granted the euphoria produced by a cup of coffee. I’m grateful every day that it isn’t banned as a drug, that I don’t have to buy it from a pusher, that its cost is minimal and there’s no need to increase the intake. I can count on its stimulation 365 mornings every year. And thanks to the magic in a cup of coffee, I’m able to plunge into a whole day’s cheerful thinking.
James Franco (b. April 19): “You want to be interesting? Be interested.”
19 Apr
James Franco (born 19 April 1978) is an American actor, director, screenwriter, producer, teacher, author and poet. His books include Palo Alto, Actors Anonymous: A Novel, and A California Childhood. Franco has also written, directed and starred in several short plays, two of which — Fool’s Gold and The Ape — he adapted into feature-length films. He wrote and directed the film Good Time Max.
Quotes:
- You want to be interesting? Be interested.
- They say living well is the best revenge but sometimes writing well is even better.
- Sometimes it’s painful to be oneself; at other times it seems impossible to escape oneself.
- Always have one artistic thing that is pure, at least one thing, where you don’t compromise. You can do other things to make money, but have one pure area.
- Make your characters interested in something. Striving for something. In need of something. Good at something. This will make them likeable and interesting.
- You also need love. Your characters need to love something, otherwise they will be unlovable.
- I’m a huge Cormac McCarthy fan and have read every book of his.
Kingsley Amis (b. April 16): “If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.”
17 Apr
Kingsley Amis (born 16 April 1922, died 22 October 1995) was an English novelist, poet, critic, and teacher. He wrote more than 20 novels, six volumes of poetry, a memoir, various short stories, radio and television scripts, and social and literary criticism. He was the father of English novelist Martin Amis.
Quotes:
- If you can’t annoy somebody, there’s little point in writing.
- No wonder people are so horrible when they start life as children.
- The novelist always has favorites, and often he’s a minor character.
- Laziness has become the chief characteristic of journalism, displacing incompetence.
- It is natural and harmless in English to use a preposition to end a sentence with.
- Writing for me is to a large extent self-entertainment, and an only child is driven to do that.
- No writer, especially a young and unknown writer, resents publicity of any kind – whatever he may say.
- You can’t imagine how much I miss the intellectual stimulus of teaching English literature to young people. More than I ever realized – I do miss it.
- I don’t get up very early. I linger over breakfast reading the papers, telling myself hypocritically that I’ve got to keep up with what’s going on, but really staving off the dreadful time when I have to go to the typewriter. Then I go on until about eight-thirty PM and I always hate stopping.
- I’ve been trying to write for as long as I can remember. But those first 15 years didn’t produce much of great interest. I mean, it embarrasses me very much to look back on my early poems – very few lines of any merit at all and lots of affectation. But there were quite a lot of them. That’s a point in one’s favor.
Felonious Monk: Axel Crowe is an astrologer action hero
14 Apr
“Axel Crowe, hero of Alan Annand’s New Age Noir mystery series, is the perfect blend of detective, astrologer, mystic and martial artist. Felonious Monk, the second of the series, engages and entertains in just the right proportions. The intricate plot involves a dead guest at a Vermont ashram, a serial killer of Asian women in New York, and a golden Buddha stolen from a Bangkok temple.
Annand weaves his story with irony, wit, information and insight, not to mention some high action scenes. Crowe is a steady, humble, highly brilliant and somewhat fearless hero. But despite his attractions, he feels no need to prove himself a James Bond, rather, he’s sexually circumspect. (Think hot, but restrained.) It’s hard not to respect the way he lives, with a spiritual practice as rigorous as his martial.”
~ Julie Simmons, Astrology Toronto
Paul Theroux (b. April 10): “Fiction gives us a second chance…”
10 Apr
“Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.”
~ Paul Theroux, 10 April 1941
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Arthur Hailey (b. April 5th): “A writer has to experience new environments.”
5 Apr
“Don’t put down too many roots in terms of a domicile. I have lived in four countries and I think my life as a writer and our family’s life have been enriched by this. I think a writer has to experience new environments. There is that adage: No man can really succeed if he doesn’t move away from where he was born. I believe it is particularly true for the writer.”
~ Arthur Hailey (b. 5 April 1920)
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Alice Hoffman (b. March 16): “Books may well be the only true magic.”
16 Mar
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Alice Hoffman, born 16 March 1952, is an American novelist best known for her novel Practical Magic, which was adapted for a film of the same name. Many of her works fall into the genre of magic realism.
Quotes on writing:
- Books may well be the only true magic.
- No one knows how to write a novel until it’s been written.
- You can’t dispute the ridiculous. You can’t argue reasonably with evil.
- I think love is a huge factor in fiction and in real life. Is there a risk? Always. In fiction and in life.
- That is the joy of reading fiction: when all is said and done, the novel belongs to the reader and his or her imagination.
- After a while, the characters I’m writing begin to feel real to me. That’s when I know I’m heading in the right direction.
- I’ve been a screenwriter for twenty-five years. Every one of my books have been optioned for movies and I have written a few of those screenplays.
- All the characters in my books are imagined, but all have a bit of who I am in them – much like the characters in your dreams are all formed by who you are.
- The original fairy tale was about the youngest sister going into a room in the castle and finding all the bodies of the wives that came before her – she is confronted with truth, thinking about how often we think we know people and we really don’t.
- My theory is that everyone, at one time or another, has been at the fringe of society in some way: an outcast in high school, a stranger in a foreign country, the best at something, the worst at something, the one who’s different. Being an outsider is the one thing we all have in common.
Khaled Hosseini (b. March 4th): “Literary fiction is kept alive by women…”
4 Mar
“Literary fiction is kept alive by women. Women read more fiction, period.”
~ Khaled Hosseini, b. 4 March 1965
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Ralph Ellison (b. March 1st): “Writing requires plunging back into the shadow of the past…”
1 Mar
“The act of writing requires a constant plunging back into the shadow of the past where time hovers ghostlike.”
~ Ralph Ellison, b. 1 March 1914
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