December 2009
53 posts
“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short, or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.”
— ...
who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Oklahoma on the impulse of winter midnight street light smalltown rain, who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston seeking jazz or sex or soup
(1956)
Tell everyone where I am but please hide me. (2007)
“How can I tell,” said the man, “that the past isn’t a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?” (1979)
There is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it. (1850)
We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body. (2 Corinthians 5:8)
Iuventuti nil arduum.
Two people can sleep in the same bed and still be alone when they close their eyes. (2001)
I mean—during my wretched exertions—my mind,
it was never not elsewhere, you understand.
But whose, of course, ever is?
Or is it that I should have said isn’t?
(1993)
Are there not some pursuits that we practice because they are good in themselves, and some pleasures that are final? (1932)
1 tag
