Posts from ‘February, 2009’

I’ve been reading “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott (remember “Shitty First Drafts” handout?) and stumbled upon a very useful advice for writers – to carry index cards everywhere so you would be able to write down an interesting idea or a peculiar scene should you observe one. It’s nothing new, and I’m sure everyone [...]

I was on the 6 train this morning and I saw a post that said “train of thought”
 
“I do not know what i may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble [...]

Clouds rumbling in the sky; teeming rain.
I sit on the river bank, sad and alone.
The sheaves lie gathered, harvest has ended,
The river is swollen and fierce in its flow.
As we cut the paddy it started to rain.
One small paddy-field, no one but me -
Flood-waters twisting and swirling everywhere.
Trees on the far bank; smear shadows like [...]

I took this from the book “The Lion’s Game” by Nelson DeMille. It’s by no means a literary classic but I think he does a great job of portraying a sarcastic and cynical voice.
You’d think that anyone who’d been shot three times and almost become an organ donor would try to avoid dangerous situations [...]

I love this quote! I was watching an interview on Tavis Smiley with the cast of the movie called The Great Debaters. 
“Education is the death to mental Slavery.“
said Henrietta Wells according to Jurnee Smollett the actress who portrayed Miss Wells in the movie “The Great Debaters”

Here is a sample of what I think is great writing.
“She rocked her into her childhood and let her see murdered dreams. And she rocked her back, back into the womb, to the nadir of her hurt, and they found it–a slight silver splinter, enbedded just below the surface of the skin. And Mattie rocked [...]

In class, when we discussed writers with distinct voice, I mentioned Matt Taibbi. I found it interesting that someone posted an excerpt from Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas because Matt Taibbi has actually been compared to Thompson quite a lot. Here is an expert:
“These fantasy elections we’ve been having — overblown [...]

THESE ARE THE TIMES that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us [...]

Since the day Momofuku hit it big by doing high-end food in a low-end setting, haute cuisine has been on the run, with every chef looking to strip down operations and go the “casual” route. But meanwhile, on the other side of the gastronomic divide, fast food has been reaching upward, like long-buried plants yearning [...]