Brick

After delays of some years, Brick now will include my com­mon­place book. Nat­u­rally, it will be updated. A lit­tle set from a decade ago can be seen here.

Writ­ing in Particular

“The writer’s only respon­si­bil­ity is to his art. He will be com­pletely ruth­less if he is a good one. … Every­thing goes by the board: honor, pride, decency, secu­rity, hap­pi­ness, all, to get the book writ­ten. If a writer has to rob his mother he will not hes­i­tate; the “Ode on a Gre­cian Urn” is worth any num­ber of old ladies.” — William Faulkner in The Paris Review

“I write many thou­sands of words a day and some of them go on paper. And of those writ­ten down, only a few are meant to be seen.” 13 Feb. “One is never drained by work but only by idle­ness. Lack of work is the most ener­vat­ing thing in the world.” 28 June. John Stein­beck, “Jour­nal of a Novel,” 1951.

“The first let­ter he [father James Wright] wrote to me [age 15] about this started with the phrase ‘I’ll be damned. You’re a poet. Wel­come to hell.’ Then he made a sug­ges­tion: Try, no mat­ter what — no mat­ter what sort of mael­strom of dis­trac­tion you find your­self in at any given time — try to write one sin­gle clear line in a note­book every day. If you man­age to do that, over time, when a cer­tain mood of inspi­ra­tion does come to you, when you’re feel­ing happy and things are going well, and you want to write, you have this store of mate­r­ial, and it’s as if the lines start to bond together, or some­thing starts to crys­tal­lize around a par­tic­u­lar line.” — Franz Wright, New Yorker, 7/9/01

“Imma­ture poets imi­tate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into some­thing bet­ter, or at least some­thing dif­fer­ent. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feel­ing which is unique, utterly dif­fer­ent from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into some­thing which has no cohe­sion. A good poet will usu­ally bor­row from authors remote in time, or alien in lan­guage, or diverse in inter­est.” — T.S. Eliot

“We do not go beyond con­sult­ing our own judg­ment and tastes and what inter­ests and pleases us. The word ‘reader’ does not come up.” — 1949–85 New Yorker Edi­tor William Shawn, to NYT’s Mur­ray Schu­mach in 1966, quoted in 3/3/04 WSJ.

“The Onion: ‘Why was stay­ing on the comics page so impor­tant?‘
“Berke­ley Breathed: ‘Same rea­son it was for Garry Trudeau: Here, let me put it vul­garly and in caps: NOBODY THE F— READS THE OPINION PAGES.’”

“Peo­ple seem to have trou­ble with the imag­i­na­tion. They can’t believe that you can just pull things out of your brain like that. It has to have started some­where, in some book, in some real person’s life. And it just wasn’t so. … I don’t have any patience for peo­ple who take stuff from their own lives or their friends’ lives. … I like to make stuff up.” — Edward P. Jones, New Yorker online, 4/26/04, also say­ing he “writes” in his head first, includ­ing think­ing up bios on the most minor char­ac­ters and, “I like to know already what’s going to hap­pen to her before I sit down to write.”

“In a cer­tain sense, every­thing is his­tor­i­cal. Two hours ago is his­tor­i­cal. It’s all over and done with.” — Edward P. Jones, quoted in the 10/10/04 New York Times on being asked if he will con­tinue to write about “the dis­tant past.” And when the Times asked, “Where do you get your inspi­ra­tion?” Jones defend­ing his reclu­sive­ness said, “I learn a lot from the peo­ple I make up in my head. God knows what kind of novel I would have writ­ten if I had been out there in the world. It might have been horrible.”

“While it’s true that my work is not gen­er­ally about the place where I grew up, given that fic­tion is my thing I never really thought that had much rel­e­vance. It’s about mak­ing things up, isn’t it? Don’t all writ­ers — regard­less of race, gen­der, age, sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion, eth­nic ori­gin, native tongue, national iden­tity, social class — don’t we all attempt to write about peo­ple who are not our­selves? And how bor­ing would it be if we didn’t?” — Daniel Alar­con, in Salon.com, May 2005

“What you don’t know when you’re 22 could fill a book. If you write that book when you’re 44, you haven’t learned a thing.” — James Lileks, online “Bleat” for June 7, 2004, lileks.com

“I don’t want to be too clear.” — Writer-editor William Maxwell to writer-editor Roger Angell, after Angell gives up try­ing to revise a sen­tence of Maxwell’s, in Angell’s book “Let Me Finish.”

“Tell all the truth but tell it slant –” — Emily Dick­in­son, Poem 1129

“Cre­ative writ­ing teach­ers should be purged until every last instruc­tor who has uttered the words ‘Write what you know’ is con­fined to a labor camp. Please, tal­ented scrib­blers, write what you don’t. The blind guy with the funny lit­tle harp who com­posed ‘The Iliad,’ how much com­bat do you think he saw?” — P.J. O’Rourke, review­ing “Dog Days” by Ana Marie “Won­kette” Cox, for the Jan. 8, 2006, Wash­ing­ton Post

“‘Thou shalt not’ might reach the head, but it takes ‘Once upon a time’ to reach the heart.” — writer Philip Pull­man in a col­umn quoted in the 12–26-05/1–02-06 New Yorker.

“Using a van­ity press is akin to buy­ing sex, but more shame­ful in a way. Vis­it­ing a pros­ti­tute is at least a pri­vate act, while pay­ing to pub­lish one’s book is a very pub­lic dis­play of cre­ative des­per­a­tion.” — George Whit­man, owner, Shake­speare & Co. book­store, Paris, from “Time Was Soft There: A Paris Sojourn at Shake­speare & Co.” by Jeremy Mercer.

Once some guy gave me this whole long mys­ti­cal rap about med­i­ta­tion and so on, and he said, “You know man, you should really med­i­tate.” And I thought for a sec­ond and I said, “You know, I hate to tell you, but I do med­i­tate about four or five hours every day. It’s called writ­ing.” — T.C. Boyle, March 2003, in powells.com

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or per­haps. — Robert Benchley

Mis­ery breeds copy. — S.J. Perelman

Never sell out, except for a really good anec­dote. — Colum­nist Stew­art Alsop, quoted by colum­nist William Safire in The Wash­ing­ton Post 11/16/04.

“When you do satire you just grab one thing that hap­pens, and you use that to weave your whole story.” — Art Buch­wald to radio inter­viewer Leonard Lopate, 10–05-05 (on why he talked about FEMA’s Michael Brown lik­ing mar­gar­i­tas instead of focus­ing on Brown’s pre­vi­ous job with a world horse association).

“Wit has truth in it; wise­crack­ing is sim­ply cal­is­then­ics with words. … [B]y satirist I mean those boys in other cen­turies. The peo­ple we call satirists now are those who make cracks at top­i­cal top­ics. … Lord knows, a writer should show his times, but not show them in wise­cracks. … Suc­cess­ful satire has got to be pretty good the day after tomor­row. — Dorothy Parker, inter­viewed in The Paris Review, 1956

“I’m going back to the hotel. Unless I write every day, I don’t feel I deserve my din­ner.” — Char­lie Chap­lin, to Mil­lard Kauf­man, The New Yorker, Sept. 17, 2007

“Here’s how it goes: I’m up at the stroke of 10 or 10:30. I have break­fast and read the papers, and then it’s lunchtime. Then maybe a lit­tle nap after lunch and out to the gym, and before I know it, it’s time to have a drink.” — nov­el­ist E.L. Doc­torow, when The New York Times asked for his writ­ing rou­tine. Sept. 2, 2009

“It is the begin­ning of the end when you dis­cover that you have a style.” — Dashiell Ham­mett, quoted in the June 14, 2004, New Yorker: “Blocked: Why Do Writ­ers Stop Writ­ing ” by Joan Aco­cella, on how he real­ized he was begin­ning to repeat himself

“The art of news­pa­per para­graph­ing is to stroke a plat­i­tude until it purrs like an epi­gram. … I get up in the morn­ing with an idea for a three-volume novel and by night­fall it’s a para­graph in my col­umn.” — Don Marquis

“The skele­ton dimen­sions I shall now pro­ceed to set down are copied ver­ba­tim from my right arm, where I had them tat­tooed; as in my wild wan­der­ings at that period, there was no other secure way of pre­serv­ing such valu­able sta­tis­tics. But as I was crowded for space, and wished the other parts of my body to remain a blank page for a poem I was then com­pos­ing — at least, what untat­tooed parts might remain — I did not trou­ble myself with the odd inches; nor, indeed, should inches at all enter into a con­ge­nial admea­sure­ment of the whale.” — Moby Dick by Her­man Melville, Chap­ter 102 “A Bower in the Arsacides”

“Ulti­mately, lit­er­a­ture is noth­ing but car­pen­try.“
Inter­viewer: Can you explain that anal­ogy a lit­tle more?
“Both are very hard work. Writ­ing some­thing is almost as hard as mak­ing a table. With both you are work­ing with real­ity, a mate­r­ial just as hard as wood. Both are full of tricks and tech­niques. Basi­cally very lit­tle magic and a lot of hard work are involved. … I never have done any car­pen­try, but it’s the job I admire most, espe­cially because you can never find any­one to do it for you.” — Gabriel Gar­cia Mar­quez, in The Paris Review, 1981.

Art in General

“Art is not art if only 14 peo­ple know about it.” — Joni Mitchell, quoted by Jacque­lyn Mitchard

“Humil­ity is not a virtue pro­pi­tious to the artist. It is often pride, emu­la­tion, avarice, mal­ice all the odi­ous qual­i­ties which drive a man to com­plete, elab­o­rate, refine, destroy, renew his work until he has made some­thing that grat­i­fies his pride and envy and greed. And in doing so he enriches the world more than the gen­er­ous and good, though he may lose his own soul in the process. That is the para­dox of artis­tic achieve­ment.” — Eve­lyn Waugh

“Art for art’s sake makes no more sense than gin for gin’s sake.” — W. Som­er­set Maugham

“Aes­thet­ics is for the artist as ornithol­ogy is for the birds.” — Bar­nett New­man, about art criticism

“Trust the mys­tery to rise from the com­mon­place.” — Ellen Gilchrist

“It’s like a law of nature, a law of aero­dy­nam­ics that any­thing that’s writ­ten or any­thing that’s cre­ated wants to be mediocre. … What it takes to make any­thing more than mediocre is such a f—ing act of will. … You just have to exert so much will into some­thing for it to be good.” — Ira Glass, in The Onion A.V. Club

“After tak­ing hun­dreds of slides, I decided see­ing the world through a cam­era viewfinder was very lim­it­ing. You dash around too fast and don’t really SEE the scene. About 30 years ago I stopped just click­ing, and started mak­ing quick sketches, try­ing to catch the essence of the view, and ignor­ing minor details. I think any­one who wishes, with a lit­tle instruc­tion, can do the same, and be hap­pier with the mem­o­ries.” — Richard Kel­logg, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus, UA School of Archi­tec­ture, spring 2005.

“I’m never happy with what I did yes­ter­day — not because I think I did a bad job, but because there’s more to do. … [I]nnovation is con­stantly the result of an attempt to solve a prob­lem, to reach out beyond where you are. … I don’t write to a mar­ket, but I’m talk­ing to some­body when I write. I guess you might say I’m like the Ancient Mariner: I’ve got a story and I want to tell it to some­body. … Any­body in the busi­ness of inno­va­tion is in pur­suit of some­thing that nobody else believes exists. … When you look at a per­son, you look for small details that reveal the char­ac­ter to you. … The back­ground can be impres­sion­is­tic, because we remem­ber back­grounds impres­sion­is­ti­cally. You don’t come away remem­ber­ing the num­ber of riv­ets in the bridge; you just remem­ber the feel­ing of the bridge.” — Graphic nov­el­ist Will Eis­ner, inter­viewed at www.avclub.com

“The secret to cre­ativ­ity is know­ing how to hide your sources.” — Albert Ein­stein (quoted by UA Uni­ver­sity Rela­tions head­lines ser­vice 01/06)

“Every­thing has been thought of before; the task is to think of it again.” — Goethe, as quoted by Igor Stravin­sky, in 01/26/09 New Yorker arti­cle about George Bal­an­chine by Arlene Croce

Explain­ing Me to Myself

“Curios­ity is the purest form of insub­or­di­na­tion” — Vladimir Nabokov, quoted by Bill Har­ri­son at Blair Library ded­i­ca­tion, 9 Octo­ber 2004 (most Google entries say it’s “curios­ity … is insub­or­di­na­tion in its purest form.”)

“When you’re through chang­ing, you’re through.” — William Safire, The New York Times, Jan. 24, 2005.

Briefs from Hunter S. Thomp­son:
“Call on God, but row away from the rocks.” “For every moment of tri­umph, for every instance of beauty, many souls must be tram­pled.” “A word to the wise is infu­ri­at­ing.” “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” “Some may never live, but the crazy never die.” — from the Lon­don Guardian. “Given money for expenses, any­thing is pos­si­ble.” — David McCum­ber, HST’s col­umn edi­tor at SF Exam­iner, in Seat­tle Post-Intelligencer. “If I can write like this and get away with it,” he recounted to Play­boy, “why should I keep try­ing to write like the New York Times? It was like falling down an ele­va­tor shaft and land­ing in a pool full of mer­maids.” HST to Play­boy, in LA Times.

“Which is trivia — the dia­mond or the ele­phant? Any humorist must be inter­ested in trivia, in every lit­tle thing that occurs in a house­hold. It’s what Robert Bench­ley did so well — in fact so well that one of the great­est fears of the humor­ous writer is that he has spent three weeks writ­ing some­thing done faster and bet­ter by Bench­ley in 1919.” — James Thurber, inter­viewed in The Paris Review, 1955

“Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first call promis­ing.” — Cyril Con­nolly, quoted in the June 14, 2004, New Yorker: “Blocked: Why Do Writ­ers Stop Writ­ing ” by Joan Acocella

“Tomor­row / Is a busy day / We got things to do / We got eggs to lay / We got ground to dig / And worms to scratch / It takes a lot of sit­tin’ / Get­tin’ chicks to hatch / There ain’t nobody here but us chick­ens / There ain’t nobody here at all / So quiet your­self / And stop your fuss / There ain’t nobody here but us / Kindly point that gun / The other way / And hob­ble hob­ble hob­ble off and /Hit the hay.” — Louis Jordan

Grou­cho: Hello, I must be going. / I can­not stay, / I came to say / I must be going. / I’m glad I came / but just the same / I must be going.
M Dumont: For my sake you must stay, / for if you should go away, / you’ll spoil this party / I am throw­ing.
Grou­cho: I’ll stay a week or two, / I’ll stay the sum­mer through, / but I am telling you, / I must be going.
Cho­rus: ?
Grou­cho: I’ll do any­thing you say / In fact I’ll even stay, / But I must be going.
– Grou­cho Marx/Ruby&Kalmar

“There is noth­ing so con­ducive to brevity like a cav­ing in of the knees.” — Jus­tice Oliver Wen­dell Holmes, cit­ing his use of the stand-up desk willed to him by his late uncle, Judge Charles Jack­son, in writ­ing short opin­ions, in long­hand. From the Web site of the Supreme Court His­tor­i­cal Soci­ety, an arti­cle by Mrs. Erwin N. Griswold.

“Gen­tle­men, in the lit­tle moment that remains to us between the cri­sis and the cat­a­stro­phe, we may as well drink a glass of Cham­pagne.” — Paul Claudel

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from. — Uncle Ellis in “No Coun­try for Old Men” by Cor­mac McCarthy

The per­fect is the enemy of the good. — Voltaire

“Careers are about noth­ing more than mak­ing peace with your­self.” — advice colum­nist Car­olyn Hax, 2008

If you look into your own mind, which are you, Don Quixote or San­cho Panza? Almost cer­tainly you are both. There is one part of you that wishes to be a hero or a saint, but another part of you is a lit­tle fat man who sees very clearly the advan­tages of stay­ing alive with a whole skin. He is your unof­fi­cial self, the voice of the belly protest­ing against the soul. — George Orwell, “The Art of Don­ald McGill,” 1941

Life in General

“I don’t get this stuff about sports­man­ship. You play to win, don’t you? Say I’m play­ing short and Mother is on first and the bat­ter sin­gles to right. Mother comeqs fast around sec­ond with the win­ning run — Mother will have to go down. I’ll help her up, dust her off and say, ‘Mom, I’m sorry, but it was an acci­dent’ but she won’t of scored. Nobody asks how you hap­pened to lose. All they want to know is did you win. If I’m spit­ting at a crack in the wall for nick­els I still want to win. Any­body can come in sec­ond. Nice guys fin­ish last.” — util­ity infielder Leo Durocher, quoted in “Non­con­for­mity” by Nel­son Algren

“Being nobody but your­self in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you like every­body else means to fight the hard­est bat­tle any human can fight.” — e.e. cum­mings, quoted by Anne Lamott

“When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You can build a throne with bay­o­nets, but you can’t sit on it for long.” — Boris Yeltsin

“Pick bat­tles big enough to mat­ter, small enough to win.” — Jonathan Kozol

“For­get about what you are escap­ing FROM. Reserve your anx­i­ety for what you are escap­ing TO.” — illu­sion­ist Bernard Korn­blum in Michael Chabon’s “Kava­lier & Clay.

“Chop wood, carry water.” — Bud­dhist maxim quoted by Ellen Gilchrist, 5/03

“Fail. Fail again. Fail bet­ter.” — Card on Samuel Beckett’s wall, quoted by Mary Gordon

“Everyone’s sell­ing some­thing now. Even if they’re giv­ing it away.” — James Lileks, online “Bleat” for June 21, 2006, lileks.com