“It should not be forgotten that art is not a science where the latest ‘correct’ theory declares the old to be false and erases it.”— Wassily Kandinsky A lawyer before he made the later-in-life decision… Read More
“I was going to sue her for defamation of character, but then I realized that I have no character.”— Charles Barkley Basketball superstar Charles Barkley has always been mindful of publicity — and he’s also… Read More
“The world of fantasy fills the gaps in people’s knowledge.”— Fred Vargas The French archaeologist Frédérique Audoin-Rouzeau is better known to the world as the crime writer Fred Vargas. My father loved her novels and… Read More
“Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure… Read More
“Imagination is the highest kite that can fly.” — Lauren Bacall Lauren Bacall wrote these words for her memoir, which was published first as By Myself in 1978, and then revised and published in 2005… Read More
“Canada is a collection of 10 provinces with strong governments loosely connected by fear.” — Dave Broadfoot As a good Canadian kid in the Seventies, I grew up on Dave Broadfoot (not to mention Sgt…. Read More
“Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.”— Groucho Marx A pop culture fixture long before my time, Groucho Marx was still a… Read More
“Recreation means to ‘recreate’ — it’s spiritual. Think about the actual word. It’s fascinating what a beautiful word it is when you look it up in the dictionary.”— Billie Jean King One of the greatest… Read More
“A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.”— P.J. O’Rourke Swimming first with the counterculture, P.J…. Read More
“The kind of people who always go on about whether a thing is in good taste invariably have very bad taste.”– Joe Orton The playwright Joe Orton said these words during an interview published in… Read More
“One of the things we learn in movies directed by men is what the ‘fantasy woman’ is. What we learn in movies directed by women is what real women are about. I don’t think that… Read More
“I always find there’s a kind of serendipity to research. I’m a generalist, so one of the things that compels me to a story is addressing my own ignorance.”— David Grann I came across this… Read More
One of the biggest stories in the U.K. this weekend is the death of Jenni Murray, who hosted the program Woman’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 for more than three decades. Murray, 75, died March… Read More
“That’s what books are, they’re containers for memory. They’re containers for the stories of the past. It’s an artifact that allows you to communicate with the past… I would imagine most writers have this sense… Read More
“Discovering witnesses is just as important as catching criminals.”— Simon Wiesenthal When he died in 2005 at the age of 96, Simon Wiesenthal was the world’s most famous Nazi hunter. A Holocaust survivor liberated from… Read More