“Ideas brush past fleeting and insubstantial as moths. But I let them go, I don’t want them. What I want is a voice.”— Joyce Carol Oates Having turned 88 last month, the American author Joyce… Read More
For many years, I’ve delighted in telling people about a library in St. John’s that most folks have never seen — nor even heard of. I’ve written an article for the summer issue of NQ,… Read More
“The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.”— Flannery O’Connor You won’t find photos of the American author Flannery O’Connor as an old woman, nor even really of a middle-aged… Read More
“For better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word.”— Vladimir Nabokov This observation from Vladimir Nabokov is spoken by one of the Russian-American novelist’s characters, and not a nice one, either…. Read More
“My parents were less than thrilled when they got the news. I can understand that: a life in the arts is chancy in at least a hundred ways, ninety of them financial. My mother said,… Read More
“My thought is always, ‘It’s only downhill from here.’ That’s how I’ve always operated, ever since I began Family Guy. I had the crippling fear that I used up all the funny last week. That crippling… 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
“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
“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
“One of the surest of tests is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or… Read More
“Manuscript: something submitted in haste and returned at leisure.”— Oliver Herford The quote of the day is about something freelancers will know well. It’s also, alas, a bit of an anachronism. Gifted in multiple ways… Read More
“I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others… Read More
“I don’t know if anyone has noticed but I only ever write about one thing: being alone. The fear of being alone, the desire to not be alone, the attempts we make to find our… Read More
“I learned this lesson too late, frankly: Do not judge it while you’re doing it. Do not go back and fix things that are 20 pages ago when you’re already 20 pages past that. You’ll… Read More
I have written plenty of obituaries over my time, and by that I mean news stories about public figures whose lives were remarkable. I also wrote or edited many articles involving death. There’s a language… Read More