June 2010
30 posts
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“Dismal are we who love only recognition
Now hand me the saber.”
– Joshua Beckman
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“I don’t have much
talent for poetry. When I see a wrecking ball
dangling...”
– Ralph Angel (in “Exceptions and Melancholies”)
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Re: Twihards.
Theater employee (as we entered): It's been "Eclipse" hell.
Us: . . .
Theater employee (as we left): Here, I can take you out past the Twilight fans. Be careful out there, guys.
Us: . . . [running away]
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Nostalgia, or something like it.
I saw Toy Story 3 tonight, expecting to be amused by my recognition of same-old, its same-old juvenile antics. Maybe I thought parts of it would tug at my heartstrings — reviews have said as much, anyway: that it’s fun without being fluffy, that audiences who saw the original Toy Story as kids would find Andy’s maturation relatable.
It was unexpectedly too relatable, or...
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The 10 most baffling "Twilight" products →
(from Salon.com)
“This Wednesday, “Twilight: Eclipse” will be unleashed into theaters to the delirious excitement of fans. At this point, the phenomenon has become so enormous it’s difficult to remember a time when we didn’t know what Twihards were, or when we could walk past any newsstand without seeing Robert Pattinson’s stone-faced pout. The real...
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“‘I tried to be good. I tried to be open and free.’
‘We all...”
– Michael Cunningham (The Hours)
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“I did it for me.
Admittedly I probably did it subliminally for you.”
– Eminem (“Not Afraid”)
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"Sex at Dawn": Why monogamy goes against our... →
(from Salon.com)
“In “Sex at Dawn,” which uses evidence gathered from human physiology, archaeology, primate biology and anthropological studies of pre-agricultural tribes from around the world, [Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá] argue that monogamy and the nuclear family are more recent inventions than most of us would expect — and far less natural than we’ve come...
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“It was the truths that made the people grotesques… . [T]he moment one of...”
– Sherwood Anderson (in Winesburg, Ohio)
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10 Under 10 →
(from The New York Times)
“In the wake of The New Yorker’s recent “20 Under 40” list of gifted fiction writers who have not yet reached age 40, the literary community has turned its attention to even younger emerging talent.”
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Eight-year-olds.
SL: You're a mess.
JL: I'm not a mess!
JL: I'm not a big sticky pile of gum.
JL: Or a messy room!
JL: . . .
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“What will survive of us is love.”
– Philip Larkin (in “An Arundel Tomb”)
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Ten rules for writing fiction →
(from The Guardian)
“Get an accountant, abstain from sex and similes, cut, rewrite, then cut and rewrite again – if all else fails, pray. Inspired by Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, we asked authors for their personal dos and don’ts”
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“She says, I loved you so much once. I loved you to the point of distraction. I...”
– Raymond Carver, (in “Intimacy,” Where I’m Calling From) (via fwriction)
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“An angry hamster looks exactly like an unangry hamster because the anger is...”
– Tao Lin (in Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy)
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Jetlag.
CS: asleep around ten
CS: woke up around 3:00?
CS: i'm kind of a wreck, to be honest
MO: i woke up at 5:30
MO: like wtf
MO: passed out at 11 PM
SL: fell asleep at 8:30
SL: hm 8:30-6:30 is good for some people
SL: like old people
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“not that I was alive
but that we were”
– Maureen N. McLane (from “Passage I”)
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“Soccer is a sport perfectly designed to reinforce a tragic view of the universe,...”
– David Brooks (for The New York Times)
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20 Under 40 →
(from The New Yorker)
“Our Summer Fiction Issue features twenty young writers who capture the inventiveness and the vitality of contemporary American fiction. Each of the twenty writers answered a brief questionnaire.”
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The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but... →
(Errol Morris, for The New York Times)
“We are overshadowed by a nimbus of ideas. There is our physical reality and then there is our conception of ourselves, our conception of self — one that is as powerful as, perhaps even more powerful than, the physical reality we inhabit. A version of self that can survive even the greatest bodily tragedies. We are creatures of our beliefs. ...
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“Why is the word yes so brief?
It should be
the longest,
the hardest,
so that...”
– Vera Pavlova (“If There Is Something to Desire,” 17)
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“… my negative emotions are raccoons in the woodshed that I want to shoot.”
– C. Southard (Wyomingite)
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Luciferous Logolepsy →
“a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words”
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“Nantes” — Beirut, on The Flying...
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“We have wacky mode here. Does anyone know what wacky modes must do? Break their...”
– Donald Barthelme
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“And with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like patience on a monument,...”
– William Shakespeare (in Twelfth Night)
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“It was the opposite of a shadow. Which is as clear a definition as I can come up...”
– Bill Hayes (for The New York Times) 