Isaac Asimov

Source of image

Isaac Asimov
Born: January 2nd, 1920 - Petrovichi, Russia
Died: April 6th, 1992 - New York City, U.S.


novelist
short story writer
non-fiction writer


Any planet is 'Earth' to those that live on it.
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There never can be a man so lost as one who is lost in the vast and intricate corridors of his own lonely mind, where none may reach and none may save.
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Of course there are worlds. Millions of them! Every star you see has worlds, and most of those you don't see.
- Pebble in the Sky


The first problem of living is to minimize friction with the crowds that surround you on all sides.
- The Caves of Steel


You show me someone who can't understand people and I'll show you someone who has built up a false image of himself.
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It seems to me, Golan, that the advance of civilization is nothing but an exercise in the limiting of privacy.
- Foundation's Edge


Isn't it sad that you can tell people that the ozone layer is being depleted, the forests are being cut down, the deserts are advancing steadily, that the greenhouse effect will raise the sea level 200 feet, that overpopulation is choking us, that pollution is killing us, that nuclear war may destroy us - and they yawn and settle back for a comfortable nap. But tell them that the Martians are landing, and they scream and run.
- The Secret of the Universe


You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason---if you pick the proper postulates.
- I, Robot

J. D. Salinger

Source of image

J. D. Salinger
Born: January 1st, 1919 - New York City, U.S.
Died: January 27th, 2010 - New Hampshire, U.S.


novelist
short story writer


What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though.
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I don't exactly know what I mean by that, but I mean it.
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Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do.
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Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly
- Catcher in the Rye


The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.
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Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.
- Nine Stories


He said I was unequipped to meet life because I had no sense of humor.
- For Esme - With Love and Squalor, and Other Stories


I'm sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.
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An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.
- Franny and Zooey


I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.
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The true poet has no choice of material. The material plainly chooses him, not he it. 
- Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters & Seymour: An Introduction

Oscar Wilde...

Oscar Wilde 
Born: October 16th, 1854 - Dublin, Ireland
Died: November 30th, 1900 - Paris, France


playwright
novelist
poet
essayist



The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
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If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.
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I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.
- The Importance of Being Earnest


I can resist anything except temptation.
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It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
- Lady Windermere's Fan


The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.
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Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
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Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
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You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
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There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
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Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.
- The Picture of Dorian Gray


Every woman is a rebel, and usually in wild revolt against herself.
- A Woman of No Importance

The only people I would care to be with now are artists and people who have suffered: those who know what beauty is, and those who know what sorrow is: nobody else interests me.
- De Profundis

There is no sin except stupidity.
- The Critic as Artist 

A writer is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.
- source???

Thomas Keneally...

Thomas Keneally 
Born: October 7th, 1935 - Sydney, Australia


Booker Prize
Miles Franklin Award - twice
Order of Australia - 1983


novelist
playwright
non-fiction writer


Oskar showed that virtue emerged where it would, and the sort of churchy observance bishops called for was not a guarantee of genuine humanity in a person.
- Searching for Schindler: A Memoir


The afternoon is hot in this alien forest. The sunlight burrows like a worm in both eye-balls. His jacket looks pallid, the arms are rotted out of his yellowing shirt, and, under the gaiters, worn for the occasion, the canvas shoes are too light for this knobbly land. Yet, as already seen, he takes long strides, he moves with vigour. He’s on his way to Mr Commissary Blythe’s place, where his secret bride, Ann Rush, runs the kitchen and the house.
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The Whales came back in white froth, and went again; back and went again. Whenever they went, they whacked the water with what looked like wrath in such big creatures. Yet perhaps it was horror. Whichever way, men disappeared amongst curds of angry water . . . the creatures did not come back the third time.
- Bring Larks and Heroes


The dogs were really keening now, like Irish widows.
- Victim of the Aurora


In the mind of a true snob there are certain limited criteria to denote the value of human existence. Jimmie's criteria were: home, hearth, wife, land. Those who possessed these had beatitude unchallengable. Other men had accidental, random life. Nothing better.
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The truest crime remaining to him to commit was the waste of love. It should be bequeathed, as land is.
- The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith


Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire. 
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The principle was, death should not be entered like some snug harbor. It should be an unambiguous refusal to surrender.
- Schindler's List

Denis Diderot...

Denis Diderot
Born: October 5th, 1713 - Langres, France
Died: July 31st, 1784 - Paris, France


novelist
playwright
philosopher
art critic


For me, my thoughts are my prostitutes. 
- Le neveu de Rameau 

There's a bit of testicle at the bottom of our most sublime feelings and our purest tenderness.
- Letter to Étienne Noël Damilaville (1760-11-03)

I picture the vast realm of the sciences as an immense landscape scattered with patches of dark and light. The goal towards which we must work is either to extend the boundaries of the patches of light, or to increase their number. One of these tasks falls to the creative genius; the other requires a sort of sagacity combined with perfectionism.
- Thoughts on the Interpretation of Nature and Other Philosophical Works

"Spirit of the staircase" or "Staircase inspiration"...
This phrase is a famous allusion to the witty remarks one thinks of when it is too late, as when one is leaving a meeting and going down the stairs.
- Paradoxe sur le Comédien (1773-1777)

Scepticism is the first step towards truth. 
- Pensées philosophiques 


It is better to reveal a weakness than allow oneself be suspected of a vice. 
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Life is but a series of misunderstandings. 
- Jacques the Fatalist

Gore Vidal...

Gore Vidal
Born: October 3rd, 1925 - New York, U.S.
Died: July 31st, 2012 - California, U.S.


novelist
playwright
essayist
non-fiction writer
screen-writer


Interesting fact: Vidal had bitter feuds with other authors, notably Truman Capote.
See HERE



We affect one another quite enough merely by existing. Whenever the stars cross, or is it comets? fragments pass briefly from one orbit to another. On rare occasions there is total collision, but most often the two simply continue without incident, neither losing more than a particle to the other, in passing.
- The City and the Pillar


Let the dust take me when the adventure's done and I shall make the dust glitter for all eternity with my marvelous fury.
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That my plans have lately gone somewhat awry is the sort of risk one must take if life is to be superb.
- Myra Breckinridge


How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself. 
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My memory plays me odd tricks these days [...] Age spares us nothing, old friend. Like ancient trees, we die from the top.
- Julian


I have always regarded as a stroke of good fortune that I was not born or brought up in a small American town; they may be the backbone of the nation, but they are also the backbone of ignorance, bigotry, and boredom, all in vast quantities.
- Death Before Bedtime

In fact, life itself is a contradiction if only because birth is the direct cause, in every single case, of death.
- Creation

Graham Greene...

Graham Greene 
Born: October 2nd, 1904 - Berkhamstead, U.K.
Died: April 3rd, 1991 - Vevey, Switzerland


novelist
short story writer
playwright
travel writer
screenplay writer
critic


A story has no beginning or end: arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.
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Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time.
- The End of the Affair


He gave her a bright fake smile; so much of life was a putting off of unhappiness for another time.
- The Heart of the Matter

We never get accustomed to being less important to other people than they are to us.
- The Third Man

It is always of interest to know what strikes another human being as remarkable.
The Ministry of Fear

There was always another side to a joke, the side of the victim.
- Our Man in Havana


Hate is a lack of imagination.
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The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit.
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Oh well, perhaps when you're my age you'll know the heart is an untrustworthy beast.The mind too,but it doesn't talk about love.
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And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.
- The Power and the Glory


You cannot love without intuition.
- The Quiet American

Faith Baldwin...

Faith Baldwin  (wrote about 85 books - New York Times HERE)
Born: October 1st, 1893 - New York, U.S.
Died: March 18th, 1978 - Connecticut, U.S.


novelist
short story writer
poet
magazine articles

(special mentor to a child HERE)


All this makes me realize that miracles are everyday things. Not only the sudden, great good fortune, wafting in on a new wind from the sky. They are almost routine, yet miracles just the same.
- Seasons of the Heart

Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
- American Family

That coffee's strong enough to walk on.
- Give Love the Air

You could get to the bottom of her mind in one dive. And rarely, if ever, come up with a pearl.
- Something Special

Kissing tends to bring on woolgathering, even amnesia.
- One More Time


The plan of Nature is progress and for any progress mankind must pay a price.
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Life is rather like a long train ride; you may encounter a great many people, but looking out from your own small compartment of self you catch only a glimpse of other people's joy or despair.
- Evening Star


Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.
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Sometimes there is a greater lack of communication in facile talking than in silence.
- Face Toward the Spring

Truman Capote...

Truman Capote
Born: September 30th, 1924 - Louisianna, U.S.
Died: August 25th, 1984 - California, U.S.


novelist
short story writer
playwright
non-fiction writer


It’s better to look at the sky than live there.
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Never love a wild thing...If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky.
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Everybody has to feel superior to somebody," she said. "But it's customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege.
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Home is where you feel at home. I'm still looking.
- Breakfast at Tiffany's


It is no shame to have a dirty face- the shame comes when you keep it dirty.
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Just remember: If one bird carried every grain of sand, grain by grain, across the ocean, by the time he got them all on the other side, that would only be the beginning of eternity.
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Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.
- In Cold Blood


There were hints of sunrise on the rim of the sky, yet it was still dark, and the traces of morning color were like goldfish swimming in ink.
- The Muses Are Heard


Still, when all is said, somewhere one must belong: even the soaring falcon returns to its master's wrist.
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Oh, I adore to cook. It makes me feel so mindless in a worthwhile way.
- Summer Crossing


It's bad enough in life to do without something YOU want; but confound it, what gets my goat is not being able to give somebody something you want THEM to have.
- A Christmas Memory 

We all, sometimes, leave each other there under the skies, and we never understand why.
- Music for Chameleons

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra...

Miguel de Cervantes
Born: September 29th, 1547 - Alcara de Hanares, Spain
Died: April 22nd, 1616 - Madrid, Spain


novelist
poet
playwright


The venerable old Don, despite all his human flaws and follies, possessed a nobility of purpose that redeemed the limitations of his powers. Spain honored him, loved him, and forgave him.
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Virtue is persecuted by the wicked more than it is loved by the good.
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Laughter distances us from that which is ugly and therefore potentially distressing, and indeed enables us to obtain paradoxical pleasure and therapeutic benefit from it.
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Time has more power to undo and change things than the human will.
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It is one thing to write as poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.
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Where there's music there can be no evil.
- The Life and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote de la Mancha 



NOTE
2016 has been named ''Year of Shakespeare and Cervantes''.
Both died 400 years ago in April, almost on the same day. (Shakespeare - April 23)

Kate Douglas Wiggin...

Kate Douglas Wiggin
Born: September 28th, 1856 - Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died: August 24th, 1923 - London, U.K.


novelist
children's story writer


To let blessed babies go dangling and dawdling without names, for months and months, was enough to ruin them for life.
- The Bird's Christmas Carol

No whimpering, madam! You can't have the joys of motherhood without some of its pangs! Think of your blessings, and don't be a coward!—
- Mother Carey's Chickens

Lord, I do not ask that Thou shouldst give me wealth; only show me where it is, and I will attend to the rest.
- Penelope's Progress


There are certain narrow, umimaginative, and autocratic old people who seem to call out the most mischievous and sometimes the worst traits in children.
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Great, wide, beautiful, wonderful World,
With the wonderful water round you curled,
And the wonderful grass upon your breast,
World, you are beautifully drest!
- Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm


There is a kind of magicness about going far away and then coming back all changed.
- New Chronicles of Rebecca


If I haven't anything to write, I am just as anxious to 'take my pen in hand' as though I had a message to deliver, a cause to plead, or a problem to unfold. Nothing but writing rests me; only then do I seem completely myself! 
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Pictures made in childhood are painted in bright hues.
- My Garden of Memory

Josef Škvorecký...

Josef Škvorecký
Born: September 27th, 1924 - Nachod, Czech Republic
Died: Janurary 3rd, 2012 - Toronto, Canada


novelist
poet
essayist
non-fiction writer


Regarded as a Czech-Canadian writer
I am a Czech and I am a loyal citizen of Canada, he told an interviewer in 2006.
(Ref  NYT HERE)


We may think we live for wisdom, but in fact we're living for the the pleasure wisdom brings us.
- The Engineer of Human Souls

After sixty years of the Soviet state’s struggle against art, it should be obvious that Marxists in power do not trouble themselves about aesthetics.
- Hipness at Noon


There’s this tradition in Czech literature that books are sacred, and therefore the language used in writing books is very formal—without contractions, distortions, or slang...
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Hemingway. I suddenly saw that you could write dialogue as people spoke it. But I didn’t read Hemingway until the end of the war in an English-language Swedish edition of A Farewell to Arms. And then I read everything. It opened my eyes. I realized that you could write dialogue that need not be informational; it simply was.
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If you live in a country where politics are oppressive and you write—or try to write—you can’t avoid being a political writer. I enjoy writing about other things, but to write a novel about Bohemia in the past forty years and avoid politics entirely would be to write some sort of romantic idyll that never existed. I consider myself a realistic writer; it’s unfortunate that one becomes a political writer out of necessity.
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Every writer writes, first of all, for himself. I think my primary readership consists of intelligent exiles because I write about Czechs not only in Czechoslovakia, but also in North America as in my new novel, about the role of Czechs during the Civil War. But I believe that if something has relevance for people of my own nation, then it probably has relevance for everybody, and that there’s something universal about it. The accidentals may be different, but the basics are the same, and they’re universal.
- Paris Review Interview - 1989 - but interview actually conducted 1985

F. Scott Fitzgerald...

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Born: September 24th, 1896 - Minnesota, U.S.
Died: December 21st, 1940 - California, U.S.


novelist
short story writer


In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.
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I love New York on summer afternoons when everyone's away. There's something very sensuous about it - overripe, as if all sorts of funny fruits were going to fall into your hands.
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So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star.
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The exhilarating ripple of her voice was a wild tonic in the rain.
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A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about.
- The Great Gatsby

All life is just a progression toward, and then a recession from, one phrase--"I love you."
- The Offshore Pirate

Receding from grief, it seems necessary to retrace the same steps that brought us there.
- Tender is the Night

In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.
- The Crack-Up

I simply state that I'm a product of a versatile mind in a restless generation — with every reason to throw my mind and pen in with the radicals.
- This Side of Paradise

Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.
- The Diamond as Big as the Ritz

Fay Weldon...

Fay Weldon
Born: September 22nd, 1933 - Alvechurch, U.K.


novelist
essayist
playwright


Booker Prize for Fiction - 1979


The more you pay attention to the body, the less attention you've got left to pay the soul. I really do understand that.
- Darcy's Utopia

Food. Drink. Sleep. Books. They are all drugs.
- The Fat Woman's Joke

The language of distinction ceases to be available; is no longer available. We must search CD Rom for meanings which once were clear, but now are obscure. The words are too big for the narrow column of the contemporary newspaper. We are all one-syllable people now, two at most.
- Wicked Women 

A writer writes opaquely to keep some readers out, let others in. It is what he or she meant to do. It is not accidental - obscurity of language, inconsistency of thought ... it's not for everyone, it was never meant to be.
- Letters to Alice on First Reading Jane Austen
(Interesting review of the letters HERE)

H. G. Wells...

H. G. Wells
Born: September 21st, 1866 - Bromley, U.K.
Died: August 13th, 1946 - London, U.K.


novelist
historian


Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life.
- The Time Machine

All men, however highly educated, retain some superstitious inklings.
- The Invisible Man

Few people realise the immensity of vacancy in which the dust of the material universe swims.
- The War of the Worlds
(Today is the International Day of Peace 2016)

So utterly at variance is Destiny with all the little plans of men.
- The First Men in the Moon

There is no liberty, save wisdom and self-control. Liberty is within--not without. It is each man's own affair.
- When the Sleeper Wakes

I hope, or I could not live.
- The Island of Dr. Moreau

Upton Sinclair...

Upton Sinclair
Born: September 20th, 1878 - Maryland, U.S.
Died: November 25th, 1968 - New Jersey, U.S.
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction - 1943


novelist
journalist
political and social activist


The old wanderlust had gotten into his blood, the joy of the unbound life, the joy of seeking, of hoping without limit.
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The rich people not only had all the money, they had all the chance to get more; they had all the know-ledge and the power, and so the poor man was down, and he had to stay down.
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There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside.
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They use everything about the hog except the squeal.
- The Jungle 


Man is an evasive beast, given to cultivating strange notions about himself.
- The Profits of Religion

William Golding...

William Golding
Born: September 19th, 1911 - Newquay, U.K.
Died: June 19th, 1993 - Perranarwarthal, U.K.
Nobel Prize for Literature 1983


novelist



Maybe there is a beast… maybe it's only us.
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The air was heavy with unspoken knowledge. 
- Lord of the Flies


I am here; and here is nowhere in particular.
- The Spire

We're all mad, the whole damned race. We're wrapped in illusions, delusions, confusions about the penetrability of partitions, we're all mad and in solitary confinement.
- Darkness Visible

Perhaps the various burnings of the Alexandria Library were necessary, like those Australian Forest Fires without which the new seeds cannot burst their shells and make a young, healthy forest.
- A Moving Target

Art is partly communication, but only partly. The rest is discovery.
- Free Fall

Ken Kesey...

Ken Kesey
Born: September 17th, 1935 - Colorado, U.S.
Died: November 10th, 2001 - Oregon, U.S.


novelist
short story writer
children's story writer
essayist



Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.
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You get your visions through whatever gate you're granted.
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They can't tell so much about you if you got your eyes closed.
- One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest


I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.
- Tom Wolfe's record of Kesey quotes in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)


What I always wanted to be was a magician... My real upbringing when I was a teenager was doing magic shows, all over the state, with my father and brothers. Doing magic, you not only have to be able to do a trick, you have to have a little story line to go with it. And writing is essentially a trick.
- interview in The Sun Times (South Africa) - 29 August 1999

Agatha Christie...

Agatha Christie
Born: September 15th, 1890 - Torquay, U.K.
Died: January 12th, 1976 - Winterbrook, U.K.


novelist
short story writer
playwright


The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.
- Murder on the Orient Express

Everybody always knows something," said Adam, "even if it's something they don't know they know.
- Cat Among the Pigeons

Many homicidal lunatics are very quiet, unassuming people. Delightful fellows.
- And Then There Were None: A Mystery Play in Three Acts

There is no detective in England equal to a spinster lady of uncertain age with plenty of time on her hands.
- Murder at the Vicarage

I know there's a proverb which that says 'To err is human,' but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.
- Hallowe'en Party

It is clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying, and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.
- The Clocks


NOTE
2016 marks the centenary of Agatha Christie writing her first detective story
 – The Mysterious Affair at Styles.
The Royal Mail is marking the centenary with the release of 6 stamps representing 6 of her novels...
- more HERE

Theodor Storm...

Theodor Storm
Born: September 14th, 1817 - Husum, Germany
Died: July 4th, 1888 - Hanerau-Hademarschen, Germany


poet
novelist


Clouds gather, treetops toss and sway; 
But pour us wine, an old one! 
That we may turn this dreary day 
To golden; yes, to golden! 
- A Song in October


Between the shadows of the earth and the dark depths of the sky, human life lay slumbering, with all its unsolved puzzles.
- Immensee