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.
+
If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated.
+
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.
+
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.
+
Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes.
+
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.
+
You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you never had the courage to commit.
+
There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.
+
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.
+
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.
+
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. 
+
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. 
+
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.
+
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. 
+
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.
+
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.
+
The world was in her heart already, like the small spot of decay in a fruit.
+
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.
+
And when we love our sin then we are damned indeed.
- The Power and the Glory


You cannot love without intuition.
- The Quiet American

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.
+
Never love a wild thing...If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky.
+
Everybody has to feel superior to somebody," she said. "But it's customary to present a little proof before you take the privilege.
+
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.
+
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.
+
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.
+
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.
+
Virtue is persecuted by the wicked more than it is loved by the good.
+
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.
+
Time has more power to undo and change things than the human will.
+
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.
+
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)

T.S. Eliot...

T.S. Eliot
Born: September 26th, 1888 - Missouri, U.S.
Died; January 4th, 1965 - London, U.K.

He became a British citizen in 1927

Nobel Prize in Literature - 1948

poet
essayist
playwright


Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherised upon a table;
+
For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock


We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
+
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
- The Hollow Men


A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water.
+
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you
I will show you fear in a handful of dust
- The Waste Land


Footfalls echo in the memory, down the passage we did not take,
towards the door we never opened, into the rose garden.
- Four Quartets

Macavity, Macavity, there's no one like Macavity, 
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity. 
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare: 
At whatever time the deed took place - MACAVITY WASN'T THERE!
- Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats


The last act is the greatest treason. To do the right deed for the wrong reason.
- Murder in the Cathedral

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)

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

Count Maurice...

Count Maurice Maeterlinck
Born: 29th August 1862 - Ghent, Belgium
Died: 6th May 1949 - Nice, France


poet
playwright
essayist
Nobel Prize winner in Literature - 1911


When we lose someone we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together ...
- The Treasure of the Humble 

...signs of a life that we cannot explain are everywhere, vibrating by the side of the life of every day.
- The Treasure of the Humble

Christopher Isherwood...

Christopher Isherwood
Born: August 26, 1904 - UK
Died: January 4, 1986 - US
novelist
playwright
screen-writer
autobiographer
diarist


One should never write down or up to people, but out of yourself. 

If it’s going to be a world with no time for sentiment, it’s not a world that I want to live in.
 ― A Single Man 

We live in stirring times-  tea-stirring times. 

I have had an unpleasant feeling, such as one has in a dream, that I myself do not exist.
 ―  Goodbye to Berlin