Monthly Archives: March 2009

Quotation of the Day

An incompetent small-town Australian police chief (Royle) visits the lodgings of a headmaster suspected of murder (Doncaster): “It was a gentleman-scholar’s room: photographs of cricket teams, school groups, and a smart army photograph with a rather artificially grim expression. On … Continue reading

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Quotation of the Day

“I had made the discovery that if you put people in a comic light they became more likable — if you spoke of someone as a gross, belching, wall-eyed human pike you got along much better with him thereafter, partly … Continue reading

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Quotation of the Day

“. . . a thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away.” (Saul Bellow, Ravelstein, p. 95) Inelegantly expressed, but the thought is interesting.

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I Wonder

When Orson Welles was filming Macbeth, Othello, and Chimes at Midnight, did the crew call him Horson Welles? Behind his back, or to his face, it would have been a thoroughly Shakespearian pun.

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Quotation of the Day

“You never do the safe thing if there’s a risky alternative. You’re what people would call feckless, in the days when such words were still in use.” (Saul Bellow, Ravelstein, p. 43) Those were presumably the days when copy editors … Continue reading

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Life and Art

What’s it like living in one of the hillier parts of the Shenandoah Valley? Like living in a Grandma Moses painting, but with slightly duller colors and much better perspective. I really like driving past cows on the way to … Continue reading

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Quotation of the Day — and Hebdomad

A boy, an ungrown child, in seven years puts forth     a line of teeth and loses them again; but when another seven God has made complete,     the first signs of maturity appear. In the third hebdomad he’s growing yet, his … Continue reading

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