Warren Zevon, Sentimental Hygiene (1987)

Commonplace Book, Also

Welcome to the sixth aggregation of quotations that interest me – that is, the sixth blog installment of my “commonplace book,” a sixteenth-century tradition (that continued for several centuries), in which “one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement” (OED). I’ve thus far done two other “general”

Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson. Photo by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

Laurie Anderson & Lou Reed’s Rules to Live By

I collect quotations – the epigrammatic, the wise, the thoughtful. Sometimes, I post these in my “Commonplace Book” entries. Here’s another for the commonplace book, offered by Laurie Anderson on the occasion of Lou Reed‘s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, on Saturday, April 18, 2015. It’s “rules to live by,” co-written

Don DeLillo, White Noise (1985)

Commonplace Book, Too

From time to time, I post quotations that strike me as interesting – my blog version of the Commonplace Book, a tradition dating to the sixteenth century, in which (if I may quote the OED) “one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement.”  I’ve done three exclusively

Guus Kuijer, The Book of Everything

Commonplace Book: Children’s Literature, Part III

Children’s literature distills experience into concise, often pithy nuggets of wisdom. When you happen upon one such pearl, it often feels as if – for just that moment – the author (and not the narrator or character) is talking directly to you. From time to time, I gather a few such quotations in my irregularly

Dr. Seuss, from Oh, the Thinks You Can Think! (1975)

Oh, the Quotations You’ll Forge!

Every March 2nd, Americans celebrate the birthday of Dr. Seuss (a.k.a. Ted Geisel) by reading his work… and by sharing words he neither wrote nor said. I understand why. Seuss could be pithy. He’s far from the only aphoristic writer to be credited with phrases he didn’t coin. Mark Twain, Ghandi, Groucho Marx, and many

Rolling Stone, 30. Dec. 1976: cover by Maurice Sendak

Sendak on Sendak

It looks like the collected works of Maurice Sendak have exploded all over my office… because I’ve just finished a draft of an article on Sendak – one of many pieces I agreed to write this summer (and one reason why this blog has been so quiet lately). He was one of our most articulate

Commonplace Book: Children’s Literature

The responses to yesterday’s “Commonplace Book” post prompts me to list here ten favorite lines from children’s literature. (And please see yesterday’s post for quotations from Crockett Johnson and Dr. Seuss, and yesterday’s comments for great lines from E. B. White and Louis Sachar.) To get very far he was going to need a lot