Eight Words
An SS noncommissioned officer came to meet us, a truncheon in his hand. He gave the order: “Men to the left! Women to the right!” Eight words spoken quietly, indifferently, without emotion. Eight...
View ArticleMrs. Hawkins Advises Writers
“‘You are writing a letter to a friend,’ was the sort of thing I used to say. ‘And this is a dear and close friend, real—or better—invented in your mind like a fixation. Write privately, not publicly;...
View ArticleA few last quotes from A Far Cry from Kensington
On William, a highly intelligent medical student with an impoverished background: “What moved and astonished me most was that he knew no nursery rhymes and fairy stories. He had read Dostoevsky,...
View ArticleWhy we read
Surely we all occasionally buy books because of a daydream we’re having—a little fantasy about the people we might turn into one day, when our lives are different, quieter, more introspective, and when...
View Article“…which says the word you have been unconsciously listening for…”
“No doubt it has happened to many of you to pick up in a happy moment some book or pamphlet or copy of verse which just says the word you have unconsciously been listening for, almost craving to speak...
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High Style
“I’ve never met a really good writer who lives in high style. I think a stylish life is unsuitable to the writer, and very often in the house where there’s a mild disorder one finds the writer with...
View ArticleWhich
There’s never any knowing—(how am I to put it?)—which of our actions, which of our idlenesses won’t have things hanging on it for ever. —E.M. Forster, Where Angels Fear to Tread
View ArticleThe Soul of Democracy
“Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched—criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led—this is the soul of democracy...
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