Tiah Beautement's Blog, page 91

On Pain

You have observed from a rather young age that you cannot make people love you. But only now are you beginning to understand that even those that love you will only do so in their own way. You cannot expect anybody to understand. You can lay out all the information, explain the problems as best you are capable of, but you cannot force anybody to hear you. Most won’t. Some choose this because they don’t care. Some choose this because they are afraid. Some choose this for reasons you have yet to grasp. You have yet to learn how not...

On American Gods

Neil Gaiman, American Gods - The best thing - in Shadow's opinion, perhaps the only good thing - about being in prison was a feeling of relief. The feeling that he'd plunged as low as he could plunge and he'd hit bottom. - - You don't do anyone else's time for them. - - You are where the forgotten wait. - - Every hour wounds. The last one kills. - - 'I think there are several aspects of our marriage we're going to have to work on.' / 'Babes,' he told her. 'You're dead.' / 'That's one of those aspects,...

On special powers

I’ve loved reading since I was a small child and have made up fictions ever since before I could write. But it never occurred to me when I was a kid that being a writer was a career choice open to me. I imagined the writers of books were a unique breed of people with special powers that normal people simply didn’t possess. - Rachel Zadok, pamelastitch.com

On For the Mercy of Water

Karen Jayes, For the Mercy of Water - 'Are you a journalist?' 'No,' I said. 'I'm a writer.' . . . 'There's a difference,' I said. 'We make up things. People believe us less.' - - 'It is hard for you to understand, but there is not even a coin sometimes. There is only dust. . . It has become a very costly human urge,' he said, 'this thirst.' - - And sometimes something is everything. - - 'When this happens to a journalist, when they lose a story to a more palatable truth - a vital part of the...

On the crime scene

Marikana brought my writing to an abrupt halt, in fact. It was not writer’s block. I stopped writing for weeks. It was not a question of finding my own words again, my inner rhythm of storytelling. It seemed to me that the narrative project of crime fiction – which, at its heart, is the restoration of social order by the solving of a crime – had been thrown permanently off kilter by that early morning bloodbath on that bleak koppie. How does one find an ethical position after a massacre of that scale? - Margie Orford, On the Marikana Effect

On Running & Other Stories

Makhosazana Xaba, Running & Other Stories - To write a farewell missive to a daughter you barely know borders on the duplicitous. So I will stick to the bones, a frame and form for you to hold me in should events in your life ever conspire to draw you close to such proclivity. - - I wanted to name you Fakazile.* Your mother would not hear of it, "for your own good". She said her Jewish family would have difficulty pronouncing that name. Go and find what it means and honour it. That is, if you ever wish to come...

On comments

Comments can be bad for science. . . . . . . even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a story, recent research suggests. . . . . . commenters shape public opinion; public opinion shapes public policy; public policy shapes how and whether and what research gets funded--you start to see why we feel compelled to hit the "off" switch. Even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a story. A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically...

On Sharp Edges

S.A. Partridge, Sharp Edges - I tumble over and over, till the force of the deluge carries me away, out the door and into the passage. Photos of my family tumble from the wall and are swallowed by the sea. Her mouth opens and closes as she calls my name, but I'm already out of reach. - - The guy in the mirror doesn't look anything like me. - - Dinner is another tradition that refuses to die. I have to sit and wait while Mom dishes up for Dad first, then for me, then for herself. Why is he...

On this day

It's never been today before. - Cynthia Voight

On The Ghost-Eater & Other Stories

The Ghost-Eater & Other Stories, Compiled by Diane Awerbuck, Edited by Louis Greenberg - What I have seen and heard about white people makes me believe that Satan lives on earth. - - He couldn't imagine why people would mind dropping the bits they would never eat, but he already knew humans as selfish. - - i don't know if she told you, or if you encouraged it, but she emailed me on your honeymoon. apologising on your behalf. - - Dogs can't really sin. Though there was the one time when I saw him mounting that other male dog,...