Hal Johnson's Blog, page 28

Truly Wordless Comic Panels

I write, for a living, books

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Dan DeCarlo!

A garland of quotations XLV

Your secret Santa craves these books!

We all have strength enough to endure the trouble of others.
•La Rochenfoucauld, Reflections (1665).

Trust him little who, without proofs, trusts you with every thing; or, when he has proved you, with nothing.
•Johann Kaspar Lavater, Aphorisms on Man. Translated from the Original Manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, Citizen of Zuric (1787).

I cannot conceive of a wisdom that lacks distrust: according to the Scriptures the beginning of wisdom is the fear of...

A garland of quotations XLIV

Your secret Santa craves these books!

Harry Hippo stood on his head
Everybody was doing something.
It was truly the best circus anybody had ever seen.
•Jerry Walters, Dumbo on Land, on Sea, in the Air (1972).

The clowns, emphasizing positive lessons by performing negative acts, are thus more like sacred priests than mere clowns.
•Alph H. Secakuku, Following the Sun and Moon: Hopi Kachina Tradition (1995).

Snoring or acting as if asleep when one is not…acting as if devoid of judgment…uttering senseless ...

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Do these books make great gifts?

Signs point to yes!

Of all Sun Myung Moon’s sins, I thought, his attacks on America were the most vile.
•Nansook Hong In the Shadow of the Moons: My Life in the Reverend Sun Myung Moon’s Family (1998).

Thus in the beginning all the world was America.
•Locke, The Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690).

The ancients did not discover America, but they invented it.
•Eduard Ebner, quoted in de Camp & Ley, Lands Beyond (1952).

No English pioneers. No French. No European pi...

Ask me to write the foreword or introduction to your next book!

Many years ago I wrote an foreword (it was to this book), and at the time I assumed I would just be dashing off prefaces left and right from then on, an assumption that proved false, I have never been asked to write another,

You, dear reader, could change all that. If you have a book, fiction or nonfiction, I will gladly write a foreword or introduction for a low low price, probably something like a $15 gift card to bookshop.org, or even just a friendly smile. Just ask and I’ll give you a forewor...

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99¢ book sale! 3 days left!

Anything done for the first time unleashes a demon.
•Dave Sim, Cerebus #65 (1984).

Blood for a blow is interest indeed.
Methinks I am grown taller with the murder,
And, standing straight on this majestic pile,
I hit the clouds, and see the world below me!
Oh, ’tis the worst of racks to a brave spirit,
To be born base, a vassal, a cursed slave.
Now, by the project labouring in my brain,
’Tis nobler far to be a king in hell,
To head infernal legions, chiefs below,
To let them loose...

Fifteen short pieces

[A gentle reminder that I write books, in the twin hopes that you will enjoy them and that I will not die forgotten.]

My weirdest, funniest novel, only 99¢!

We have discovered an ecstasy more profound than laughter; it is forbidding other people to laugh.

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One implies one, but two implies an infinity, as can be proved by mirrors.

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There is power in doing something once, and power in doing something a thousand times, but there is no power in between. The well-traveled cosmopolitan and the backwoods...

Media Roundup and "Valuable" Prizes!

Hi! If you’re reading this, perhaps you wish I would scatter my metaphorical seed profligately to the four winds. You are in luck!

Most spectacularly, and releasing today, I am a guest on the wonderful monster-themed podcast Uncle Monster’s Spooky Time Fright Hour.

It features an original short story (by me) and a lot of gabbing about the featured monster, the woodwose by me and the Spooky Time “zoo crew”. NSFW, unless you work somewhere weird, but if you work somewhere weird (or aspire to) you w...

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Please consider reading these books

A e i o u his Great Name doth spell,
Here it is known, but is not known in hell.
•H.L., A Divine Horn-Book, or the First Form in the True Theosophick School (1688).

Hiram, king of Tyre, was brought by God into paradise because he built the Temple and was at first God-fearing. He remained alive in paradise for a thousand years. Later. however, he became arrogant and said, ‘I am a god,’ as it is said, ‘Because you have been so haughty and have said, I am a god’ (Eze...

A garland of quotations XL

Come harass me on Goodreads

Kiss me, sweet, for who knoweth
What thing cometh after death!
•William Morris, “Love and Death” (1870).

“If thou didst but know as much as I know, thou wouldst fly in to me through the window,” said the Princess to the dove.
•Andrew Lang, ed., The Red Fairy Book (1890).

If you had been where I’d been
You’d have seen the fairy queen;
If you’d been where I’d been
You’d have been out.
•children’s rhyme, quoted in Iona & Peter Opie, Children’s Games in Street and Playground (1969)...