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To the dumb question “Why me?” the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply: Why not?
(angry cloud, proud mountain, presumptuous little Beaujolais)
Well, I mean to say, gosh, thanks awfully.)
All the rituals and etiquette of conversation, from clearing the throat in preparation for the telling of an extremely long and taxing joke to (in younger days) trying to make my proposals more persuasive as I sank the tone by a strategic octave of shame, were innate and essential to me. I have never been able to sing, but I could once recite poetry and quote prose and was sometimes even asked to do so.
To my writing classes I used later to open by saying that anybody who could talk could also write. Having cheered them up with this easy-to-grasp ladder, I then replaced it with a huge and loathsome snake: “How many people in this class, would you say, can talk? I mean really talk?” That had its duly woeful effect. I told them to read every composition aloud, preferably to a trusted friend. The rules are much the same: Avoid stock expressions (like the plague, as William Safire used to say) and repetitions. Don’t say that as a boy your grandmother used to read to you, unless at that stage of
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The most satisfying compliment a reader can pay is to tell me that he or she feels personally addressed. Think of your own favorite authors and see if that isn’t precisely one of the things that engages you, often at first without your noticing it.
My chief consolation in this year of living dyingly has been the presence of friends.
Death has this much to be said for it: You don’t have to get out of bed for it. Wherever you happen to be They bring it to you—free. —Kingsley Amis
How to Philosophize with a Hammer”—has
Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.
Brave? Hah! Save it for a fight you can’t run away from.
Saul Bellow: Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are able to see anything.
