Matthew Royal > Recent Status Updates

"The trick of successful walking, I always say, is knowing when to stop."

"She went into bustling mode again and, after making a great deal of industrious-sounding noise from every quarter of the house, announced that the guest room was ready. I found a neatly turned-down bed complete with hot-water bottle and, after the most cursory of ablutions, crawled gratefully into it, wondering why it is that the beds in the houses of grandparents and in-laws are always so deliciously comfortable."

"For the better part of a decade architects had been arriving in the area and saying, “You think that’s bad? Wait’ll you see what I can do!” And there, towering proudly above all the clunky new offices, was the ugliest piece of bulk in London, the News International complex, looking like the central air-conditioning unit for the planet."

"No matter how hard I tried, I seemed fated to annoy. On the third afternoon as I crept in, Mrs. Gubbins confronted me in the hallway with an empty cigarette packet, and demanded to know if it was I who had thrust it in the privet hedge. I began to understand why innocent people sign extravagant confessions in police stations."

"There's no need to finish reading books that you only got halfway through. Their purpose was to be read halfway." "Clutter is caused by a failure to return things to where they belong. Therefore, storage should reduce the effort needed to put things away, not the effort needed to get them out."

Enjoying the unfolding of the story, knowing I'll probably never read it again -- seems like a "once you know the ending" sort of deal.

This book is flying by! Normally a 400-page book seems to crawl... guess I've been reading the wrong books.

"If the plant has any vigor at all, it will soon shade out any weeds you can't reach with a hoe. If you can't control weeds in tomatoes, better take up golf."

"Man is the only animal whose fear of embarrassment can overcome his instinct for self-preservation."

"Founded in fraud."

I never put it together that back when native Americans were forced off the plains, the land was infertile. Yet, real estate syndicates used the promise of easy farming wealth and "every man a landlord" to draw in white settlers. The lie became truth when German Russian immigrants planted hardy red grains.

This book makes me want to read more Steinbeck.

"Founded in fraud."

I never put it together in my head that back when native Americans were forced off the western plains, the land was infertile. Yet, real estate syndicates used the promise of easy wealth from agriculture and "every man a landlord" to draw white settlers west. However, the lie became truth when German Russian immigrants planted hardy red grains.

This book makes me want to read more Steinbeck.

Recommended by several people -- it's a little slow to start, but so far, she advocates tidying up everything all at once by categories of things rather than location. Looking learning more of her philosophy.

“The reality is that streaming services offer copyright holders a much better deal than radio ever did. For one thing, radio pays royalties only to composers, while streaming services pay both performers and composers. That’s right: musicians get nothing from U.S. radio play, and never have."

Dark ships, jagged and fang-like, a cluster of seven faces sculpted in their prows, the same faces that adorn every Sobornost structure, the Founders: god-kings with a trillion subjects. I used to go drinking with them.