Tag: lonely

“We can’t chose what we want and what we don’t want and that’s the hard lonely truth.”

tartt cropped

At 771 pages, this is a long novel.  Is it worth it?  Many of the 57 commentators on the Kirkus review didn’t think so.  However, I love the way Tartt develops big themes.  And she has sentences that are works of art. The NY Times review, written by Stephen … Read More

“Don’t begin with an idea: begin with the point of the pen touching paper.”

Goldberg cropped2Uniquely in America, there is “a desire to understand in the heat of living,” says Natalie Goldberg in her book about the practice of writing memoir. Don’t think of memoirs as records of events.  Instead, think of it as a chance to make sense of your life and search for … Read More

“I wandered lonely as a cloud”

Great poems croppedThis is the opening line of a poem written by the revolutionary William Wordsworth in 1804.  He shook things up by experimenting with “real language” (as opposed to the formal style found in serious writing), and he wrote about feelings (as opposed to intellectual matters). This line has stuck with … Read More