“I had lines inside me, a string of guiding lights. I had language. Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination. I had been damaged, and a very important part of me had been destroyed - that was my reality, the facts of my life. But on the other side of the facts was who I could be, how I could feel. And as long as I had words for that, images for that, stories for that, then I wasn’t lost.” — Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? (via wordpainting:)
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“I had lines inside me, a string of guiding lights. I had language. Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination. I had been damaged, and a very important part of me had been destroyed - that was my reality, the facts of my life. But on the other side of the facts was who I could be, how I could feel. And as long as I had words for that, images for that, stories for that, then I wasn’t lost.”

— Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

(via wordpainting:)

She was breathing deeply, she forgot the cold, the weight of beings, the insane or static life, the long anguish of living or dying. After so many years running from fear, fleeing crazily, uselessly, she was finally coming to a halt. At the same time she seemed to be recovering her roots, and the sap rose anew in her body, which was no longer trembling. Pressing her whole belly against the parapet, leaning toward the wheeling sky, she was only waiting for her pounding heart to settle down, and for the silence to form in her. The last constellations of stars fell in bunches a little lower on the horizon of the desert, and stood motionless. Then, with an unbearable sweetness, the waters of the night began to fill her, submerging the cold, rising gradually to the center of her being, and overflowing wave upon wave to her moaning mouth. A moment later, the whole sky stretched out above her as she lay with her back against the cold earth.

Albert Camus, “The Adulterous Woman”
From Exile and the Kingdom

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“Pen names have long been a means for writers to inhabit another identity—to attain privacy, assume the acceptably literate gender, or play with the freedom of a psychic unburdening. But at what point does a pseudonym become obfuscation, transgression?” Luling Osofsky on Kent Johnson’s / Araki Yasusada’s / Tosa Motokiyu’s “Mad Daughter and the Big-Bang.” Photo via (via theparisreview:)
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“Pen names have long been a means for writers to inhabit another identity—to attain privacy, assume the acceptably literate gender, or play with the freedom of a psychic unburdening. But at what point does a pseudonym become obfuscation, transgression?”

Luling Osofsky on Kent Johnson’s / Araki Yasusada’s / Tosa Motokiyu’s “Mad Daughter and the Big-Bang.”

Photo via

(via theparisreview:)

Every writer has changed these stories, and I have changed them, and I’m sure someone else in I don’t know how many years will change them. These stories refuse to die—they are always expanding and shrinking, they have an organic life of their own. Usually, Arab women writers look down on Shahrazad, saying “Oh, she became a prisoner of the Shah, the bloodthirsty king.” No, in my opinion, she was stronger, he became her prisoner. He needed her stories; he depended on her to humanize him. She wasn’t doing it to save her life, but to educate him. That was what she set out to do, to humanize him.

Author Q&A: Hanan al-Shaykh’s New Shahrazad | Library Journal

Hanan al-Shaykh’s new retelling of One Thousand and One Nights (with an intro by Mary Gaitskill!) comes out next month.

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Source: reviews.libraryjournal.com

“He had become the dandy of the unpredictable.” This is the gorgeous cover for one of our newest Oxford World’s Classics, French Decadent Tales, a unique anthology of 36 of the best decadent tales from the French fin-de-siècle, translated and edited by Stephen Romer. It includes well-known writers such as Maupassant, Lorrain, Mirbeau, and Villiers as well as lesser-known figures such as Léon Bloy, Jean Richepin, and the Belgian Georges Rodenbach. (via oupacademic:)
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“He had become the dandy of the unpredictable.”

This is the gorgeous cover for one of our newest Oxford World’s Classics, French Decadent Tales, a unique anthology of 36 of the best decadent tales from the French fin-de-siècle, translated and edited by Stephen Romer. It includes well-known writers such as Maupassant, Lorrain, Mirbeau, and Villiers as well as lesser-known figures such as Léon Bloy, Jean Richepin, and the Belgian Georges Rodenbach.

(via oupacademic:)

‘Times and their reasons, arranged in order though the Latin year, and constellations sunk beneath the earth and risen, I shall sing.’ Our latest Oxford World’s Classics is a new (and the only) modern prose translation of Ovid’s Fasti, a poetical calendar of the Roman year, recording a wealth of detail on rites and customs. Written in the late years of the emperor Augustus, and cut short when the emperor sent the poet into exile, the poem’s tone ranges from tragedy to farce, and its subject matter from astronomy and obscure ritual to Roman history and Greek mythology. And (we say it every week), if you like our Classics series, you can do the social media thing with them on Facebook and Twitter. (via oupacademic:)
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‘Times and their reasons, arranged in order though the Latin year, and constellations sunk beneath the earth and risen, I shall sing.’

Our latest Oxford World’s Classics is a new (and the only) modern prose translation of Ovid’s Fasti, a poetical calendar of the Roman year, recording a wealth of detail on rites and customs. Written in the late years of the emperor Augustus, and cut short when the emperor sent the poet into exile, the poem’s tone ranges from tragedy to farce, and its subject matter from astronomy and obscure ritual to Roman history and Greek mythology.

And (we say it every week), if you like our Classics series, you can do the social media thing with them on Facebook and Twitter.

(via oupacademic:)

Literary Birthday - 28 April Harper Lee, born 28 April 1926 Five Quotes from To Kill a Mockingbird Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts. I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it. Seven Quotes: On Reading & Writing More than a simple matter of putting down words, writing is a process of self-discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer. There are people who write, but I think they’re quite different from people who must write. There’s no substitute for the love of language, for the beauty of an English sentence. There’s no substitute for struggling, if a struggle is needed, to make an English sentence as beautiful as it should be. I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career, that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide. Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself…It’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent. It was like being hit over the head and knocked cold. I didn’t expect the book to sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of reviewers but at the same time I sort of hoped that maybe someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I’d expected. Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it. You must come to terms with yourself about your writing. You must not write ‘for’ something; you must not write with definite hopes of reward. Lee is an American author known for her 1961 Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Despite it being her only published book, it led to her being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature. Lee has received numerous honorary degrees. She is also well-known for assisting her close friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood. by Amanda Patterson for Writers Write (via amandaonwriting:)
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Literary Birthday - 28 April

Harper Lee, born 28 April 1926

Five Quotes from To Kill a Mockingbird

  1. Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I’d have the facts.
  2. I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.
  3. Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself.
  4. Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.
  5. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.

Seven Quotes: On Reading & Writing

  1. More than a simple matter of putting down words, writing is a process of self-discipline you must learn before you can call yourself a writer. There are people who write, but I think they’re quite different from people who must write.
  2. There’s no substitute for the love of language, for the beauty of an English sentence. There’s no substitute for struggling, if a struggle is needed, to make an English sentence as beautiful as it should be.
  3. I would advise anyone who aspires to a writing career, that before developing his talent he would be wise to develop a thick hide.
  4. Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself…It’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.
  5. It was like being hit over the head and knocked cold. I didn’t expect the book to sell in the first place. I was hoping for a quick and merciful death at the hands of reviewers but at the same time I sort of hoped that maybe someone would like it enough to give me encouragement. Public encouragement. I hoped for a little, as I said, but I got rather a whole lot, and in some ways this was just about as frightening as the quick, merciful death I’d expected.
  6. Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it.
  7. You must come to terms with yourself about your writing. You must not write ‘for’ something; you must not write with definite hopes of reward.

Lee is an American author known for her 1961 Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Despite it being her only published book, it led to her being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her contribution to literature. Lee has received numerous honorary degrees. She is also well-known for assisting her close friend Truman Capote in his research for the book In Cold Blood.

by Amanda Patterson for Writers Write

(via amandaonwriting:)