A Quote by Jonathan Swift

If it were a rainy day, a drunken vigil, a fit of the spleen, a course of physic, sleepy Sunday, an ill run at dice, a long tailor's bill, a beggar's purse, a factious head, a hot sun, costive diet, want of books, and a just contempt for learning - but for these. . .the number of authors and of writing would dwindle away to a degree most woeful to behold.
My father was predisposed to drunken rages. I would hide under the bed. My sister and I were talking just the other day about the terror a drunken man in a rage can create in a child.
And if I were to open you up - would you see anything less remarkable? Less intricately dazzling, in its squelching, spongy way? Lungs and heart and spleen, and all the rest - ticking away, as it were? Yet you walk down the boulevard, and pass any number of such wonderful devices, all ticking away as they walk, and think it no great marvel.
I see manuscripts and books that are spoiled for the literary reader because they are one long stream of top-of-the-head writing, a writer telling a story without concern for precision or freshness in the use of language. Some of this storytelling reads as if it were spoken rather than written, stuffed with tired images that pop into the writer's head because they are so familiar. The top of the head is fit for growing hair, but not for generating fine prose.
1. Turn all care out of your head as soon as you mount the chaise. 2. Do not think about frugality: your health is worth more than it can cost. 3. Do not continue any day's journey to fatigue. 4. Take now and then a day's rest. 5. Get a smart seasickness if you can. 6. Cast away all anxiety, and keep your mind easy. This last direction is the principal; with an unquiet mind neither exercise, nor diet, nor physic can be of much use.
The vestiges of pagan religion in Christian symbology are undeniable. Egyptian sun disks became the halos ... The pre-Christian God Mithras ... had his birthday celebrated on December 25 ... Even Christianity's weekly holy day was stolen from the pagans ... Christianity honored the Jewish Sabbath of Saturday, but Constantine shifted it to coincide with the pagans' veneration of the day of the sun ... To this day, most churchgoers attend services on Sunday morning with no idea that they are there on account of the pagan sun god's weekly tribute- Sunday.
I remember writing Sunday Morning' and Gwen wasn't feeling well that day and I had an acoustic guitar and I started singing, Somebody is feeling quite ill ' and that became Sunday Morning.'
People think updos are so hard, but they're not. Your hair should look tousled and undone. If I'm in a mood to go out and feel hot and sexy, I want long hair that I can feel on my back. But I also like bed head. Ill usually wash my hair and let it air-dry wavy, but if I'm just in a hang-out mood, I wont even wash it. Ill wait until it smells.
Teachers and librarians can be the most effective advocates for diversifying children's and young adult books. When I speak to publishers, they're going to expect me to say that I would love to see more books by Native American authors and African-American authors and Arab-American authors. But when a teacher or librarian says this to publishers, it can have a profound effect.
The most important factors for a long life, I think, are partly in the genes; number two is lifestyle, which includes healthy diet and regular exercise. I walk, run and swim every day. However, I think too much exercise is also unhealthy because of over-stress; sometimes people who exercise too many hours per day die early.
People would react to books by authors like James and Austen almost on a gut level. I think it was not so much the message, because the best authors do not have obvious messages. These authors were disturbing to my students because of their perspectives on life.
Now narcolepsy is really hard though because they're very tired during the day, they're sleepy during the day and it's managed mostly with medications. So we use medications to help them sleep better at night and to stay away during the day. But there are behavioral things you can do also by changing diet, exercise, having an actual nap schedule.
Imagination doesn’t just mean making things up. It means thinking things through, solving them, or hoping to do so, and being just distant enough to be able to laugh at things that are normally painful. Head teachers would call this escapism, but they would be entirely wrong. I would call fantasy the most serious, and the most useful, branch of writing there is. And this is why I don’t, and never would, write Real Books.
Here are some who like to run. They run for fun in the hot, hot sun.
Apollodorus says, "If any one were to take away from the books of Chrysippus all the passages which he quotes from other authors, his paper would be left empty.
The earth in its rapid motion round the sun possesses a degree of living force so vast that, if turned into the equivalent of heat, its temperature would be rendered at least one thousand times greater than that of red-hot iron, and the globe on which we tread would in all probability be rendered equal in brightness to the sun itself.
Despite wanting to work in publishing, I was a publisher's worst nightmare: I rarely bought new books. So my goal was to publish the kind of books I would buy, and read. My reading habits have changed since starting the press. The only other "goal", per say, is to continue to experiment. I don't want the press to ever fall into a formula, or to be pigeonholed - "They do great reissues of modernist poets!" - I want to keep pushing, exploring the kind of title we can get away with. And working with authors who challenge the way I think about writing, editing and reading.
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