A Quote by Walter Kirn
I love reference books, especially collections of memorable quotations, world almanacs, and atlases. Facts to me are like candy or popcorn, small, tasty delights, and I like to gorge on them now and then.
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I love reference books, especially collections of memorable quotations, almanacs, and atlases. Facts to me are like candy or popcorn - small, tasty delights - and I like to gorge on them now and then.
One of my favorite ways to find fictional inspiration, by the way, is to browse historical timelines. I also like world atlases - any country with a squiggly coastline seems to inspire me, as do visual dictionaries, those reclusive creatures of the reference shelf.
We stock up on popcorn and candy like we're crossing the Sierras, don't we? I'll have a couple of soft pretzels, a hot dog, Milk Duds, Snocaps. Is that the largest popcorn you've got there, that bucket? You don't have a barrel or anything like that? Do you have a donkey or a pack mule or anything? - Oh, and a Diet Coke.
I am a big popcorn fanatic. I love popcorn. In fact one year for my birthday, my husband bought me one of those big popcorn machines like they have in movie theaters.
I'm always reading many books at a time. It might be quite unorthodox, but what I do is, since I'm always surrounded with books, I'll read a page of physics, and then I'll read a chapter of a novel that I really love, and then I'll say, "Oh well, what does that mixture do in my head?" I adore reference books. I love encyclopedias. I also like just going back to original texts, because a lot of these self-help books today.
Strawberries are like tomatoes for me; I just won't eat them year round. I'll happily wait for them to come into season, then I gorge like a brown bear eating salmon before hibernation.
When I am down, there is nothing like a bowl of hot popcorn; popcorn means great movies and reading fantasy books wrapped up in a soft blanket to me.
A library is many things. It's a place to go, to get in out of the rain. It's a place to go if you want to sit and think. But particularly it is a place where books live, and where you can get in touch with other people, and other thoughts, through books. If you want to find out about something, the information is in the reference books---the dictionaries, the encyclopedias, the atlases. If you like to be told a story, the library is the place to go.
I spend a lot of time looking at rococo books. And almanacs used to be huge sellers - they were pretty much part of the fabric of life. I thought, this is bizarre, I'd love to buy a book like this, and there isn't one. So I thought, all right then, this could be fun. I'll write an almanac.
I first read Wendell Berry's short-story collections, "Fidelity" and then "Watch with Me." They just knocked my socks off. The characters and the fellowship of the small town reminded me of my own small town in Illinois.Then I discovered that, much like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, that all of Berry's fiction was centered in this same town.
Because by now Elinor had understood this, too: A longing for books was nothing compared with what you could feel for human beings. The books told you about that feeling. The books spoke of love, and it was wonderful to listen to them, but they were no substitute for love itself. They couldn't kiss her like Meggie, they couldn't hug her like Resa, they couldn't laugh like Mortimer. Poor books, poor Elinor.
The great thing about candy is that it can't be spoiled by the adult world. Candy is innocent. And all Halloween candy pales next to candy corn, if only because candy corn used to appear, like the Great Pumpkin, solely on Halloween.
he ones that bother me the most are the media saying, "He's like the next Bill Hicks." It's supposed to be complimentary, but then all these Bill Hicks fans show up thinking you're going to be like him, and then go, "You're no Bill Hicks." And I'm like, "I never wanted to try to be like him, I don't think I'm anything like him at all, and now you're mad at me for not being him because a journalist didn't have a better reference."
Most young dealers of the Silicon Chip Era regard a reference library as merely a waste of space. Old Timers on the West Coast seem to retain a fondness for reference books that goes beyond the practical. Everything there is to know about a given volume may be only a click away, but there are still a few of us who'd rather have the book than the click. A bookman's love of books is a love of books, not merely of the information in them.
I think my books are better than my exhibitions. If people don't like my books then I don't mind. I guess you like them enough to write an essay about them so that makes me pretty happy.
When music turned into being like candy - what people don't realize is, yes it's candy, but candy has long-term effects if you're just eatin' it as your main meal. And that's a problem, 'cause if you got music that keeps comin' at you, that keeps coming like a piranha, coming and rippin' at your soul, it's like yeah, I'm takin' this in, but there's not much of me left. Then you'll be lookin' for something outside of music to satisfy you, or take you away.
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