+ Against the ruins of the world, there is only one defense—The creative act.- unknown
+ We live in a fractured world. I've always seen it as my role as an artist to attempt to make wholeness- Anish Kapoor
+ What moves men of genius, or rather what inspires their work, is not new ideas, but their obsession with the idea that what has already been said is still not enough- Eugene Delacroix
+ The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say. -Mark Twain
+Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. ~Sylvia Plath
+This is the nature of genius, to be able to grasp the knowable even when no one else recognizes that it is the present- Deepak Chopra
+ Be obscure clearly.- E.B. White
+ If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up- Richard Avedon
+ Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave- Constantin Brancusi
+ There’s nothing to stop a man from writing unless that man stops himself. If a man truly desires to write, then he will. Rejection and ridicule will only strengthen him.
+ Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast- Lewis Carroll
+ All my best thoughts were stolen by the ancients. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
+ To give body and perfect form to your thought, this alone is what it is to be an artist- Jacques Louis David
+ Everyone has talent at 25. The difficulty is to have it at 50- Edgar Degas
+Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep- Scott Adams
+ In a successful painting everything is integral.. all the parts belong to the whole. If you remove an aspect or element you are removing its wholeness- Richard Diebenkorn
+ We never really know what stupidity is until we have experimented on ourselves- Paul Gauguin
+ I always say that I'm an artist who works with pictures and words, so I think that the different aspects of my activity, whether it's writing criticism, or doing visual work that incorporates writing, or teaching, or curating, is all of a single cloth, and I don't make any separation in terms of those practices- Barbara Kruger
+ Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master- Leonardo davinci
+ Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~Mark Twain
+ The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. -Mark Twain
+ I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.- English Professor (Name Unknown), Ohio University (ha!)
+ Writing is easy: All you do is sit staring at a blank sheet of paper until drops of blood form on your forehead.- Gene Fowler
+ The only cure for writer's block is insomnia.- Merit Antares
+ What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he's staring out of the window. -Burton Rascoe
+ If I'm trying to sleep, the ideas won't stop. If I'm trying to write, there appears a barren nothingness. -Carrie Latet
+ Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand. -George Orwell
+ I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear- Joan Didion
+ There is only one final judge of writing and that is the writer. When he is swayed by the critics, the editors, the publishers, the readers, then he’s finished. And, of course, when he’s swayed with his fame and his fortune, you can float him down the river with the turds- Charles Bukowski.
READING LIST
Norman Mailer, The Executioner’s Song
The story of Gilmore, a convicted murder, and his fight to die in prison
George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
Orwell's personal account of his experiences and observations in the Spanish Civil War.
George Orwell, Down and out in Paris and London
narrates without self-pity and often with humor the adventures of a penniless British writer among
the down-and-out of two great cities. In the tales of both cities we learn some sobering Orwellian
truths about poverty and society.
Truman Capote, In Cold Blood
Chronicles Capote’s relationship with a convicted murderer on death row as he (Capote) tries to
find out facts related to his case
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlahem
Collection of essays dealing with life in California, life as a writer, court cases, musicians
Joan Didion, Year of Magical Thinking
Memoir about the death of her husband, the poet, John Dunne
Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff
Essays surrounded around pilots engaged in U.S. postwar experiments with experimental rocket-
powered, high-speed aircraft
Hunter Thompson, ANY
Michael Herr, Dispatches
Michael Herr, who wrote about the Vietnam War for Esquire magazine, gathered his years of
notes from his front-line reporting and turned them into what many people consider the best
account of the war to date, when published in 1977. He captured the feel of the war and how it
differed from any theater of combat ever fought, as well as the flavor of the time and the essence
of the people who were there.
Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer (later a law suite was filed against Malcolm for apparently fabricating quotes)
In two previous books, Janet Malcolm explored the hidden sides of, respectively, institutional
psychoanalysis and Freudian biography. In this book, she examines the psychopathology of
journalism. Using a strange and unprecedented lawsuit as her larger-than-life example -- the
lawsuit of Jeffrey MacDonald, a convicted murderer, against Joe McGinniss, the author of Fatal
Vision, a book about the crime -- she delves into the always uneasy, sometimes tragic relationship
that exists between journalist and subject. In Malcolm's view, neither journalist nor subject can
avoid the moral impasse that is built into the journalistic situation.
Gay Talese, Portraits and Encounters; The Kingdom and the Power: Behind the Scenes at The New York Times: The Institution That Influences the World; Love Thy Neighbor; A Writer’s Life; Sports Writing
Dexter Filkin, The Forever War
An instant classic of war reporting, The Forever War is the definitive account of America's conflict
with Islamic fundamentalism and a searing exploration of its human costs. Through the eyes of
Filkins, a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, we witness the rise of the Taliban in the
1990s, the aftermath of the attack on New York on September 11th, and the American wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq.
Sarah Vowell, Take the Canoli
Take the Cannoli is a moving and wickedly funny collection of personal stories stretching across
the immense landscape of the American scene. Vowell tackles subjects such as identity, politics,
religion, art, and history with a biting humor. She searches the streets of Hoboken for traces of the
town's favorite son, Frank Sinatra. She goes under cover of heavy makeup in an investigation of
goth culture, blasts cannonballs into a hillside on a father-daughter outing, and maps her family's
haunted history on a road trip down the Trail of Tears.
Kathryn Harrison, The Kiss
A memoir about an incestuous relationship between a 20-something-year-old girl and her father
Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage (American Civil War)
Slavenka Drakulic, Café Europa: Life After Communism
In the place of the fallen Berlin Wall there is a chasm between East and West, consisting of the
different way people continue to live and understand the world. Little bits—or intimations—of the
West are gradually making their way east: boutiques carrying Levis and tiny food shops called
"Supermarket" are multiplying on main boulevards. Despite the fact that Drakulic can find a Cafe
Europa, complete with Viennese-style coffee and Western decor, in just about every Eastern
European city, the acceptance of the East by the rest of Europe continues to prove much more
elusive.
Daniel Hernandez, Down and Delirious in Mexico City (punk scene in Mexico City)
Carolyn Forche, The Country Between Us
A series of poems about El Salvador, where ForchÉ worked as a journalist and was closely
involved with the political struggle in that tortured country in the late 1970's.
Samuel Freedman, Letters to a Young Journalist
Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs and Coco Puffs
A series of essays about pop culture (super funny)
The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople should know and the Public should expect.
Kevin Kerrane and Ben Yagoda, The Art of Fact
David Bayles and Ted Orland, Art and Fear
George Orwell, Why I Write
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