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From Michael Gruber’s blog, true and witty but not funny: “I don’t much like to talk about my work while it’s in progress or read reviews or give encouragement to people trying to enter a profession I know to be a miserable way to make a living, with a premature death rate that compares unfavorably …

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“There comes a time when you realize that everything is a dream, and only those things preserved in writing have any possibility of being real.” -James Salter

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“… as soon as I went in the door I immediately recalled how great an experience a good bookstore was, to which the browsing we do on computers is as phone sex compared to sex.”– Michael Gruber

Quote re Politics

“But wouldn’t it be Simpler if the Government Simply dissolved the People And elected another?” (Bertolt Brecht –A Marxist, but one wise enough to live out of reach of the more dangerous governments) They sure do carry on…

Excellent Quote

From Michael Gruber’s blog: “Nothing pleases Apollo better than the slaughtering of a frivolous irresponsible reviewer on his altar.” – Georg Christof Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

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“Thus my advice to the aspiring fiction writer: don’t be tempted by that graveyard of literary talent, creative writing courses. Take a sharp turn and study history instead.” – Caleb Carr, WSJ Weekend

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From “Caliph of the Tricksters: Cockfighting in the Ruins of Kabul”, by Christopher de Bellaigue, in the December Harper’s: “… Then he quoted an Afghan saying: ‘Drinking wine is forbidden; tell me something that is permitted in this world!’”

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From the Medieval French poet Francois Villon: Ce monde n’est perpetuel Quoy que pense riche pillart; Tous sommes soubz mortel coustel…” (The world is not everlasting/ despite what rich robbers think/ We are all beneath a mortal blade…)

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“In Britain, an editor will permit a writer to make an allusion if he, the editor, understands it. In America, an editor might well understand it but he will want it taken out, for fear the readers won’t”.– Clive James in the Atlantic ???

Quote: on the multiplication of laws…

“…I noticed years ago that people who agitate for more [YOUR ISSUE HERE] laws tend to be wholly ignorant of the existing laws. I am wiser now, and realize that everyone who agitates for more X laws is ignorant of existing X laws, and probably ignorant of X.”– Neutrino Cannon