The best time for planning a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
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William Faulkner on what he needs to write
The tools I need for my work are paper, tobacco, food,
and a little whiskey.
from The Road to Shu Is Hard by Li Po
The Brocade City might be a place for pleasure,
But it’s far better to hurry home.
The road to Shu is hard, harder than climbing to the heavens.
Sideways I look westward and heave a long sigh.
translated b y Irving Y. Lo
from Seven Songs Written While Living at T’ung-ku in 759 : 7 by Tu Fu
I am a man who’s made no name, already I’ve grown old,
Wandering hungry three years on barren mountain roads,
In Ch’ang-an the ministers are all young men;
Wealth and fame must be earned before a man grows old.
In the mountains here are scholars who knew me long ago.
We only think of the good old days, our hearts full of pain.
Alas! This is my seventh song, oh! with sorrow I end the refrain,
Looking up to the wide sky where the white sun rushes on.
translated by Geoffrey Waters
Emily Bronte on writing
If I could I would always work in silence and obscurity, and let my efforts be known for their results.
William Faulkner on learning the craft
Read, read, read. Read everything—trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an appretice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it is good, you’ll find out. It it’s not, throw it out the window.
Robert Graves on writing novels to support his poetry
Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.
Returning Home after a Trip by Wei Ying-wu
In the past I was glad to come home
but to sadness I now return
entering our closed sunless room
I stifle my grief and write the epitaph
I lift the dark curtain in pain
startled by a cold desolate breeze
our younger daughter doesn’t realize
she still comes into the courtyard to play
I sigh every day feeling older
dazed by the transience of life
my relatives urge me to eat
at the table my tears fall in vain
translated by Red Pine
Chinese proverb
A book is like a garden
carried in the pocket.
Cold Food Days: To My Cousins in the Capital by Wei Ying-wu
My empty rooms are bleak on a rainy day with fire banned
I sit alone and listen to orioles by the river
I’ve had the wine and seen the flowers but think about my cousins
Cold Food Day on Tuling the grass by now is green
translated by Red Pine
NOTE: Cold Food was the name given to a 3 day period in April when fires were banned.
Leonard Durso 