[I]t is worth remembering that every writer begins with a naively physical notion of what art is. A book for him or her is not an ...expression or a series of expressions, but literally a volume, a prism with six rectangular sides made of thin sheets of papers which should include a cover, an inside cover, an epigraph in italics, a preface, nine or ten parts with some verses at the beginning, a table of contents, an ex libris with an hourglass and a Latin phrase, a brief list of errata, some blank pages, a colophon and a publication notice: objects that are known to constitute the art of writing.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One realizes that human relationships are the tragic necessity of human life; that they can never be wholly satisfactory, that eve...ry ego is half the time greedily seeking them, and half the time pulling away from them. In those simple relationships of loving husband and wife, affectionate sisters, children and grandmother, there are innumerable shades of sweetness and anguish which make up the pattern of our lives day by day, though they are not down in the list of subjects from which the conventional novelist works.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Shea--they call him Scholar Jack-- Went down the list of the dead.... Officers, seamen, gunners, marines, The crews of the gig and yawl, The bearded man and the lad in his teens, Carpenters, coal-passers--all.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Religious literature has eminent examples, and if we run over our private list of poets, critics, philanthropists and philosophers..., we shall find them infected with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we ought to have tapped.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our party to the diplomatic corps was all that could be desired.... The exclusion of wine from the list of refreshments has turned... out exceedingly well. There is a good deal of dissipation here. At the receptions of the British Minister, and at that of the Mexican Minister, disgraceful things were done by young men made reckless by too much wine. Hence the necessity for our course is obvious, and is commended in unexpected quarters. Many of the foreign gentlemen speak of it with approval. We shall stick to it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Should ardent spirits be everywhere banished from the list of drinks, it will be a revolution not the least remarkable in this rev...olutionary age, and our country will have its full share in that as in other merits.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Love's boat has been shattered against the life of everyday. You and I are quits, and it's useless to draw up a list of mutual hur...ts, sorrows, and pains.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I'm going to take you down and show you our cemetery. I've got a waiting list of fifty people at that cemetery just dying to get i...n. But I like you and I'm going to shove you in ahead of all of them. I'm going to see that you get a steady position and if I can arrange it, it will be horizontal.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
O Kate, nice customs curtsy to great kings. Dear Kate, you and I cannot be confined within the weak list of a country's... fashion. We are the makers of manners, Kate.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »