To begin with, let us take the following motto (not especially for this chapter, but generally): Literature is Love. Now we can co...ntinue.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I am fully sensible that an historical romance, founded on the House of Saxe Cobourg, might be much more to the purpose of ... />profit or popularity than such pictures of domestic life in country villages as I deal in. But I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter. No, I must keep to my own style and go on in my own way.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The work is rather too light, bright, and sparkling; it wants shade; it wants to be stretched out here and there with a long<...br />chapter of sense, if it could be had; if not of solemn specious nonsense, about something unconnected with the story; an essay on writing, a critique of Walter Scott, or a history of Buonaparte, or anything that would form a contrast, and bring the reader with increased delight to the playfulness and epigrammatism of the general style.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let us never accept the point of view that mysteries are written by hacks. The poorest of us shed our blood over every chapter. Th...e best of us start from scratch with every new book.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You will, I am sure, agree with me that ... if page 534 only finds us in the second chapter, the length of the first one must have... been really intolerable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
(1) Do not cry. No matter what. (2) Use your appearance to create an image of strength. (3) Develop staying power. (4) Specialize.... (5) Don't wear your sex like a badge on your sleeve. (6) Put in more time than anyone else. (7) Be loyal. (8) Be a team player. (9) Never use your family as an excuse. (10) Learn how to be a manager. (11) Network.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If for Americans, at least, the Great War could sometimes be imagined as a brief, quasi-athletic lark, the Second War permitted no... such melioration by the spirit of adolescent optimism. In North Africa alone, the 1st Infantry Division spent more time in mortal contact with the enemy than all the time it spent--forming up, marching, drawing equipment, lining up at the mess hall, training, bitching--in all of the First World War. And on December 7, 1941, the American navy lost in one day more men killed--2008, to be exact--than in all the days of the earlier war. The Second World War, total and global as it was, killed worldwide, more civilian men, women, and children than soldiers, sailors, and airmen. And compared with the idiocies of Verdun, Gallipoli, or Tannenberg, it was indescribably cruel and insane. It was not until the Second World War had enacted all its madness that one could realize how near Victorian social and ethical norms the First World War really was.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In everything from athletic ability to popularity to looks, brains, and clothes, children rank themselves against others. At this ...age [7 and 8], children can tell you with amazing accuracy who has the coolest clothes, who tells the biggest lies, who is the best reader, who runs the fastest, and who is the most popular boy in the third grade.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »