Have at last written another [play, i.e., Endgame].... Rather difficult and elliptic, mostly depending on the power of the text to... claw, more inhuman than "Godot."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Since I know nothing of the merits of poetry, I am not able to pass any opinion upon this, but I can see that "reap" and "deep," "...prayers" and "bears," "ark" and "dark," "true" and "grew" do rhyme, and so I suppose it is a splendid effort, but if you had written it in plain prose, I could have understood it a great deal better and read it a great deal more easily.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... no book ... ever competed with the Bible. The story of Ruth was better than Ramona, and the poetry of Job was better than Long...fellow. I still have my first big Bible, carefully underlined through with red and black ink, and interleafed [sic] with painfully written manuscript pages.... Margery and I earned our five cents a week for church and a penny for Sunday school by learning three verses of the Bible a day and six on Sunday. We learned dozens and dozens of chapters. I supposed "Evangeline" and "Hiawatha" were better poetry, but I didn't like them so well.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As to "Don Juan," confess ... that it is the sublime of that there sort of writing; it may be bawdy, but is it not good English? I...t may be profligate, but is it not life, is it not the thing? Could any man have written it who has not lived in the world? and tooled in a post-chaise? in a hackney coach? in a Gondola? against a wall? in a court carriage? in a vis a vis? on a table? and under it?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Professor Bloom is a finished example of the new womanly man. His moral nature is simple and lovable. Many have found him a dear m...an, a dear person. He is a rather quaint fellow on the whole, coy though not feebleminded in the medical sense. He has written a really beautiful letter, a poem in itself, to the court missionary of the Reformed Priests' Protection Society which clears up everything. He is practically a total abstainer and I can affirm that he sleeps on a straw litter and eats the most Spartan food, cold dried grocer's peas. He wears a hairshirt of pure Irish manufacture winter and summer and scourges himself every Saturday. He was, I understand, at one time a firstclass misdemeanant in Glencree reformatory. Another report states that he was a very posthumous child. I appeal for clemency in the name of the most sacred word our vocal organs have ever been called upon to speak. He is about to have a baby.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
We can see nothing whatever of the soul unless it is visible in the expression of the countenance; one might call the faces at a l...arge assembly of people a history of the human soul written in a kind of Chinese ideograms.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A novel is what you dream in your night sleep. A novel is not waking thoughts although it is written and thought... with waking thoughts. But really a novel goes as dreams go in sleeping at night and some dreams are like anything and some dreams are like something and some dreams change and some dreams are quiet and some dreams are not. And some dreams are just what any one would do only a little different always just a little different and that is what a novel is.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An empty book is like an infant's soul, in which anything may be written. It is capable of all things, but containeth nothing. I h...ave a mind to fill this with profitable wonders.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »