• Herman Melville was born on 8/1/1819. “A man thinks that by mouthing hard words he understands hard things.”
• James Baldwin was born on 8/2/1924. “Every legend, moreover, contains its residuum of truth, and the root function of language is to control the universe by describing it.”
• Wallace Stevens died on 8/2/1955. “As life grows more terrible, its literature grows more terrible.”
• Donald Ogden Stewart died on 8/2/1980. Stewart was a playwright-turned-screenwriter. He won an Academy Award for his adaptation of Philip Barry’s play, The Philadelphia Story.
• William S. Burroughs died on 8/2/1997. “Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact.”
• Ernie Pyle was born on 8/3/1900. “War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.”
• Joseph Conrad died on 8/3/1924. “An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.”
• Colette died on 8/3/1954. “A happy childhood is poor preparation for human contacts.”
• Flannery O’Connor died on 8/3/1964. “I am not afraid that the book will be controversial, I am afraid it will not be controversial.”

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