• Samuel Taylor Coleridge was born on 10/21/1772. “Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests.”
• Jack Kerouac died on 10/21/1969. “My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.”
• Kingsley Amis died on 10/22/1995. “If you can’t annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.” (Lucky Jim)
• Sarah Josepha Hale was born on 10/24/1788. “There is something in the decay of nature that awakens thought, even in the most trifling mind.”
• Denise Levertov was born on 10/24/1923. “Images/split the truth/in fractions.”
• Geoffrey Chaucer died on 10/25/1400. “There’s never a new fashion but it’s old.”
• Frank Norris died on 10/25/1902. “The function of the novelist…is to comment upon life as he sees it.”
• John Berryman was born on 10/25/1914. “The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him. At that point, he’s in business.”
• Mary McCarthy died on 10/25/1989. “We are the hero of our own story.”

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

[All images are courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and are in the Public Domain.]