The Dead Writers Round-Up: 3rd-6th June

  • Franz Kafka died on 6/3/1924. “A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” (The Metamorphosis; The Trial; The Castle)
  • Allen Ginsberg was born on 6/3/1926. “I don’t think there is any truth. There are only points of view.” (Howl; Kaddish; September on Jessore Road)
  • Ivy Compton-Burnett was born on 6/5/1884. “Everything is breaking stones, up to a point.” (Pastors and Masters; A House and Its Head; The Present and the Past)
  • Federico García Lorca was born on 6/5/1898. “…I am the immense shadow of my tears.” (Poem of Deep Song; Six Galician poems; First Songs)
  • Stephen Crane died on 6/5/1900. “It was not well to drive men into final corners; at those moments they could all develop teeth and claws.” (Maggie: A Girl of the Streets; The Red Badge of Courage; George’s Mother)
  • O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) died on 6/5/1910. “No friendship is an accident.” (Cabbages and Kings; The Gift of the Magi; The Cop and the Anthem)
  • Pierre Corneille was born on 6/6/1606. “To win without risk is to triumph without glory.” (La Veuve; Le Cid; Rodogune)
  • Thomas Mann was born on 6/6/1875. “It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.” (Buddenbrooks; Tristan; Death in Venice)

 

Six Quotes About Writing

“I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live.”-Anaïs Nin

“Write hard and clear about what hurts”.-Ernest Hemingway

“Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.”-Leonard Cohen

“He asked, “What makes a man a writer?” “Well,” I said, “it’s simple. You either get it down on paper, of jump off a bridge.”-Charles Bukowski

“If a story is in you, it has to come out.”-William Faulkner

“That’s all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones.”-Raymond Carver