Rainer Maria Rilke by Leonid Pasternak:

Rainer Maria Rilke by Leonid Pasternak
Rainer Maria Rilke by Leonid Pasternak:

Rainer Maria Rilke by Leonid Pasternak
“The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one’s life and discover one’s usefulness.”–John Cheever
Yesterday’s Google Doodle was in honor of Hannah Glasse (born on 28 March 1708).
Isn’t it adorable?

Hannah Glasse Google Doodle

Virginia Woolf Google Doodle
My sweet cousin bought me this book for Christmas. As most of you know, I do an occasional feature about dead writers’ style, so this is up my alley.

Legendary Authors and the Clothes They Wore
American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson was born on 22 December 1869:

Edwin Arlington Robinson
“Friends: people who borrow my books and set wet glasses on them.”–Edwin Arlington Robinson
“The first draft is just telling yourself the story.”—Terry Pratchett
“Never keep a poem waiting; it might be a really good one, and if you don’t get it down, it’s lost.”–Ruth Stone
“For two extraordinary years, I have been working on it–learning to write– but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are “like” everybody– that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough– beauty…”–Louise Brooks

Louise Brooks, circa 1929
The extraordinarily gifted and intelligent Louise Brooks– dancer, actor, and writer–was born on 14 November 1906. May she never be forgotten.
Robert Louis Stevenson was born on this day in 1850.

Robert Louis Stevenson by Count Girolamo Nerli (1892). Scottish National Gallery.
“I kept always two books in my pocket, one to read, one to write in.”–Robert Louis Stevenson