She was not accustomed to taste the joys of solitude except in company.
:: Edith Warton
Author Archives: Drunken Librarian
Hilary Scheppers is a writer, artist, and poet. California | Minnesota | Colorado | New York
Excerpt from You Can’t Go Home Again
Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America — that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement. At any rate, that is how it seemed to young George Webber, who was never so assured of his purpose as when he was going somewhere on a train. And he never had the sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there. It was only when he got there that his homelessness began.
:: Thomas Wolfe
Excerpt from The House On Mango Street
You can never have too much sky. You can fall asleep and wake up drunk on sky, and sky can keep you safe when you are sad. Here there is too much sadness and not enough sky. Butterflies too are few and so are flowers and most things that are beautiful. Still, we take what we can get and make the best of it.
:: Sandra Cisneros
Taro – Alt-J
This music takes the strings behind your ribcage and matches their frequency to the vibrations of every desperate child. senti questa.
Think Zen
If you don’t bend, you’ll break.
– Zen Expression
Excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit
“Real isn’t how you were made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real, you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.
:: Margery Williams
REBLOG TO WIN! one advance copy of David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell to be given away by Penguin Books, London!
In order to win just simply reblog this post. You don’t have to be a follower, although it would be nice and you can reblog as plenty times as you desire. A lucky Book Mania! reader will be chosen on the 25th of September and will be contacted via Tumblr inbox or via e-mail coming from me (archie@bookmania.me) to organise a trade, so you have plenty of time to enter and give yourself a chance to win!
***This is open to everyone outside North America***
***
About David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell
Why do underdogs succeed so much more than we expect? How do the weak outsmart the strong? In David and Goliath Malcolm Gladwell takes us on a scintillating and surprising journey through the hidden dynamics that shape the balance of power between the small and the mighty.
From the conflicts in Northern Ireland through the tactics of civil rights leaders and the problem of privilege, Gladwell demonstrates how we misunderstand the true meaning of advantage and disadvantage. When does a traumatic childhood work in someone’s favour?How can a disability leave someone better off? And do you really want your child to go to the best school he or she can get into?
David and Goliath draws on the stories of remarkable underdogs, history, science, psychology and on Malcolm Gladwell’s unparalleled ability to make the connections other miss. It’s a brilliant, illuminating book that overturns conventional thinking about power and advantage.
‘A global phenomenon… there is, it seems, no subject over which he cannot scatter some magic dust’ Observer
Available for pre-order on Amazon!
All the best,
Archie
There is another world, but it is in this one.
W.B. Yeats
Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What They Do
“When you’re trying to create a career as a writer, a little delusional thinking goes a long way.”
Michael Lewis on writing, idea-integrity vs. commercial success, and the necessary self-delusions of creativity:
drunken library 