Thought For The Day

[Paul Whybrow]

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness and truth.

Leo Tolstoy

 

[Paul Whybrow]

The crime novel is where the social novel went. If you want to write about the underbelly of America, if you want to write about the second America that nobody wants to look at, you turn to the crime novel.

Dennis Lehane

 

[Paul Whybrow]

I belong to the common people. From the middle classes one gets ideas, from the common people – life itself.

D.H. Lawrence

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Ability is of little account without opportunity.

Napoleon Bonaparte

 

[Steve C]

I believe people create their own opportunities. The tricky part is recognising them then having the confidence to grab them.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool.

Richard Feynman

 

[Paul Whybrow]

The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it – basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.

Charles Bukowski

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

[Paul Whybrow]

You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money., compliments, or publicity.

Thomas Wolfe

 

[Steve C]

I think he is describing someone on their deathbed. Either that or someone who's had a full-frontal lobotomy.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

A writer is essentially a man who does not resign himself to loneliness.

François Mauriac

 

[Paul Whybrow]

A writing teacher once told me that the most successful movies and books were simple plots about complex characters….You should be able to articulate your concept in a couple of lines.

James Scott Bell

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Proofs​

Death will not correct
a single line of verse
she is no proof-reader
she is no sympathetic
lady editor

a bad metaphor is immortal​

a shoddy poet who has died
is a shoddy dead poet​

a bore bores after death
a fool keeps up his foolish chatter
from beyond the grave.

Tadeusz Rózewicz

​

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Moments​

Clear moments are so short.
There is much more darkness. More
ocean than firm land. More
shadow than form.

Adam Zagajewski

 

[Paul Whybrow]

What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Detail​

I was watching a robin fly after a finch – the smaller bird
chirping with excitement, the bigger, its breast blazing, silent
in light-winged earnest chase – when, out of nowhere
over the chimneys and the shivering front gardens,
flashes a sparrowhawk headlong a light brown burn
scorching the air from which it simply plucks
like a ripe fruit the stopped robin, whose two or three
cheeps of terminal surprise twinkle in the silence
closing over the empty street when the birds have gone
about their own business, and I began to understand
how a poem can happen: you have your eye on a small
elusive detail, pursuing its music, when a terrible truth
strikes and your heart cries out, being carried off.​

Eamon Grennan

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Talent is like electricity. We don’t understand electricity. We use it.

Maya Angelou

 

[Paul Whybrow]

The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce the artistic job of writing.

Raymond Chandler

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Writers may be disreputable, incorrigible, early to decay or late to bloom but they dare to go it alone.

John Updike

 

[KateESal]

Proofs

Death will not correct
a single line of verse
she is no proof-reader
she is no sympathetic
lady editor

a bad metaphor is immortal

a shoddy poet who has died
is a shoddy dead poet

a bore bores after death
a fool keeps up his foolish chatter
from beyond the grave.

Tadeusz Rózewicz

​

Gosh, he looks exactly like my dear departed Granddad. Gave me quite a turn, I had no idea Faffa dabbled in poetry on the side.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Life is a racket. Writing is a racket. Sincerity is a racket. Everything’s a racket.

Nick Tosches

 

[Steve C]

Someone has clearly given this guy a severe kicking at some point that he denies honesty exists. He sure looks pissed off.

 

[Ancora Imparo]

The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce the artistic job of writing.

Raymond Chandler

Never thought I'd disagree with Raymond Chandler. He's one of my favourite, favourite authors. Love his writing. And LOVE Philip Marlowe. Perfect detective, perfect detective stories (ok I'm biased )

 

[Paul Whybrow]

You can’t test courage cautiously.

Annie Dillard

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Fast is fine but accuracy is final. You must learn to be slow in a hurry.

Wyatt Earp

 

[Rich.]

Great quote, but I can't get past the tache. I want to rev him up and take him for a spin.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

Great quote, but I can't get past the tache. I want to rev him up and take him for a spin.

Great tea-strainer, for sure. Wyatt was a hell of a man, living life on both sides of the law, including being a brothel keeper and a corrupt boxing referee open to bribes. He took his time when gunfighting, which is why I thought the quote was appropriate for writing. No point is firing six shots quickly, that all miss their target, when one carefully-place shot hits the mark!

 

[Steve C]

a corrupt boxing referee open to bribes

Nothing much has changed then has it? The current crop have no shame.

 

[Paul Whybrow]

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.

Marc Chagall

 

[E G Logan]

Life is a racket. Writing is a racket. Sincerity is a racket. Everything’s a racket.

Nick Tosches

That's what you'd call a blanket cynic.
The fun in cynicism, IMHO, is discernment.