the contextual life

picadorbookroom:

When you started writing, in high school or college, it wasn’t out of a wish to be published, or to be successful, or even to win a lovely award like the one you’re receiving tonight. It was in response to the wondrousness and humiliation of being alive. Remember?

—Jeffrey Eugenides, 2012 Whiting Award speech

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“Supreme achievement and outstanding capacity are only rendered possible by mental concentration, by a sublime monomania that verges on lunacy.”
—Stefan Zweig (1881 - 1942) / novelist, playwright, journalist

[photo credit: Atrium Press]

“At a dinner party one should eat wisely but not too well, and talk well but not too wisely.” —W. Somerset Maugham