"'I know this woman!' she kept thinking. 'Angered by my inability to summon suitable language,' she writes, 'I threw my pencil on the floor, sucked my teeth in disgust.' Sth. 'So that's what I wrote' she says, and it became the novel's first line." - T — The New York Times Style Magazine
It turns out that the strategy of exploitation prevails in fiction at large. Knowing the topics of just a few books by an author, fairly accurate predictions can be made about the rest of their books. - Psyche
"I began to enjoy its warmth and inclusivity, the way everyone was equally gathered under its umbrella. I had to admit: It didn't feel sexist, racist or classist. It felt friendly and — most of the time — genuine." Maud Newton's paean to the second-person plural pronoun. - The New York Times Magazine
The unionized journalists — well, most of them — voted to join their colleagues in other departments to protest what they say is the owners' refusal to negotiate a contract. But the vote to join the strike won by only two votes and up to 40% of the newsroom continues to work. - Poynter
It’s a common misapprehension that “editing” is a synonym for “deleting.” Yes, by all means trim away what I call the Throat-Clearers and Wan Intensifiers. But I have learned that prose often benefits from the cushioning of a few extra words — for rhythm, for sense. - Washington Post
Students will now be put in touch with a school counselor if they want to check out the book. The counselor will then contact students’ parents or guardians for permission to let them check out the book. - The Daily Beast
"Dating from 1100, this codex — the work of a single artist, (written in hieroglyphics) on long sheets of amate, paper made from fig tree bark — reveals the Mayan preoccupations with time and the cosmos, as well as the 'otherworldly' role of the scribe." - The New York Times
"(This) supernatural satire set amid a murderous Sri Lankan civil war ... is about a photographer who wakes up dead, with a week to ask his friends to find his photos and expose the brutality of war." - BBC
Jacques Testard said that he would think it “very silly” if people called Fitzcarraldo the home of the Nobel. “It’s not like we have a strategy to try and win,” he said. His taste just happened to align with “a bunch of older bourgeois Swedish people” who decide the Nobel each year, he added. - The New York Times
Our current problem isn’t an insufficient amount of Black representation in literature but a surfeit of it. And in many cases that means simply another marketing opportunity, a way to sell familiar images of Blackness to as broad an audience as possible. - The New York Times
Jacqueline Woodson: "The ‘goodnight nobody’ always caught me by surprise and made me think ... I thought in including that ‘Goodnight nobody’ spread, Hurd and Brown were telling a quiet truth about emptiness and the world." - LitHub
Graham gives her readers the possibility of "adaptation and radical witness. Her language and poetic structure adapt to her changing world and reality, and never succumb to denial." - The Rumpus
Jane Campbell, author of the book Cat Brushing and experienced psychotherapist: "What I wanted to say, from quite an angry point of view, was, yes, old women are totally functioning human beings." - Slate
That's important for the planet: "There was this sense of wonder in everything, this sense of awe, not just beauty as some sort of painting you put on your wall, but as a feeling inside of you." - The Rumpus
"Smells, bells, blood, guts, spectacle, and of course, bodies, bodies, bodies. Catholicism is a deeply theatrical religion based in provocative stories." - The Millions
