A WRITER'S WIT It is the mystery that lingers, and not the explanation. ​Sacheverell Sitwell ​Born November 15, 1897

S. Sitwell

My Book World

A WRITER'S WIT Feminism isn't simply about being a woman in a position of power. It's battling systemic inequities; it's a social justice movement that believes sexism, racism and classism exist and interconnect, and that they should be consistently challenged. ​Jessica Valenti Born November 1, 1978

J. Valenti

My Book World

“Cutting-edge research tells us that what doesn’t kill you doesn’t necessarily make you stronger. Far more often, the opposite is true: the early chronic unpredictable stressors, losses, and adversities we face as children shape our biology in ways that predetermine our adult health” (xiii)

A WRITER'S WIT I'm not happy when I'm writing, but I'm more unhappy when I'm not. ​Fannie Hurst Born October 18, 1885

F. Hurst

My Book World

​“Reality TV enacts the various self-delusions of the emotionally immature: the dream that you are being closely watched, assessed, and categorized; the dream that your life itself is movie material, and that you deserve your own carefully soundtracked montage when you’re walking down the street” (44).  

“Traditionally, male literary characters are written and received as emblems of the human condition rather than the male one . . . [f]emale literary characters, in contrast, indicate the condition of being a woman. They are condemned to a universe that revolves around sex and family and domesticity” (118).

“I wonder if women today would so readily accept the unequal diminishment of the independence without their sense of self-importance being overinflated first. It feels like a trick, a trick that has worked and is still working, that the bride remains the image of womanhood at its most broadly celebrated—and that planning a wedding is the only period in a woman’s life where she is universally and unconditionally encouraged to conduct everything on her terms” (289).

A WRITER'S WIT Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos. ​Mary Shelley Born August 30, 1797

M. Shelley

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“The diaries, I began to think, were an inheritance of sorts—unanticipated, undeserved, a stroke of fortune. But, like an inheritance, they came at a cost. Land, houses, money: Wealth had tumbled in my father’s family from one generation to the next. Each new descendant arrived as an unwitting conduit for its transmission. You had a right to enjoy it, an obligation to protect it, a duty to pass it on to your own unsuspecting children. It was a stroke of good fortune, of course. But what you could never know, starting out, was how those things would influence decisions you’d make over a lifetime” (220)

A WRITER'S WIT The paradox of education is precisely this—that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated. ​James Baldwin ​Born August 2, 1924

J. Baldwin

My Book World

A WRITER'S WIT Everybody has parents. As a dramatist, whenever you write a character, you must write their parents as well, even if the parents aren't there. ​Mark O’Donnell Born July 19, 1954

M. O'Donnell

My Book World

A WRITER'S WIT A writer wants something more than money for his work: he wants permanence. A. A. Milne ​Born January 18, 1882

A. Milne

My Book World

“I also started doing this thing when I drove around, that is completely obnoxious or funny, depending on who you are and how you feel: I’d roll down my window, get a person’s attention on the sidewalk or crossing the street, and call out, ‘Excuse me! Are you a vegan?!’ Or I got the attention of someone in a car at a stop sign and said causally (but a little too loud), ‘I AM A VEGAN.’ This was more fun in the passenger seat, when I’d get to hang out of the car. It was good clean fun—unlike veganism, which is hard work.
 
I get this from my parents—doing silly, unexpected stuff. One time we went on a trip and my mon wanted to stop at a mall for a shopping fix, so we went into a store called Spencer’s and bought some plastic masks. My dad wore a Nixon one, I remember, and my mom was a pig. They’d put them on as they drove, and we’d see who they could freak out, laughing until we made ourselves tired. It wasn’t cool anymore to drink in the car, so that’s how they replaced their fun. Not really, they still drank in the car, but in moderation” (189).

“It’s an industry (an art, hopefully) full of orphans left to create their own worlds with one another. I don’t feel glamorous, I feel like a possum—the animal born clinging to its mother’s tail, that grows up by falling off it, and probably too soon. Acting is the possum’s defense. Have you ever seen this? When threatened, they play dead—and they’re very convincing at it. They scare themselves so deeply that their eyes roll back into their heads and their little tongues stick out. They’ll even take it so far as to froth at the mouth They’ll go on with the act as long as they’re terrified and its truly ghoulish, because they’ve been known to be buried alive—they’re famous for it” (227).
 
And Posey doesn’t sugarcoat what an actor’s life can be like:
 
“A dollar seventy-five in my bank account, isn’t that too much? It doesn’t make sense, right? But all those independent movies I did in the nineties were done on the cheap. I was counting coins, which I’d put in those paper roll-ups to take to the deli so I could buy pasta to make for dinner. I didn’t know anyone else who was famous and broke” (288).

A WRITER'S WIT A writer is always writing, seeing everything through a thin mist of words, fitting swift little descriptions to everything he sees, always noticing. ​Shirley Jackson Born December 14,1916

S. Jackson

My Book World