Archives for March 10, 2005

I have to be somewhere else this morning, but fling a fistful of cookies behind me as I head out the door…

“What a story! Everything but the bloodhounds snappin’ at her rear end.” (All About Eve)


“What are you a wizard?! A genius?!” (Best in Show)


“Two dollars!” (Better Off Dead)


“I’ll meet you at the place where we did that thing that time.” (Broadcast News)


“You can leave in a taxi. If you can’t get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that’s too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff.” (Duck Soup)


“What are you lookin’ at?” “I’m lookin’ at a tin star with a drunk pinned on it.” (El Dorado)


“I was born when she kissed me, I died when she left me, I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” (In a Lonely Place)


“It’s the stuff dreams are made of.” (The Maltese Falcon)

Back later.

I returned from Washington this afternoon to find in my e-mailbox this note from a friend who’s been worrying about my reputation:

Remember when I said you shouldn’t hit every deadline so reliably, because it will make some dunderhead think you’re not an artist? In the same spirit, I want you to slow down a little. I want you to start spreading stories of your suffering–up at night, anguished at the burden of capturing such a great man’s art, honored by the opportunity to find and focus on Satchmo, listening over and over to his early recordings, hitting the crystal meth a little too hard. (We’ll think about that last one.) I just think many people are surprisingly primitive, even intellectuals, sometimes especially intellectuals, and are inclined to see truth in clich

“To write simply is as difficult as to be good.”

W. Somerset Maugham, Don Fernando