Birthdays missed

Catching up:

July 8: John D. Rockefeller (shown here) was born on this day in 1839.

"The rich are the scum of the earth in every country." -- G. K. Chesterton.



July 9: Romance novelist Barbara Cartland was born on this day in 1901.

"If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves." -- Don Marquis.



And today: French novelist Marcel Proust was born on July 10, 1871.

"I think he (Proust) was mentally defective." -- Evelyn Waugh.

Just this one line makes us slightly ill

American writer Stanley Elkin was born on this day in 1930. He wrote:

"If you can't make people miserable by writing, what's the point?"

And nobody's pleased with sour grapes

Birthday of American poet Rod McKuen, born in 1933.

“People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson.

All the really acute readers are from Mars

Author Thornton Wilder (The Bridge of San Luis Rey) was born on this day in 1897 He wrote, in that novel:

"The public for which masterpieces are intended is not on this earth."

While spreading the pain to schoolkids forever

Author Henry James was born on this day in 1843.

"Henry James wrote fiction as if it were a duty -- a very painful duty." -- Oscar Wilde.

Beat from all that typing

American beat writer Jack Kerouac was born on this day in 1922.

"That's not writing, that's typing." -- Truman Capote, on Kerouac's famous novel, On The Road.

Writing has its heights and depths

English novelist Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights ) died on this day in 1848.

A contemporary of hers, Gustave Flaubert (Madame Bovary), said this about their vocation:

"Writing is the most ignoble of professions."

To read about Emily Bronte's last words, visit Farewells

Today is I Love To Write Day!

"Everybody is writing, writing, writing–worst of all, writing poetry. It'd be better if the whole tribe of scribblers—every damn one of us—were sent off somewhere with tool chests to do some honest work." – Walt Whitman.


"It is the glory and the merit of some men to write well, and of others not to write at all." – La Bruyere.

Today's Perverse Verse:

The proliferation of The Blog
Leaves one agog.
From Chicago to Prague,
Like some noxious fog,
It hangs heavy as smog.
It's a World Wide bog,
Through which one can slog
Like a drunken hog,
Until you cry out: Aaaggh!