In this excerpt from Roald Dahl’s Boy, his mother asks if he wants to go to Oxford or Cambridge. “No, thank you,” I said. “I want to go straight from school to work for a company that will send me to wonderful faraway places like Africa or China.” You must remember that there was virtually [...]
Tagged CommonplaceBook, Roald DahlIn the following excerpt from Roald Dahl’s Boy, he’s left public school at 18 to take a job with Shell Oil company. He is taking their internal training courses and is learning the business. …[E]very morning, six days a week, Saturdays included, I would dress neatly in a sombre grey suit, have breakfast at seven [...]
Tagged common, CommonplaceBook, Roald DahlVaynerchuk tells anecdotes, but his main activities veer more into the uncool profession of teaching. In the above-linked interview he admits to being a “class clown,” and I have found in my twenty years of teaching that that one characteristic is a better predictor of who ends up a teacher in life than any other. [...]
From the final Hold this Thought broadcast: “In East of Eden, John Steinbeck writes: ‘A child may ask, “What is the world’s story about?” And a grown man or woman may wonder, “What way will the world go? How does it end and, while we’re at it, what’s the story about?” I believe that there [...]
Tagged CommonplaceBookBy then, the veterans had developed an informal set of rules for themselves: Take the craft seriously ([Judi] Dench: “deadly”). Don’t take yourself seriously ([Patrick] Stewart: “That’s death to creativity”). Never think you know it all (Dench: “Absolutely fatal”). Ian McKellen: The Player – TIME
Tagged CommonplaceBook