Examining the unlived life

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

Alex has a wonderful essay up this week on the unexamined life vs the unlived life. I recognized so much of myself in his description of his early college self. And i would say it's only been fairly recently that I've decided to bias myself towards action -- even fidgety ...

Dahl on travel and civilization

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

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 ...

Dahl on the life of businessmen and writers

Monday, July 20th, 2009

In 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, ...

Great words

Tuesday, March 31st, 2009

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 ...

On acting and life

Monday, March 30th, 2009

By 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 Related posts:Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of ...