Quotomania

Today’s Quotation is care of Milan Kundera. Listen in! Subscribe to Quotomania on quotomania.com or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!

Milan Kundera is the author of the novels The Joke, Farewell Waltz, Life Is Elsewhere, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and Immortality, and the short-story collection Laughable Loves—all originally written in Czech. His most recent novels Slowness, Identity, and Ignorance, as well as his nonfiction works The Art of the Novel, Testaments Betrayed, The Curtain, and Encounter, were originally written in French.

From https://www.harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/milan-kundera-20154134342990.

For more information about Milan Kundera:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-unbearable-lightness-of-being-milan-kundera?variant=32131838115874

“Milan Kundera, The Art of Fiction No. 81”: https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2977/the-art-of-fiction-no-81-milan-kundera

“A Talk With Milan Kundera”: https://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/19/magazine/a-talk-with-milan-kundera.html

“Why Read Milan Kundera?”: ​​https://www.nypl.org/blog/2021/04/16/milan-kundera

Today’s Quotation is care of Albert Camus. Listen in! Subscribe to Quotomania on quotomania.com or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!

Albert Camus, (born Nov. 7, 1913, Mondovi, Alg.—died Jan. 4, 1960, near Sens, France), was an Algerian-French novelist, essayist, and playwright. Born into a working-class family, Camus graduated from the university in Algiers and then worked with a theatrical company, becoming associated with leftist causes. He spent the war years in Paris, and the French Resistance brought him into the circle of Jean-Paul Sartre and existentialism. He became a leading literary figure with his enigmatic first novel, The Stranger (1942), a study of 20th-century alienation, and the philosophical essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” (1942), an analysis of contemporary nihilism and the concept of the absurd. The Plague (1947), his allegorical second novel, and “The Rebel” (1951), another long essay, developed related issues. Other major works include the short-story collection Exile and the Kingdom (1957) and the posthumous autobiographical novel The First Man (1994). His plays include Le Malentendu (1944) and Caligula(1944). Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. He died in a car accident.

From https://www.britannica.com/summary/Albert-Camus.

Today’s Quotation is care of Elizabeth Alexander. Listen in! Subscribe to Quotomania on quotomania.com or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!

Elizabeth Alexander is a prize-winning and New York Times bestselling author, renowned poet, educator, scholar, and cultural advocate.  She is also president of the Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest funder in the arts, culture, and humanities.

Dr. Alexander’s most recent book, The Trayvon Generation (2022), is a galvanizing meditation on the power of art and culture to illuminate America’s unresolved problem with race and the challenges facing young Black America.  Among the fifteen books she has authored or co-authored, her poetry collection American Sublime was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry in 2006, and her memoir, The Light of the World, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography and the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2015.  Other works include Crave Radiance:  New and Selected Poems 1990–2010 (2010), Power and Possibility:  Essays, Reviews, Interviews (2007), The Black Interior:  Essays (2004), Antebellum Dream Book (2001), Body of Life (1996), and The Venus Hottentot (1990).

Over the course of an esteemed career in education, Dr. Alexander has held distinguished professorships at Smith College, Columbia University, and Yale University, where she taught for fifteen years and chaired the African American Studies Department.  She has been awarded the Jackson Poetry Prize, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, the George Kent Award, the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and three Pushcart Prizes for Poetry.  Notably, Dr. Alexander composed and delivered “Praise Song for the Day” for the 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Dr. Alexander is Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, serves on the Pulitzer Prize Board, and co-designed the Art for Justice Fund.

From http://www.elizabethalexander.net/about.

Today’s Quotation is care of Anne Carson. Listen in! Subscribe to Quotomania on quotomania.com or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!

Anne Carson was born in Toronto, Ontario on June 21, 1950. With the help of a high school Latin instructor, she learned ancient Greek, which contributed to her continuing interest in classical and Hellenic literature. She attended St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto and, despite leaving twice, received her BA in 1974, her MA in 1975 and her PhD in 1981. She also studied Greek metrics for a year at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

Since bursting onto the international poetry scene in 1987 with her long poem “Kinds of Water," Carson has published numerous books of poetry, including Float (Alfred A. Knopf, 2016); Red Doc> (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013); The Beauty of the Husband: A Fictional Essay in 29 Tangos (Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), winner of the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry;Autobiography of Red (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998); and Short Talks (Brick Books, 1992). Also a Classics scholar, Carson is the translator ofElectra (Oxford University Press, 2001), If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho (Knopf, 2002), and An Oresteia (Faber and Faber, 2009), among others. She is also the author of Eros the Bittersweet (Princeton University Press, 1986).

Her awards and honors include the Lannan Literary Award, the Pushcart Prize, the Griffin Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, and the MacArthur Fellowship. She was also the Anna-Maria Kellen Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin, Germany. Carson was the Director of Graduate Studies in Classics at McGill University and taught at Princeton University from 1980-1987. She has also taught classical languages and literature at Emory University, California College of the Arts, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Michigan. She currently teaches in New York University’s creative writing program.

From https://poets.org/poet/anne-carson.

Today’s Quotation is care of Harold Pinter. Listen in! Subscribe to Quotomania on quotomania.com or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!

Harold Pinter, (born Oct. 10, 1930, London, Eng.—died Dec. 24, 2008, London), British playwright. Born into a working-class family, he acted with touring companies until 1959. His early one-act plays were followed by the full-length The Birthday Party (1958). His next major plays, The Caretaker (1960) and The Homecoming (1965), established his reputation as an innovative and complex dramatist, sometimes considered as belonging to the Theatre of the Absurd. He often used disjointed small talk and lengthy pauses in dialogue to convey a character’s thought, which often contradicts his speech. Pinter’s later plays include Old Times (1971), No Man’s Land (1975), Betrayal (1978; film, 1983), Mountain Language (1988), Moonlight(1993), and Celebration (2000). He also wrote radio and television plays, as well as screenplays for The Go-Between (1970), The French Lieutenant’s Woman(1981), The Handmaid’s Tale (1990), and Sleuth(2007). In 2005 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature.

From https://www.britannica.com/summary/Harold-Pinter.

For more information about Harold Pinter:

“Harold Pinter: Nobel Lecture”: https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2005/pinter/lecture/

“Harold Pinter, Playwright of the Pause, Dies at 78”: https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/26/theater/26pinter.html

“Harold Pinter, The Art of Theater No. 3”: https://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4351/the-art-of-theater-no-3-harold-pinter

“Front Row, Harold Pinter”: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00gy71c

Today’s Quotation is care of Marcus Aurelius. Listen in! Subscribe to Quotomania on quotomania.com or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!

Marcus Aurelius , in full Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustusorig. Marcus Annius Verus, (born April 26, AD 121, Rome—died March 17, 180, Vindobona [Vienna] or Sirmium, Pannonia), was a Roman emperor (161–180). He was born into a wealthy and prominent family. Hadrian arranged that Marcus and Lucius Verus be adopted by the designated future emperor Antoninus Pius, who dutifully groomed Marcus as his heir. On his accession, Marcus nevertheless shared power with his adoptive brother as coemperor, though he himself remained the more dominant. His reign was marked by numerous military crises, all the major frontiers being threatened by invasion. Struggles against the Parthians (162–166) were successful, but returning troops brought a devastating plague to Rome. With a concurrent German invasion, Roman morale declined; the Germans were repulsed, but Verus died during the campaign (169). Marcus made his son Commodus coemperor in 177. Though a man of gentle character and wide learning, Marcus opposed Christianity and supported persecution of its adherents. His Meditations on Stoicism, considered one of the great books of all times, gives a full picture of his religious and moral values. His reign is often thought to mark the Golden Age of Rome.

From https://www.britannica.com/summary/Marcus-Aurelius-Roman-emperor.

For more information about Marcus Aurelius:

Meditations: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/6367/meditations-by-marcus-aurelius/

“Marcus Aurelius”: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marcus-aurelius/

A Companion to Marcus Aurelius: https://www.wiley.com/en-ie/A+Companion+to+Marcus+Aurelius-p-9781405192859

Today’s Quotation is care of Edgar Kunz. Listen in! Subscribe to Quotomania on quotomania.com or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!

Edgar Kunz is the author of the poetry collections Tap Out (Mariner, 2019), a NYT New & Noteworthy pick, and Fixer, forthcoming from Ecco/HarperCollins in August 2023.

His writing has been supported by fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, Vanderbilt University, where he earned his MFA, and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow.

His poems appear widely, including in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry, Ploughshares, and American Poetry Review. He lives in Baltimore and teaches at Goucher College.

From https://www.edgarkunz.com.

For more information about Edgar Kunz:

“Piano”: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/11/07/piano

Tap Out: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781328518125

“Conversations with Contributors: Edgar Kunz”: https://theadroitjournal.org/2020/04/20/conversations-with-contributors-edgar-kunz/

Today’s Quotation is care of J. A. Baker. Listen in! Subscribe to Quotomania on quotomania.com or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!

J. A. Baker was a native of Essex, England. He wrote The Peregrine and The Hill of Summer. J. A. Baker was born on August 6, 1926, and died on December 26, 1987.

From https://www.nyrb.com/collections/j-a-baker.

For more information about J. A. Baker:

The Peregrine: https://www.nyrb.com/products/the-peregrine?variant=1094932429

“Werner Herzog on the Books Every Filmmaker Should Read”: https://lithub.com/werner-herzog-on-the-books-every-filmmaker-should-read/

“Robert Macfarlane: ‘I Wanted the Reader to Undertake a Descent into the Darkness.’”: https://lithub.com/robert-macfarlane-i-wanted-the-reader-to-undertake-a-descent-into-the-darkness/

“Legendary Werner Herzog talks books with author Robert Pogue Harrison”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MncnB-kofRo

“The secret life behind the writer of England’s greatest cult book”: https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-secret-life-behind-the-writer-of-england-s-greatest-cult-book-1.3333957

Today’s Quotation is care of Pablo Neruda. Listen in! Subscribe to Quotomania on quotomania.com or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!

Born Ricardo Eliecer Neftalí Reyes Basoalto in the town of Parral in southern Chile on July 12, 1904, Pablo Neruda led a life charged with poetic and political activity. In 1923, he sold all of his possessions to finance the publication of his first book, Crepusculario (“Twilight”). He published the volume under the pseudonym “Pablo Neruda” to avoid conflict with his family, who disapproved of his occupation. The following year, he found a publisher for Veinte poemas de amor y una cancion desesperada (“Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair”). The book made a celebrity of Neruda, who gave up his studies at the age of twenty to devote himself to his craft.

In 1927, Neruda began his long career as a diplomat in the Latin American tradition of honoring poets with diplomatic assignments. After serving as honorary consul in Burma, Neruda was named Chilean consul in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1933. While there, he began a friendship with the visiting Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. After transferring to Madrid later that year, Neruda also met Spanish writer Manuel Altolaguirre. Together, the two men founded a literary review called Caballo verde para la poesîa in 1935. The outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 interrupted Neruda’s poetic and political development. He chronicled the horrendous years which included the execution of García Lorca in Espana en el corazon (1937), published from the war front. Neruda’s outspoken sympathy for the loyalist cause during the Spanish Civil War led to his recall from Madrid in 1937. He then moved to Paris and helped settle Spanish republican refugees in Chile.

Neruda returned to Chile in 1938 where he renewed his political activity and wrote prolifically. Named Chilean Consul to Mexico in 1939, Neruda left Chile again for four years. Upon returning to Chile in 1943, he was elected to the Senate and joined the Communist Party. When the Chilean government moved to the right, they declared communism illegal and expelled Neruda from the Senate. He went into hiding. During those years he wrote and published Canto general (1950).

In 1952 the government withdrew the order to arrest leftist writers and political figures, and Neruda returned to Chile and married Matilde Urrutia, his third wife (his first two marriages, to Maria Antonieta Haagenar Vogelzang and Delia del Carril, both ended in divorce). For the next twenty-one years, he continued a career that integrated private and public concerns and became known as the people’s poet. During this time, Neruda received numerous prestigious awards, including the International Peace Prize in 1950, the Lenin Peace Prize and the Stalin Peace Prize in 1953, and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971.

Diagnosed with cancer while serving a two-year term as ambassador to France, Neruda resigned his position, ending his diplomatic career. On September 23, 1973, just twelve days after the defeat of Chile’s democratic regime, the man widely regarded as the greatest Latin American poet since Darío died in Santiago, Chile.

From https://poets.org/poet/pablo-neruda.

Today’s Quotation is care of Daphne du Maurier. Listen in! Subscribe to Quotomania on quotomania.com or search for Quotomania on your favorite podcast app!

Daphne du Maurier (1907–1989) is one of the best-loved authors of popular fiction of her generation. Her novels established her as a master storyteller, but she also wrote plays, short stories and biographies. Haunting and atmospheric, her work occupies a unique place in 20th century literature, appealing to a broad audience yet worthy of literary merit.

Daphne du Maurier’s first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931 to critical acclaim. She married Major Frederick Arthur Montague ('Boy') Browning in 1932 and had her first daughter, Tessa, in 1933. Her frank biography of her father, Gerald: A Portrait (1934) shocked some of her father’s admirers but also gained her recognition as a talented writer. In 1936, publication of Jamaica Inn propelled her to the top of the best-seller lists.

An unhappy period in Egypt as an army wife gave rise to Daphne du Maurier’s best-known novel, Rebecca (1938). An intense study of female jealousy, Rebecca was made into a successful film in 1940, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.  Frenchman’s Creek (1941) and Hungry Hill (1943) followed, both of which were also made into successful films. She had another daughter, Flavia, in 1937, and a son, Christian, in 1940, and while her husband was away at war, she moved back to Cornwall with the children to live in 'Menabilly', a house which she had loved since her early 20s.

During and after the war, the du Mauriers’ marriage became strained. This prompted her to write a play, The Years Between (performed in 1944), which explored the effects of war on marriage. My Cousin Rachel (1951) was followed by two collections of short stories, The Apple Tree (1952) and The Breaking Point(1959); the latter was also influenced by her psychological stress. The Scapegoat (1957), a novel exploring themes of stolen identity and the self, is appreciated by critics as a more serious work, though at the time it was pigeonholed as another of her romantic thrillers. In 1963, Alfred Hitchcock’s film version of her short story The Birds, was released and became a cult classic. The death of her husband, in 1965, affected Daphne du Maurier profoundly and her unease was compounded by a growing sense that her imaginative talent was waning. Unable to renew the lease on her treasured home, Menabilly, she moved to Kilmarth, in Par, where she wrote the well-received The House on the Strand in 1969, the same year that she was made a DBE. She subsequently entered into a period of creative and personal decline, culminating with a nervous breakdown in 1981. She died at home in Cornwall in 1989 at the age of 81.

From https://www.bl.uk/people/daphne-du-maurier.