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" I'm nothing if not a literary hedonist. "
Michael Dirda
Nothing
Literary
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" I didn't work for any newspapers in college, never worked for any newspaper before 'The Washington Post'. "
Michael Dirda
College
Work
Newspaper
" A personal library is a reflection of who you are and who you want to be, of what you value and what you desire, of how much you know and how much more you'd like to know. "
Michael Dirda
Know
Library
Reflection
" At the age of 14, I ran away from home for four days and hitchhiked around western Pennsylvania and southern Ohio. "
Michael Dirda
Age
Away
Days
" For those of us with an inward turn of mind, which is another name for melancholy introspection, the beginning of a new year inevitably leads to thoughts about both the future and the past. "
Michael Dirda
Mind
Past
Beginning
" With the possible exception of steampunk aficionados, many reasonable people must view my fascination with Victorian and Edwardian popular fiction - mysteries, fantasy, and adventure - as eccentric or merely antiquarian. "
Michael Dirda
View
People
Many
" A reviewer's lot is not always an easy one. I can remember flogging myself to finish Harold Brodkey's 'The Runaway Soul' despite the novel's consummate, unmitigated tedium. "
Michael Dirda
Soul
Finish
Easy
" Fiction is a house with many stately mansions, but also one in which it is wise, at least sometimes, to swing from the chandeliers. "
Michael Dirda
House
Wise
Fiction
" Reading books might itself be a bit weird, but obviously okay, since books were part of school, and doing well in school was clearly a good thing. But comics were more like candy, just flashy wrappers without any nourishment. Cheap thrills. "
Michael Dirda
Good
Weird
Reading
" Books can be a source of solace, but I see them mainly as a source of pleasure, personal as well as esthetic. "
Michael Dirda
Pleasure
Personal
See
" Mentoring is the last refuge of the older artist. With luck, disciples will keep one's books in print, one's reputation alive. "
Michael Dirda
Will
Artist
Luck
" Born in 1910, Wilfrid Thesiger spent his childhood in Ethiopia, or Abyssinia, as it was then called, where his father was an important and much-admired British official. "
Michael Dirda
Father
Important
Then
" I love the look of books published by the firm of Rupert Hart-Davis: They strike me as handsome, elegant, and inviting. I'll pick up almost anything with that imprint, especially if it's in a jacket or priced low. "
Michael Dirda
Love
Me
Look
" Basically, I think that most people either make too much money or not enough money. The jobs that are essential and important pay too little, and those that are essentially managerial pay far too much. "
Michael Dirda
Money
Think
People
" For years, I meant to read 'Arabian Sands', Wilfred Thesiger's account of two punishing camel journeys during the late 1940s across Southern Arabia's Empty Quarter. Now that I have, I can sheepishly join the chorus of those who revere the book as one of the half dozen greatest works of modern English travel writing. "
Michael Dirda
Now
Late
I Can
" With concerted effort, I can follow written instructions, but don't ask me to simply grasp how to operate a smartphone. "
Michael Dirda
Effort
I Can
Instructions
" Late summer is perfect for classic mysteries - think of Raymond Chandler's hot Santa Anas and Agatha Christie's Mediterranean resorts - while big ambitious works of nonfiction are best approached in September and early October, when we still feel energetic and the grass no longer needs to be cut. "
Michael Dirda
Think
Best
October
" To an Ohio boy, it represented world-weary Gallic shrugs and Gauloises cigarettes, existentialist thinkers in berets and Catherine Deneuve in nothing at all - French was the language of intellectual power and effortless sex appeal. "
Michael Dirda
Language
Intellectual
Boy
" Adventurous reading allows one to escape a little from the provincialities of one's home culture and the blinders of one's narrow self. "
Michael Dirda
Self
Reading
Home
" On any given day, I'm likely to be working at home, hunched over this keyboard, typing Great Thoughts and Beautiful Sentences - or so they seem at the time, like those beautifully flecked and iridescent stones one finds at the seashore that gradually dry into dull gray pebbles. "
Michael Dirda
Time
Home
Gray
" No matter how beautiful the paper, artwork, printing, and binding, I'm seldom drawn to a book unless it's by a writer I care about or on a subject that appeals to me. "
Michael Dirda
Me
Care
Paper
" While Napoleon believed his fortunes to be governed by destiny, his real genius lay in self-control and martial daring coupled with an indomitable will to power. "
Michael Dirda
Power
Destiny
Will
" I suppose movie theaters are the churches of the modern age, where we gather reverently to worship the tinsel gods of Hollywood. "
Michael Dirda
Age
Hollywood
Worship
" In truth, my Anglophilia is fundamentally bookish: I yearn for one of those country house libraries, lined on three walls with mahogany bookshelves, their serried splendor interrupted only by enough space to display, above the fireplace, a pair of crossed swords or sculling oars and perhaps a portrait of some great English worthy. "
Michael Dirda
Great
Enough
Truth
" Carl Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon, in 1901, grew up in a farming family, and eventually held a number of blue-collar jobs. He knew what it was to be poor and to work hard for a living. "
Michael Dirda
Family
Born
Living
" Digital texts are all well and good, but books on shelves are a presence in your life. As such, they become a part of your day-to-day existence, reminding you, chastising you, calling to you. Plus, book collecting is, hands down, the greatest pastime in the world. "
Michael Dirda
Life
Hands
Book
" At 17, I traveled to Mexico in a lemon yellow Mustang and saved money by bunking down in cheap, cockroach-infested flophouses. In my early 20s, I went on to thumb rides through Europe, readily sleeping in train stations, my backpack as a pillow. Once I even hunkered down for a night on a sidewalk grate - for warmth - in Paris. "
Michael Dirda
Money
Yellow
Train
" In truth, I'm not really a cat person. Seamus, the wonder dog, still deeply mourned by all who knew him, was just about the only pet I've ever really loved. "
Michael Dirda
Cat
Wonder
Truth
" I don't like gross monetary inequities. I firmly believe that the wrong people and the wrong professions are being rewarded, and rewarded absurdly, and that the hardest work the obscenely rich do is ensuring that they preserve their privileges, status symbols, and bloated bank accounts. "
Michael Dirda
Bank
Wrong
Rich
" I think of my own work as part of a decades-long conversation about books and reading with people I will mainly never meet. "
Michael Dirda
People
Meet
Own
" Throughout the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, Latin was the language of learning and international communication. But in the early modern period, it was gradually displaced by French. By the eighteenth century, all the world - or at least all of Europe - aspired to be Parisian. "
Michael Dirda
Communication
Learning
World