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" People who've read my reviews know my tastes, know how I approach a book, know my background. I can write with believable authority. It doesn't mean I'm always right. "
Michael Dirda
Authority
People
Know
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" Some travelers collect souvenirs, postcards, or bumper stickers; I bring home a pencil from the various places I visit. "
Michael Dirda
Bring
Postcards
Pencil
" 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
" Young people looking for adventure fiction now generally turn to fantasy, but for those of a certain age, the spy thriller has long been the escape reading of choice. "
Michael Dirda
Looking
People
Reading
" Many people know that Shakespeare's dramatic 'canon' was established in 1623 by the publication of the so-called First Folio. That hefty volume contained thirty-six plays. "
Michael Dirda
Dramatic
Know
First
" Not all of E. Nesbit's children's books are fantasies, but even the most realistic somehow seem magical. In her holiday world, nobody ever goes to school, though all the kids know their English history, Greek myths, and classic tales of derring-do. "
Michael Dirda
School
World
Children
" 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
" Many cultures believe that on a certain day - Halloween, the Irish Samhain Eve, Mexico's 'Dia de los Muertos' - the veil between this world and the next is especially thin. "
Michael Dirda
Mexico
World
Halloween
" Deep in my cortex, the year is divided into reading seasons. The period from mid-October to Christmas, for instance, is 'ghost story' time, while Jane Austen and P. G. Wodehouse pretty much own April and May. "
Michael Dirda
Time
Story
Seasons
" 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
" People sometimes think that I bring home all these old books because I'm addicted, that I'm no better than a hoarder with a houseful of crumbling newspapers. "
Michael Dirda
Sometimes
People
Better
" To my mind, 'Dear Brutus' stands halfway between Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's 'Into the Woods'. Like them, it is a play about enchantment and disillusion, dreams and reality. "
Michael Dirda
Dreams
Night
Reality
" In my own case, my folks didn't actually object to comics, as many parents did, but they pretty much felt the things were a waste of time. "
Michael Dirda
Own
My Own
Parents
" Since I make my living as a literary journalist, not a book scout, I spend inordinate amounts of time either reading or writing. "
Michael Dirda
Living
Reading
Writing
" 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
" The only kind of notebook I actively dislike is the steno pad, entirely because of that vertical line down the middle of the page. I presume it has some arcane secretarial use, but to me, it's both ugly and confusing. "
Michael Dirda
Down
Me
Page
" I've always liked an easygoing, colloquial style. I like the kind of reviewer who is essentially a fellow reader, an enthusiast, a fan. "
Michael Dirda
Style
Always
Fan
" Books don't only furnish a room: they also make the best holiday gifts. "
Michael Dirda
Only
Books
Best
" I long ago ran out of bookshelf space and so, like a museum with its art, simply rotate my books from the boxes to the shelves and back again. "
Michael Dirda
Like
Long
Art
" Most lyric poetry is about love, whether yearned after, fulfilled, or wistfully regretted; what isn't tends to consist of laments and cris du coeur over this, that, and the other. "
Michael Dirda
Other
About
Over
" 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 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
" I've been slightly obsessed with paper and notebooks. Among my most precious possessions is a small light-blue, breviary-sized volume - four-and-a-half inches wide, seven inches tall - made by a company called Denbigh. "
Michael Dirda
Precious
Small
Tall
" In 1911, Edgar Rice Burroughs, having failed at everything else, decided to write a novel. He was then in his mid-thirties, married with two children, barely supporting his family as the agent for a pencil-sharpener business. "
Michael Dirda
Children
Business
Family
" 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
" For even the ordinary well-read person, the French Enlightenment is largely restricted to the three big-name philosophes: Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire. "
Michael Dirda
Enlightenment
Three
Person
" Most scholarly books we read for the information or insight they contain. But some we return to simply for the pleasure of the author's company. "
Michael Dirda
Company
Information
Insight
" Summertime, and the reading is easy... Well, maybe not easy, exactly, but July and August are hardly the months to start working your way through the works of Germanic philosophers. Save Hegel, Heidegger, and Husserl for the bleaker days of February. "
Michael Dirda
Way
Reading
Start
" I once read that there are more biographical works about Napoleon Bonaparte than any other man in history. "
Michael Dirda
Man
History
Than
" I didn't work for any newspapers in college, never worked for any newspaper before 'The Washington Post'. "
Michael Dirda
College
Work
Newspaper
" I'm sometimes willing to put in vast, even inordinate amounts of time if I find a project that interests me. "
Michael Dirda
Time
Even
Sometimes