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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
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" 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
" Close friends, or those in my pay, sometimes call me a literary polymath, while others say that I'm just a shallow dilettante, superficial and breezy, with a faux-naif style. "
Michael Dirda
Style
Sometimes
Say
" 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
" Long ago, I realized that my only talent - aside from the rugged good looks, of course, and the strange power I hold over elderly women - can be reduced to a single word: doggedness. "
Michael Dirda
Women
Long
Talent
" 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
" None of us, of course, will ever read all the books we'd like, but we can still make a stab at it. "
Michael Dirda
Still
Course
Books
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Every summer, I regret that I didn't become a college teacher. Such a sweet life! With all that vacation time! You'll never get me to believe that being a tenured professor at a good college is anything but Heaven on earth. "
Michael Dirda
Good
Vacation
Time
" I do think digital media encourages speed-reading, which can be fine if one is simply seeking information. But a serious novel or work of history or volume of poetry is an experience one should savor, take time over. "
Michael Dirda
History
Poetry
Time
" At any given moment, I've always assumed that nearly everyone around me was smarter than I was, more naturally gifted, quicker-witted, and probably capable of understanding Heidegger and Derrida. "
Michael Dirda
More
Moment
Understanding
" When I come to visit my mom - every two or three months - I generally spend five or six hours with her each day. She's always immensely glad to see me, her eldest child, her only son. "
Michael Dirda
Day
Me
Mom
" The goal of a just society should be to provide satisfying work with a living wage to all its citizens. "
Michael Dirda
Living
Work
Wage
" Sad to say, multi-tasking is beyond me. I read one book at a time all the way through. If I'm reviewing the book, I have to write the review before I start reading any other book. I especially hate it when the phone rings and interrupts my train of thought. "
Michael Dirda
Thought
Book
Hate
" 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
" 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
" 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 classic noir fiction and film, it is always hot. Fans whirr in sweltering hotel rooms, sweat forms on a stranger's brow, the muggy air stifles - one can hardly breathe. Come nightfall, there is no relief, only the darkness that allows illicit lovers to meet, the trusted to betray, and murderers to act. "
Michael Dirda
Meet
Hotel
Hot
" 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
" Books don't only furnish a room: they also make the best holiday gifts. "
Michael Dirda
Only
Books
Best
" 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
" In my younger days, I used to visit record shops and covet boxed sets of Beethoven symphonies, Wagner operas, Bach cantatas, Mozart piano concertos. Only rarely was I able to find the money for such luxuries. "
Michael Dirda
Piano
Days
Find
" 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
" My urge at Christmas time or Hanukkah-time or Kwanzaa-time is that people go to bookstores: that they walk around bookstores and look at the shelves. Go to look for authors that they've loved in the past and see what else those authors have written. "
Michael Dirda
Walk
Christmas
Past
" Like most people, I find watching the lazy and quiet underwater realm of a big aquarium exceptionally calming. "
Michael Dirda
Find
Underwater
Quiet
" When I talk to friends and editors about possible projects, especially about projects that might come with a significant cash advance, they usually suggest a biography. Sometimes I'm tempted, but the prospect of spending years researching and writing about someone else's life offends my vanity. "
Michael Dirda
Life
Friends
Someone
" Critics for established venues are vetted by editors; they usually demonstrate a certain objectivity; and they come with known backgrounds and specialized knowledge. "
Michael Dirda
Editors
Knowledge
Come
" 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
" 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