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" 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. "

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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

" The goal of a just society should be to provide satisfying work with a living wage to all its citizens. "

" I once read that there are more biographical works about Napoleon Bonaparte than any other man in history. "

" 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. "

" Fiction is a house with many stately mansions, but also one in which it is wise, at least sometimes, to swing from the chandeliers. "

" Once upon a time, I sat in my mother's lap as she turned the pages of Golden Books, and I gradually learned to read. "

" Near my desk, I keep a large plastic carton filled with fresh notebooks and stationery of various kinds, sizes, and qualities. "

" 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. "

" It is a truth universally acknowledged that M. Dirda is a sucker for anything bookish in the way of artwork. "

" 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

Long

Art

" Because of Kipling, I've sometimes wondered about keeping a mongoose about the house. But given the cobra population in Silver Spring, Maryland - zero, when last I checked - we hardly need a Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. "

" My gift, if that's not too grandiose a term, is one for describing novels, biographies, and works of history in such a way that people want to read them. "

" 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. "

" I didn't work for any newspapers in college, never worked for any newspaper before 'The Washington Post'. "

" I'm sometimes willing to put in vast, even inordinate amounts of time if I find a project that interests me. "

" 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. "

" I've always liked an easygoing, colloquial style. I like the kind of reviewer who is essentially a fellow reader, an enthusiast, a fan. "

" 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. "

" I think of my own work as part of a decades-long conversation about books and reading with people I will mainly never meet. "

" When I was a boy in the late 1950s, the public library refused to stock books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. They were regarded as vulgar, ill-written potboilers. "

" Literary generations come and go, and each generation passeth away and is heard of no more. In the end, simply the making itself - of poems and stories and essays - delivers the only reward a writer can be sure of. And, perhaps, the only one that matters. "

Michael Dirda

End

Come And Go

" I'm an appreciator. I love all kinds of books, and I want others to love them, too. "

" 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. "

" With concerted effort, I can follow written instructions, but don't ask me to simply grasp how to operate a smartphone. "

" The savagery and power of Edith Wharton's ghost stories surprised me. "

" From the late 19th to the early 20th century, the December issue of almost any general-interest magazine regularly featured a holiday horror or two. "

" 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

Care

Paper

" Writers keep writing and publishers publishing - it never grows boring. "

" 'The Admirable Crichton' is probably Barrie's most famous work after 'Peter Pan', nearly a pendant to that classic. "

" Like most people, I find watching the lazy and quiet underwater realm of a big aquarium exceptionally calming. "