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" 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. "

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" 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

Mom

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" With any luck, Heaven itself will resemble a vast used bookstore, with a really good cafe in one corner, serving dark beer and kielbasa to keep up one's strength while browsing, and all around will be the kind of angels usually found in Victoria's Secret catalogs. "

" 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. "

" I am something of an aficionado of thrift stores. In my youth, I regularly searched their shelves for old books. "

" Mentoring is the last refuge of the older artist. With luck, disciples will keep one's books in print, one's reputation alive. "

" 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

Page

" In a single lifetime, roughly from 1865 to 1930, one finds the pioneering and patterning works of modern fantasy, science fiction, children's literature and detective fiction, of modern adventure, mystery and romance. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" I suppose movie theaters are the churches of the modern age, where we gather reverently to worship the tinsel gods of Hollywood. "

" 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. "

" I haven't read for pleasure in 35 years. I mean, I get a lot of pleasure from what I read... For me, it's gotten so that it doesn't seem as though I've read a book unless I've written about it. It really seems the completion of the reading process. "

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

" 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. "

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

" Adventurous reading allows one to escape a little from the provincialities of one's home culture and the blinders of one's narrow self. "

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

" Sometimes the very best of all summer books is a blank notebook. Get one big enough, and you can practice sketching the lemon slice in your drink or the hot lifeguard on the beach or the vista down the hill from your cabin. "

" It's a sad commentary on our time - to use a phrase much favored by my late father - that people increasingly celebrate Christmas Day by going to the movies. "

" 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. "

" None of us, of course, will ever read all the books we'd like, but we can still make a stab at it. "

" I once read that in vaudeville, it was often the straight guy who got paid more than the comic because that's the tougher job. He has to set up the jokes in just the right way. "

" 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. "

" 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. "