A bit on memoir from the wonderful and painfully missed Nuala O’Faolain
Novels are completed when they are finished, but the memoir changes its own conclusion by virtue of being written… I was not at all the same person, when I handed the manuscript to the publisher, as I had been when I began. A memoir may always be retrospective, but the past is not where its action takes place.
From Jeanette Winerson
Language is what stops the heart exploding.
Read the whole essay at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/nov/15/ts-eliot-festival-donmar-jeanette-winterson
Quotes attributed to Attila the Hun:
There is Another Day
Know that your most worthy efforts will be scorned by your peers, for it is they who suffer most when you excel. If your actions and ambitions threaten them not, you’re simply striving toward the insignificant.
Perceptions and Publicity
Contrary to what most chieftains think, you’re not remembered by what you did in the past, but by what most Huns think you did.
Customs
It is the custom of all Huns to hold strong to personal and national honor. This is a cardinal virtue. One’s word must prevail over all other considerations, including political expediency.
Leaders and Leadership
A wise chieftain never depends on luck. Rather, he always trusts his future to hard work, stamina, tenacity and a positive attitude.
Leadership and Loneliness
Chieftains who lead our Huns must have courage. They must be fearless and have the fortitude to carry out assignments given them – the gallantry to accept the risks of leadership. They must not balk at the sight of obstacles, nor must they become bewildered when in the presence of adversity. The role of a chieftain has inherent periods of loneliness, despair, ridicule and rejection.
What Keeps Mankind Alive :
Performed by Tom Waits
(Weill/Brecht)
You gentlemen who think you have a mission
To purge us of the seven deadly sins
Should first sort out the basic food position
Then start your preaching, that’s where it begins
You lot who preach restraint and watch your waist as well
Should learn, for once, the way the world is run
However much you twist or whatever lies that you tell
Food is the first thing, morals follow on
So first make sure that those who are now starving
Get proper helpings when we all start carving
What keeps mankind alive?
What keeps mankind alive?
The fact that millions are daily tortured
Stifled, punished, silenced and oppressed
Mankind can keep alive thanks to its brilliance
In keeping its humanity repressed
And for once you must try not to shriek the facts
Mankind is kept alive by bestial acts
From the late Studs Terkel
“Take it easy, but take it.”
Amen to that.
