"I always start with physicality when I’m writing as a woman. So I always have a vagina and think about having periods."

Said Will Self , who has a new novel, "Umbrella," the title of which is based on the Joyce quote "A brother is as easily for...

"There are notes and notes, of course: notes to oneself and notes to others; notes taken, made, jotted, and passed."

"Mash, doctor's, suicide, and condolence notes. Field, class, and case notes; notes for general circulation; foot and head notes, n...

"The biggest and weirdest myth out there about the $1 trillion platinum coin is..."

Matthew Yglesias debunks a myth without establishing that anyone believes it. Clue to Matt: No one believes it. This is one of those glarin...

"Be a Sadist."

Rule #6 on Kurt Vonnegut's 8 rules for writing a short story: No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful thing...

"Nobody ever became a writer just by wanting to be one. If you have anything to say..."

"... anything you feel nobody has ever said before, you have got to feel it so desperately that you will find some way to say it that n...

Obama's inauguration poet "tackles 'the intersection of his cultural identities as a Cuban-American gay man.'"

The poet is Richard Blanco, the verb "tackles" comes from Politico , and the quote within the quote is in the Presidential Inaugur...

"A serious person should try to write posthumously."

"By that I took her to mean that one should compose as if the usual constraints—of fashion, commerce, self-censorship, public and, perh...

"Gatsby, pale as death, with his hands plunged like weights in his coat pockets, was standing in a puddle of water glaring tragically into my eyes."

The most interesting thing about today's "Gatsby" sentence is the use of plunged for the action of the hands into the pocket...

In discussing what makes a job the "least stressful"...

... consider that, in this context, the opposite of stress is control . Is that true? For some, I would think, too much control would lead t...

"Gatsby’s notoriety, spread about by the hundreds who had accepted his hospitality and so become authorities on his past, had increased all summer until he fell just short of being news."

That's from Chapter 6. I'm getting used to these F. Scott Fitzgerald sentences (as I continue with this Gatsby project , taking one...

"They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house."

I decided to pluck something from Chapter 1 for today's entry in the "Great Gatsby" project . I randomly selected the sentenc...

"A paparazzo hoping to get a picture of Justin Bieber in his Ferrari after the vehicle was pulled over by police in Los Angeles got struck and killed by an SUV instead."

"And as it turned out, the 18-year-old singer wasn't even in the sports car." This seems to be an occasion for wheeling out th...

"Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the season..."

"... suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chif...

"Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York..."

"... every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves." I warned you I was going to d...

Baz Luhrmann's "Gatsby."

If you loved "Moulin Rouge," as I did, you may find the new trailer thrilling: I was literally thrilled. And I'm very skeptic...

"It’s almost always a mistake to read only a first-rate writer’s masterpieces."

"A great deal of Fussell’s best, most perceptive and, frankly, most hilarious work arrived in books like 'Class: A Guide Through th...

"We know what the future of the Internet's going to be."

"It's going to be a great, big video platform." And here I thought it was all about the return to reading and writing.

"Has anyone ever told you that your high-wattage passion for no-collar American food makes you television’s answer to Calvin Trillin, if Mr. Trillin bleached his hair, drove a Camaro and drank Boozy Creamsicles?"

"When you cruise around the country for your show 'Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives,' rasping out slangy odes to the unfancy places ...

Dana Loesch sues to escape from the "indentured servitude" that is Breitbart.com.

"The internal disputes roiling the website founded by the late conservative provocateur Andrew Breitbart broke out into the open Friday...

"As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cynical and religious."

"I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your ...