QUOTATIONS
-
“With other animals you can usually throw out 90 percent of the stories you hear about them as exaggerations. With ravens, it’s the opposite. No matter how strange or amazing the story, chances are pretty good that at least some raven somewhere actually did that.” That is because ravens are individuals. Ants aren’t. ~Bernd Heinrich Read more
-
Jo-Anne had started pouring the coffee when the doorbell rang. After four in the morning, it would be either the milkman or cops. I was not betting on Louis Pasteur’s boy. We all deserted the kitchen for the front door. “Police Medical Examiner,” the stocky man with rimless glasses and a doctor’s satchel told us.… Read more
-
Just like that he laughed. “You’re a cocky little punk.” “You’re the first guy who ever called me little, friend.” He laughed again. “Come on inside and have some coffee and keep your language where it belongs. I got all kinds of visitors today.” (cf. Spillane, Mickey. The Mike Hammer Collection, Volume II.) Read more
-
The state of the country, considering how poets go to Nature, how they use her for their images and their contrasts even when they do not describe her directly, is a matter of some importance. Her cultivation or her savagery influences the poet far more profoundly than for the prose writer. (cf. Virginia Woolf. The… Read more
-
There they were, everyone with a coffee cup, lined up at the urn. Because I took my time with the smoke I had to join the end of the line, and it was a good thing I did. It gave me time enough to get the pitch. Everybody had been watching me covertly anyway, saying… Read more
-
“In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.” (cf. Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Letters and Papers from Prison.) Read more
-
The attendant filled my cup and made change without waking, moving as if his starched coat was holding him up. I sat at the shining enameled counter, slowly burning my throat with coffee and thinking with a chilly three o’clock brain. Ruth was clear, of murder at any rate. But the Schneiders’ alibi was at… Read more
-
“Failure is a part of success. There is no such thing as a bed of roses all your life. But failure will never stand in the way of success if you learn from it.” – Hank Aaron Read more
-
One of the most enjoyable things about reading short story anthologies is the number of pleasant surprises you get. In the Golden Age of Detective Fiction (the 1920s & 1930s) everyone who wrote in Britain tried their hand at mysteries. Even Winnie-the-Pooh’s famous creator, A.A. Milne. Milne’s short story “Bread Upon the Waters” is an… Read more
ClimbingSky 