Pain is deeper than all thought,
Laughter is higher than all pain.
-Elbert Hubbard
Babette's Feast: is Lauren’s favourite movie. At the very end, when the dinner party breaks up, and the sisters tell Babette that in heaven, she'll get to be the great artist she was meant to be on earth. And we see that all the characters have had to set aside their ambitions and become something other than what they wanted to be, and yet there they are, looking up at the stars, looking at each other. That gets me every single time ...
The only difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for free costs more ...
I mean, this may sound ridiculous, but I’ve never to this day really known what most women think about anything. Completely closed book to me. I mean, God bless them, what would we do without them. But I’ve never understood them. I mean, damn it all, one minute you’re having a perfectly good time and the next, you suddenly see them there like—some old sports jacket or something—literally beginning to come apart at the seams. Floods of tears, smashing your pots, banging the furniture about. God knows what. Both my wives, God bless them, they’ve given me a great deal of pleasure over the years but, by God, they’ve cost me a fortune in fixtures and fittings. All the same. Couldn’t do without them, could we. I suppose ;-)
-Alan Ayckbourn, Absurd Person Singular
Long work hours are making men grumpy, while women are struggling to balance uncertain hours with family commitments Long hours disconnecting families: Goward ; There are two great F-words that form the central equation of the population debate: fertility equals family. Why aren't we having children? The reasons have to do with lack of family formation, or family formation that is simply too late Finding fertile ground: Feminists killed the Australian family
Art of Living & Literature Across Frontiers: Your love, your excitement, is not something you can just turn on
I am not yet sure of Byng's weakness - though he is on two wives at 36 - but his strength is pretty obvious.
He cares, and he makes others care. He understands how to motivate writers, how to inspire them. Simple, really: he takes only writers whose work he loves, and his confidence becomes their confidence. This year, his passion is for James Meek's The People's Act of Love. A few years ago, it was Yann Martel's Life of Pi, which became the Booker prize-winner after publication by Canongate. Martel's first two books had gone nowhere. But Byng read Life of Pi and wrote Martel an impassioned letter explaining why he loved his book, why Canongate should publish it. Martel said that if Byng matched his offer from Faber & Faber, the book was his. Byng did. "I think what we offered was something you can't put a value on, which was commitment to the book in terms of time and passion.
• The mane man ; [Mark Billingham continues his occasional series of columns for the Bookseller talking about the writing life. This time, he tackles the age-old question: does it get easier with each book? Guess what the answer is: The Write Stuff ; Book authors are kind of the low end of celebrity ]
• · She was a Goth, into body piercings and the heavy metal bands Marilyn Manson and Korn. Just days after her 15th birthday she, and a young man she had taken up with only three weeks before, hanged themselves in what police believe was a planned ritual suicide pact Young and troubled - two lives destroyed in a gothic tragedy ; Eric Fellner has plenty of enthusiasm when it comes to filmmaking From Britain, brimming with ideas
• · · AAAAH, Halloween, or as it is known among those who are powerless over their addiction, Candy Corn Season A Guilty Pleasure Shows Its Colors ; How to Write Dozens of Bestsellers and Still Live the Good Life Stuart Woods, Author of 'Iron Orchid'
• · · · Don't look now, but Sydney could get a new nudist beach just in time for summer Nude Beach ; Under the skin of a French obsession
• · · · · Ms. Household Opera asks (and answers) a wonderful question: Which movie scenes always make you cry (and which ones always make you laugh)? The Life of Brian: "You don't have to follow me! You're all individuals!" Crowd, in unison: "Yes! We're all individuals!" One lone voice in the background: "I'm not.") Yes, it's true. I am a great big sap ; Australian Coffee and Australian Wine
• · · · · · Peter Paul Rubens’s feelings for women were edgy and confused. His tastes for plump nudes mask X-rated hungers for sex and violence The art of excess ; John Bayley’s writing shares all the central Iris Murdoch postulates, derived from Aristotle and Kant. But where she is the intellectual, he is the evasive critic Puffed Wheat