A DAZZLING DISPLAY of fireworks lit up Sydney Harbour spying from Howell part of this antipodean world as Australia’s biggest city welcomed the New Year in spectacular style.
Come, children, gather round my knee;
Something is about to be.
Tonight’s December Thirty-First,
Something is about to burst.
The clock is crouching, dark and small,
Like a time bomb in the hall.
Hark! It’s midnight, children dear.
Duck! Here comes another year.
- Wishful Jozef Imrich after Sparkling Shiraz
As we head into our 13th year as your go-to media dragon patterns and trends, we want to thank you again for being such a bohemian community of eclectic readers ;-)
For James Patterson – 305 million books in print, 24-book contract – writer's block is never a problem. “I look at it the way Henry Ford would look at it” Best Selling Media Dragon
“Tomorrow is the first blank page of a 365-page book. Write a good one.”
-Brad Paisley
“I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You’re doing things you’ve never done before, and more importantly, you’re Doing Something. So that’s my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.”
-Neil Gaiman
No one ever wishes a friend a secure new year, or a merely tolerable one. New years are definitely not to be survived at best and endured at worst.
A new year should be embraced with a fresh (Hollywood like) optimism built from renewal and the lessons learnt from the year just passed.
In that sense we are confident 2015 will be a much happier year than 2014.
We hope that more people will feel inclined to see the sunny side of life, no matter the darkness of the times. A new year presents new opportunities ... Happy New Year 2015
Samuel Johnson knew why Shakespeare's plays were so popular. The guiding principle was clear: "Nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature."
Shakespeare is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirror of manners and of life. His characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply and observation will always find.
Mass-market paperbacks transformed the culture of reading, largely for the better. If no pulps, then no Philip Roth, Jozef Imrich and Erica Jong... Mass Marketing
“I have no way of knowing how people really feel, but the vast majority of those I meet couldn’t be nicer. Every once in a while someone barks at me. My New Year’s resolution is not to bark back.”
-Tucker Carlson
The Seventies, once known for its lack of significance, is now a source of mournful nostalgia of Tatranka, for a time when we lost what we had become... Czechoslovak Socialist Army of 1970s
“Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.”
-Helen Keller
“Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.”
-Benjamin Franklin
“Take a leap of faith and begin this wondrous new year by believing. Believe in yourself. And believe that there is a loving Source – a Sower of Dreams – just waiting to be asked to help you make your dreams come true.”
-Sarah Ban Breathnach
“Hope smiles from the threshold of the year to come, whispering, ‘It will be happier.’”
– Alfred Lord Tennyson