Atheism is a crutch for those who cannot bear the reality of God.— Tom Stoppard, born in 1937
Why It’s So Difficult To Pin Down Creativity
Like many people, public speaking once filled me with a sense of dread. As a writer I felt much more comfortable expressing myself on the page, rather than from centre stage.
Why showing stress can make people more likeable
Has Writing Been My Friend Or Foe? Writing from pain is not the only way to go, but I get it
7 Sites to Identify the Owner of a Phone Number
The 7 Best Psychology Blogs to Find the Latest Research
Kay Ryan says in her Paris Review interview:
“I’ve had a terrifically fortunate life. Which is not to say I’m talking nothing but sunshine. A certain kind of perhaps rather unwholesome-looking distortion or lopsidedness is necessary to the writer’s mind, but I never wanted to add to the grief of being human, the burden of it, or have my work do that. I never wanted to make things harder for people, or to make them feel more weighed down or guilty.”
Like her poems, Ryan’s remarks are bracing, ice water on a hot Houston afternoon. She doesn’t indulge bullshit, the seductively self-deceiving kind that compounds self-pity with petulance and calls itself honesty. Writers are lucky. We always have words to play with. So often I understand nothing until I write about it. The interviewer asks, “What can ‘trip’ your mind?” and Ryan answers: “People can do it, but honestly, it’s writing. The only real access that I have to my mind is when I’m writing.”
Read Something of Thrilling Quality'
There Are Uses for All Kinds of Books'
Culture Shock: Liberal exodus from Canberra into lobbyland as Labor staffers flood in
After 9 years of Coalition rule, a Liberal stampede out of Parliament House means political and social upheaval in the nation’s capital. Out with the old political culture, in with the new. Stephanie Tran reports on the wave of political change.
