“The queue and the fan are, of course, closely related in that fans wil...” — Howard Jacobson Quote

The queue and the fan are, of course, closely related in that fans will queue any length of time in any weather to see, touch, watch, hear, read, wear, or simply enjoy proximity to the object of their devotion.

For me a Writing Day was an occasion for self-reproach and panic, a time to lament the passing of the years, stare out of windows and remember that even those famous late starters Joseph Conrad and George Eliot had started by the age I was now.

Don't imagine that a word you say is going to make a blind bit of difference.

Once in a while, we need the hard Left to pipe up.

I have never met an intelligent optimist. That is not to say I think pessimism makes you intelligent, but I have always felt like an Old Testament Jeremiah or Cassandra from ancient Greece. I want to run down the streets warning people.

If you're passionate about the world, and if you really look closely at everything around you, each thing can be transformed into a shoe, or into a part of a shoe.

I think if you're too embroiled in the need to relate too closely to the character, then you start to judge the character for the audience rather than to present it to the audience for their enjoyment and them to mull over the questions that the characters present.

Sometimes one can be so closely involved with things that the larger context is lost to view.

I was a big sports fan, and I had been closely monitoring Hank Aaron's home run totals since I was a kid playing on the sandlot adjacent to the Foundry and Machine Company in Batavia, Illinois.