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2021

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Jan 2021

6^th January

Thou shalt not be embarrassed about making exactly the same things from leftovers as you always do. Yes, your turkey curry is awful. It’s always been awful. But tradition is important and your awful turkey curry is one of them. Stop trying to re-invent the wheel.

Jay Rayner, My 10 Christmas food commandments, The Guardian, 14 Dec 2017

13^th January

This isn’t a proper novel. It is not Stendhal’s mirror being carried along the linear high road. We dropped that with a ghastly crash back in March. Instead, we offer you an improvised disco ball, with tiny squares of reflection, little glimpses into little lives, and scraps of light floating all around like snowflakes.

Catherine Fox, Tales from Lindford: DECEMBER: Long Night Moon Part II, 3 January 2021

20^th January

Had Nicholas been more familiar with rural life he would have known where, before such a social earthquake as he glimpsed, to look for the first crack. There was a meeting of the Women’s Institute that same afternoon. These meetings were at no time dull. There were too many subterranean goings-on. There was the perennial battle for leadership between Mrs. Crowner and Mrs. Pye, there was the perennial and slanderous battle between Mrs. Uffley and Mrs. Ada Thirkettle.... Every one enjoyed the meetings very much.

Margery Sharp, The Stone of Chastity (1940)

27^th January

There was some inherited twist in his mind which gave him vague discomfort if other people were enjoying themselves in their own way. To him the gods of unhappiness and ill-luck appeared to need frequent propitiation, and they could best be served by making oneself and everyone else unhappy now, in case they were in any event going to be unhappy later.

Angela Thirkell, Ankle Deep (1933)

Feb 2021

3^rd February

Could we, I wondered to my husband, have always been as serene as this? No, we decided; you can only come to it after the turbulence of earlier years. A sunlit haven is fine after a life on the high seas, but if you had never ventured, never set sail, you would just be rotting on the beach.

Katharine Whitehorn, Success, social life and serenity: Katharine Whitehorn's guide to happiness at every age (2003, reprinted 2021, hail and farewell)

10^th February

Q: You said you used to be too respectful to disagree with Tolstoy but after you got into your sixties your faculty of respect atrophied and you began to ask rude questions of Tolstoy. What were they?
LE GUIN: 'Why did you say ‘all happy families are alike’? You know, the famous beginning of Anna Karenina. What a ridiculous thing to say. Show me two happy families that are alike. Show me two happy families.... There are families that are happy from time to time, I grew up in one. But the idea of them being 'a happy family' or a family that is continuously happy? what are you talking about, Tolstoy? I think he got a good first sentence, it sounded good, he couldn’t let it go.

Ursula K. Le Guin, The Last Interview: and Other Conversations (2019)

17^th February

Allende says that for years she wanted to write a romance novel, but failed every time because she didn’t believe in the male characters she was writing.... When she does introduce a male character into her books with romantic intent, she says, 'I kill him somewhere around page 112, because I soon find I can’t stand the guy. If you wouldn’t want him in your life, why would you impose him on your protagonist?'

Isabel Allende: 'Everyone called me crazy for divorcing in my 70s. I’ve never been scared of being alone' The Guardian Saturday Review 13 Feb 2021

24^th February

Entertaining people -- inducing laughter or interest -- is really difficult. It takes effort and thought. Scaring them is comparatively easy and a much surer way of grabbing attention.

David Mitchell, We need to develop a vaccine against media scare tactics The Observer New Review 14 Feb 2021

Mar 2021

3^rd March

Rebecca sewed diligently for a minute, her eyes on the seam; then she said, ‘You’re not the sort of person who would ever mean to hurt any one. You would always want to shower gifts on people and be kind to them and pet them, but did you ever think how irritating unwanted kindness can be to the recipient? Did you ever think how much more grace it requires to be a receiver than a giver? From the first I could feel you saying to yourself, "Oh, the poor plain good little thing! I must be kind to her and try to brighten life for her a little."

O. Douglas (Anna Buchan), Pink Sugar (1924)

10^th March

Yet some things aren’t important, even things that happen every day. To very serious people this is one of the galling things about life. Daily existence is often trivial, silly and absurd. Indeed, I believe much pleasure and beauty is to be found in these aspects of life. To insist on endless struggle and endless heroism and endless meaning is to cut yourself off from a great deal of what is best in people and in the world.

James Marriott, Beyond Order by Jordan B Peterson review - stick to YouTube videos, Jordan, The Times, 2 Mar 2021

17^th March

Spiritually, gentrification is the removal of the dynamic mix that defines urbanity—the familiar interaction of different kinds of people creating ideas together. Urbanity is what makes cities great, because the daily affirmation that people from other experiences are real makes innovative solutions and experiments possible. In this way, cities historically have provided acceptance, opportunity, and a place to create ideas contributing to freedom.

Sarah Schulman, The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination (2012)

24^th March

The idea of the organic society, united by blood, faith, language, and culture, attractive as it may sound, actually tears societies apart, since some intolerable difference can always be found, some old wrong remembered.

Marilynne Robinson, 'A Proof, a Test, an Instruction', in What Are We Doing Here? Essays (2018)

31^st March

[It] is a perfect example of a certain kind of woman's writing that is so smart it seems as though it must have been as easy to compose as it is to read, so smart that it doesn't seem important compared to more difficult and experimental novels.

Jane Smiley, 'Rebecca West, The Fountain Overflows', in Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005)