If you wish the profound, generous, encompassing things, New York is your natural center of gravity Walt Whitman insisted, and you’ll get no contrary argument from me. How often I’ve written of my love for New York as a stimulant for daily living and writing! The sounds and sights, to say nothing of the energies… Continue Reading
“She had no tolerance for scenes which were not of her own making.” ― Edith Wharton, The House of Mirth — I’m often asked how I get the core inspiration for my novels. There are many different ways authors feel that lightning strike, but they fall into similar categories. Some will tell you they sense… Continue Reading
“A historian must “reconstruct” history by using “historical imagination” to “re-enact” the thought processes of historical persons based on information and evidence from historical sources.” The Idea of History– R. G. Collingwood ******** If we’re referring only to the images in our brains from light hitting objects in front of us, then people from the… Continue Reading
“writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.”—Pico Iyer Most of you have heard my stories about readers challenging my sanity when I started the blog almost ten years ago. It was hard for people to understand why I’d put so much time and energy into writing not… Continue Reading
The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web. — Pablo Picasso “Emotions are not an affliction we must strive to keep in check”, writes Sy Montgomery in the NY Times,… Continue Reading
“Peace is liberty in tranquility.” —Marcus Tullius Cicero A marvelous montage of four very recognizable ladies graced an article in the NY Times on February 1, 2019. The title is, ‘70 and Female Is the New Cool’, and the pictures were of Nancy Pelosi, Glenn Close, Maxine Waters and Susan Zirinsky, all superstars from media,… Continue Reading