Roger Rosenblatt

I think there must be something wrong with me as a writer. Because all my friends who are writers find reasons to hate everything about their day. But I just love writing. I love starting the day with language and seeing if I can make something of it.

No writer besides Shakespeare has created more memorable characters attached to vices and virtues. In even their least sympathetic characters, one senses a kind of helplessness to passion quivering between the poles of good and evil.

Whatever brief delights it provides, mere strangeness in poetry and prose eventually leaves us cold, especially when we suspect the writer is stretching for effect to avoid the actual life before his eyes.

Embrace yourself and do what you can to look and feel your best. Don't put on so many fashion trends that create a ridiculous style statement. Pick and choose what feels good, and flatters your own body.

I start looking for adjectives in news reporting, and if there are too many of them, if they're all sort of repeatedly designed to influence my thinking in a certain way, I start getting concerned. I'm leery of people trying to paint a picture in a certain way.