Monthly Archives: December 2022

“A good book is the best of friends, the same today and forever.” How true this fortune cookie bite of wisdom is! And how wonderful it is to revisit old “friends” and enjoy their wisdom and beauty anew. It’s like … Continue reading →

Working hard becomes a habit, a serious kind of fun. You get self-satisfaction from pushing yourself to the limit, knowing that all the effort is going to pay off.”Mary Lou Retton, Olympic gymnast champion “We are what we repeatedly do. … Continue reading →

“In painting, as in composing or any art form, what you take out is as important as what you leave in.” Neil Simon From Neil Simon’s Rewrites: A Memoir: “By the end of the first week I had written eighteen … Continue reading →

Something about this poem made me think of warm summer nights and velvet moons: A Boy, A Lake, A Sun My little boy, the vast, still lake,And the big low sunKeep each other companyNow the day is done. The child … Continue reading →

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.”   Frederic Chopin As soon as I read this, I knew I … Continue reading →

William Zinsser, author of On Writing Well, proclaims, ‘Verbs are the most important of all your tools.’ Amen to that. Verbs give us the action, and well-chosen verbs give us the flavor of that action. Although we can’t banish weak verbs … Continue reading →