Category Archives: Thought For The Day

Michael Lewis: You are lucky and so there is a debt there

“This isn’t just false humility. It’s false humility with a point. My case illustrates how success is always rationalized. People really don’t like to hear success explained away as luck — especially successful people. As they age, and succeed, people … Continue reading

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The thing is not just about the thing

“If you think you’ve got writers’ block after 45 seconds of not writing, you don’t need an app, you need someone gently to tell you that you should consider the possibility that writing is not just about writing, it’s also … Continue reading

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Bill Murray on dying

“You’ve gotta go out there and improvise and you’ve gotta be completely unafraid to die. You’ve got to be able to take a chance to die. And you have to die lots. You have to die all the time. You’re goin’ out there with just a whisper of an idea.”

Half decent Bill Murray interview in Esquire; I’d say he’s earned the write to give the kind of advice you’d imagine Hemmingway would give. 

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Red lights and rushing

The people who can’t stop at red lights aren’t happy – they don’t have the psychological resources to be themselves, so they’re infected with this anxiety, this, “I’ve got to get going.” – Patrick Field, in Bella Bathurst’s The Bicycle … Continue reading

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We all romanticize our youth

INTERVIEWER What about Joseph Conrad? MITCHELL His story “Youth” has this beautiful passage about your first landfall in Asia and how it haunts you for the rest of your life—everything is downhill afterward. There’s something of that in the end … Continue reading

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Where you come from, where you go

I went to New York last week, mostly for work, but I had two free days at the end to explore the city. I took, as always, a Lonely Planet guidebook, but most of the time I built a list of … Continue reading

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The end of the 60s is now

Brian Eno, giving his prediction for 2009/the future in general, focusses not on a scientific, technological, political or economic breakthrough, but essentially, the end of optimism as being the default of the west. Unlike Bono’s blethering mass of words in … Continue reading

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Memoir in six words

The Guardian is running a competition asking for six word memoirs to promote a new book, called ‘One Life, Six Words, What’s Yours?‘. This is my entry and you can see a selection on their site.

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43 was a pillock, 44 looks like he’ll be a lot better

I was with an American friend last night, and even at 11pm she didn’t dare believe it was going to happen. It did though, it really did. Writers with a firmer grasp on the issues, the times and the rhetoric … Continue reading

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My Favourite Piece of Travel Writing

My favourite piece of travel writing is short and to the point, but it questions everything about ‘here’ and calls to mind perfectly the change of ‘there’ that is its lure. It is a description of people in an airport, … Continue reading

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