
"Theme from English B"
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)
"The Sadistic Muse" - an interview with Laura Miller at salon.com (10 February 1998) http://web.archive.org/web/20000110052318/http://www.salon.com/books/int/1998/02/cov_si_10int.html
Context: It's been said that happiness writes white. It doesn't show up on the page. When you're on holiday and writing a letter home to a friend, no one wants a letter that says the food is good and the weather is charming and the accommodations comfortable. You want to hear about lost passports and rat-filled shacks.
"Theme from English B"
Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951)
“My page was too white
My ink was too thin
The day wouldn't write
What the night pencilled in”
Source: Book of Longing
“I've been in pain hope it doesn't show
I've been insane well the time is slow”
Been Insane
Lyrics, Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt (1994)
“If your writing doesn't keep you up at night, it won't keep anyone else up either”
“Read. Read 1000 pages for every 1 page that you write.”
“History is not the soil of happiness. The periods of happiness are blank pages in it.”
Variant, as translated by H. B. Nisbet (1975): History is not the soil in which happiness grows. The periods of happiness in it are the blank pages of history.
Die Weltgeschichte ist nicht der Boden des Glücks. Die Perioden des Glücks sind leere Blätter in ihr.
General Introduction to the Philosophy of History
Lectures on the Philosophy of History (1832), Volume 1
“Tomorrow, is the first blank page of a 365 page book. Write a good one.”