Vol. I, Ch. 1 : A Man of His Day, p. 8
New Grub Street : A Novel (1891)
Context: I am learning my business. Literature nowadays is a trade. Putting aside men of genius, who may succeed by mere cosmic force, your successful man of letters is your skilful tradesman. He thinks first and foremost of the markets; when one kind of goods begins to go off slackly, he is ready with something new and appetising. He knows perfectly all the possible sources of income. Whatever he has to sell he'll get payment for it from all sorts of various quarters; none of your unpractical selling for a lump sum to a middleman who will make six distinct profits.
Wilbur Ross (1937) 39th and current United States Secretary of Commerce
U.S. Commerce nominee Ross says NAFTA is Trump's first trade priority https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/r-us-commerce-nominee-ross-says-nafta-is-trumps-first-trade-priority-2017-1-1001675930 (January 18, 2017)
“Never pursue literature as a trade.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge book Biographia Literaria
Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XI
“The trade of critic, in literature, music, and the drama, is the most degraded of all trades.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Vol. II, p. 69
Mark Twain's Autobiography (1924)
Satoru Iwata (1959–2015) Japanese video game programmer and businessman
Source: 2005 GDC Keynote https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9HUMt2rrOI
“I am a woman and my business is to hold things together.
My business is to tear them apart.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night
Source: Tender Is the Night
Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist
Vickery (1998) "The Royal Society scientific information conference of 1948." Journal of Documentation, 54(3), p. 283; As cited in: Vanda Broughton (2011) " Brian Vickery and the Classification Research Group: the legacy of faceted classification http://www.iskouk.org/conf2011/papers/broughton.pdf".
“My business is not prognosis, but diagnosis. I am not engaged in therapeutics, but in pathology.”
H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer
1920s, Notes on Democracy (1926)
“I am free of the busy world
There is not a doubt in my heart or a worry to disturb my mind”
Han-shan Chinese monk and poet
Cold Mountain Transcendental Poetry
Context: Today I sat before the cliff
Until the mist and rainbows disappeared
I followed the emerald stream
Explored a thousand tiers of green cliffs
In the morning my spirit rests among white clouds
At night a bright moon floats in the sky
I am free of the busy world
There is not a doubt in my heart or a worry to disturb my mind
Samanta Schweblin (1978) Argentine writer
On her encouraging that Americans read literature beyond their country in “Samanta Schweblin on Revealing Darkness Through Fiction” https://lithub.com/samanta-schweblin-on-revealing-darkness-through-fiction/ in LitHub (2017 Jan 12)
