Gerard Beirne

"There is a marvellous peace in not publishing...Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy. I like to write. I live to write. But I write just for myself and my own pleasure...I'm known as a strange, aloof kind of man. But all I'm doing is trying to protect myself and my work."

J. D. Salinger

YouTube video by ElvisPresleyVEVO Elvis Presley - Harbor Lights (Official Audio)

Elvis from his Sun days singing Harbour Lights - lyrics by Northern Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy (who grew up in Portstewart where he saw a few harbour lights for sure) with music by Hugh Williams (the pseudonym of exiled Austrian composer Will Grosz).

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xif6...

YouTube video by ChocolateJesus101 Tom Waits - Don't Go Into That Barn

#Halloween
Don't go into that barn, yeah
I said don't go into that barn, yeah
Black cellophane sky at midnight
A big blue moon with three gold rings
I called Champion to the window
I pointed up above the trees
That's when I heard my name in a scream
Coming from the woods
youtu.be/qRSBmalHDV0?...

Fargo 5. Yup.

“Your talk," I said, "is surely the handiwork of wisdom because not one word of it do I understand.”

― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

Hi, It’s Me, Wikipedia, and I Am Ready for Your Apology “Wikipedia, the constantly changing knowledge base created by a global free-for-all of anonymous users, now stands as the leading force for the dum...

Hi, It's Me, Wikipedia, and I Am Ready for Your Apology
"In 2004, you saw some college guy using me and thought, 'What a lazy cheater.'

Now you’d think, 'At least he’s not asking Gemini.'

In a few years, you’ll say, 'Wow, look, a human being who can read.'"

www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/hi-...

“Writing a novel is a terrible experience, during which the hair often falls out and the teeth decay. I’m always irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.”

Flannery O'Connor

“Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.”
― Raymond Chandler

Smiling to myself with a stray memory that just came back to me: I walked out into the hall about 25 years ago when my son was barely five, and he was staring up at the light switch on the wall.
- What's up?
- I was just thinking that the house must be wired in parallel not series.

“Throw up into your typewriter every morning. Clean up every noon.”
― Raymond Chandler

It's a great pleasure to welcome Anne Enright back to the shop this evening. She's in conversation with Clair Wills about ATTENTION, her new collection of essays, which is published on Thursday

Signed copies are available to order here: www.londonreviewbookshop.co.uk/stock/attent...

🤣

" Excuse me, can you tell me if an anti-bacterial air filter is essential in an integrated fridge-freezer unit?"

“If colons and semicolons give themselves airs and graces, at least they also confer airs and graces that the language would be lost without.”

Lynne Truss

Also: Team Themself.

As a copy editor I'm supposed to reflect and enhance usage rather than shove it down people's windpipes, but since I didn't coin "factito"—the great Michael Chabon did, as a means to avert the ongoing misuse of "factoid"—I can certainly endorse it, and use it, and do.

"I kept thinking that the imitators never knew and don’t know how miserable these men were. They think they were having marvelous times — joy, joy, joy — and they weren’t at all."

~ Carolyn Cassady, to novelist Gina Berriault in 1972 of the Beat Generation writers

Sharon Shannon and Alan O'Connor looking quite ethereal.

Legends.

Liam Ó'Maonlaí giving it (Copperhead Road) welly on the bodhrán.

Well, that's me recharged.

Waiting for Steve. And everyone else.

phew

"Voices ought not to be measured by how pretty they are. Instead they matter only if they convince you that they are telling the truth."

Sam Cooke

“Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.”
― Jack Kerouac

👏

The New Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary 12th Ed.

Technically, this is a book of spells.

Bertie Ahern says he's voting for Humphreys - but believes he could have won the election Speaking on Newstalk this morning, Ahern said Fine Gael’s candidate is his top choice as he and Jim Gavin are not in the race.

Charlie Haughey put his head around the door, pointed at Bertie Ahern and declared: "He's the man. He's the best, the most skilful, the most devious, and the most cunning of them all."
Bertie Ahern looked up, sighed and said quietly: "That's all I need."

www.thejournal.ie/bertie-ahern...

“Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.”
― Jack Kerouac