When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished. Czeslaw Milosz

In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot. Czesław Miłosz

The Curse

She deprived her child of food, one meal a day as a toddler. His growth was stunted. All because his father had been a fat boy. The mother soon kicked the father out and took all of her rage out on the boy. He was her experimental guinea pig. She deprived him of the alphabet and colorful books to read because she believed some quack about discouraging preschool literacy. Mother and son did not share meals at the table. She bought a case of canned soup and told him his meals were in the pantry. Help yourself, she scowled. I blame the mother for causing her son to shoot himself. She should be jailed but instead she hangs up his handprints on paper plates from nursery school all sentimental having never done such a gesture while he was alive.

What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want. Anything at all . . . as long as you tell the truth. What you know makes you unique . . . Be brave.”

 Stephen King

The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better.

 Stephen King

In the end, it’s about enriching the lives of those who will read your work, and enriching your own life, as well. It’s about getting up, getting well, and getting over. Getting happy, okay? Getting happy.

 Stephen King

Your job is to make sure the muse knows where you’re going to be every day from nine ‘til noon or seven ‘til three. If he does know, I assure you that sooner or later he’ll start showing up, chomping his cigar and making his magic.

Stephen King

DNA Evidence Leads to Cold Case Arrest

Rhode Island

History of Hortense

She insisted on stirring the rice counterclockwise by candle light when she visited. And when we went to see her I couldn't believe the outhouse was attached to her home. It stank up the whole place. I remember that it was August and she served us hot oatmeal. 

The tide has turned and like a lapsed Catholic everything became the opposite. Now she's all about convenience bad take-out Chinese food gloopy galore and a big TV stuffed with Netflix opposite a couch the size of her house. I don't read, she shouts if you tell her about a book.

She adds cream cheese and bacon to everything and gloms it up with shredded cheese. The worst of it is she thinks she knows everything and she will dive right into your conversations and offer her unfiltered opinion to maintain her illusion of superiority.

You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better. Anne Lamott

Rude and Ungrateful

Criticizing someone's home-cooked food without being asked is widely considered rude and ungrateful, as cooking is an act of time, care, and personal expression. Most agree that unsolicited critiques hurt feelings, while constructive feedback should only be offered gently if the cook specifically asks for your opinion.

Why People Do It 

Control and ego: Some people use criticism to feel superior or show off supposed culinary expertise.

Insecurity: Projecting personal anxieties about diet, health, or upbringing onto others.

Habitual negativity: General dissatisfaction that spills over into everyday interactions.

The Critic Should

Pause before speaking: Ask yourself if your comment is kind, necessary, or helpful.

Focus on gratitude: Remember that someone spent time and effort making a meal for you.

Practice neutrality: If you do not like a dish, simply eat what you can or say "thank you" quietly without giving a review.

Keep preferences to yourself: Save specific recipe changes or tweaks for your own kitchen.

The closer to street level you live, the more you have lessons thrust upon you.

 Robert Stone

Last night someone walking down the street got shot in our neighborhood. Luckily a passers by gave him a lift to the hospital. 

This morning I found three hypodermic needles in the shrubs at my garden stairs. I carefully disposed of them by dropping them in an empty plastic water bottle. Then I started trimming the shrubs to make my garden stairs more visible and less like a cave for hiding. 

I went swimming and when I came home I made salmon cakes for the first time and they came out great. 

Salmon Burger Inspiration or Cape Cod in a Can

 I was swimming and thinking of what I had in the cupboard. 1 can of salmon, eggs, panko and Adobo and a few other things. So when I came home I glanced at a recipe and then jumped into improvisation mode. I used  1 can of salmon, panko breadcrumbs, some leftover brown rice, Adobo seasoning, my homemade cilantro sauce, 1 large red onion minced, 4 eggs, a bloop of mayo, dashes of Worcestershire sauce, Dijon mustard, and I put a small sample in the microwave to taste test. Then I formed patties and fried them in olive oil. After I made all nine, I added 3 chopped green bell peppers and 2 large white onions to the leftover olive oil and sauteed them with Adobo, I added Chianti to deglaze the pan. These were delicious. I will make them again.

The only thing worth writing about is people. People. Human beings. Men and women whose individuality must be created, line by line, insight by insight. If you do not do it, the story is a failure. [...] There is no nobler chore in the universe than holding up the mirror of reality and turning it slightly, so we have a new and different perception of the commonplace, the everyday, the “normal,” the obvious. People are reflected in the glass. The fantasy situation into which you thrust them is the mirror itself. And what we are shown should illuminate and alter our perception of the world around us. Failing that, you have failed totally.

HARLAN ELLISON

 “Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you–as if you haven't been told a million times already–that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching. ” Harlan Ellison

“There are certain injustices in this life you’ve got to do something about. You can’t just say that you can’t fight it, or it’s too much trouble, or that you don’t have the time or the effort, or that you can’t win. Forget all that. Fight them all!” Harlan Ellison

The stars we are given. The constellations we make. That is to say, stars exist in the cosmos, but constellations are the imaginary lines we draw between them, the readings we give the sky, the stories we tell. Rebecca Solnit

Your Best Ideas Don’t Come When You’re Trying

Tapping Into the Other Mode of Thinking Where Creativity and Insight Lives. 

Dr. Judy Ho Aug 19, 2026 The Shower, the Walk, the 3am Moment  

https://drjudyho.substack.com/p/your-best-ideas-dont-come-when-youre

By writing, in other words, you are literally firing up your brain and therefore stirring up your conscious thoughts and something new emerges. You are not, or at least not always, transcribing something already present in your conscious thoughts.

 https://www.historians.org/perspectives-article/how-writing-leads-to-thinking-february-2010/