How to transform your life (in the comfort of your bedroom): LitBash 29

If "writing transforms" then it follows that so does reading. Let these authors change your life:

Born this week:

Nathaniel Hawthorne, USA
"Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever."

Francesco Chiesa, Switzerland

Felix Timmermans, Belgium

Jean Cocteau, France
"I am a lie who always speaks the truth."

Ludwig Fulda, Germany

Lion Feuchtwanger, Germany
"Asking the author of historical novels to teach you about history is like expecting the composer of a melody to provide answers about radio transmission."

Jean de la Fontaine, France
"People must help one another; it is nature's law."

Gerard Walschlap, Belgium

Died this week:

Francoise Rene de Chateaubriand, France
"Take away the art of writing from this world, and you will probably take away its glory."

Georgette Heyer, UK
"I comfort myself with the reflection that your wife will possibly be able to curb your desire--I admit, a natural one for the most part--to exterminate your fellows."

Georges Bernanos, France
"Money-crimes have an abstract quality. History is laden with the victims of gold, but their remains are odourless."

Guy de Maupassant, France
"I entered literary life as a meteor, and I shall leave it like a thunderbolt."

Henri Meilhac, France

William Faulkner, USA
"Even a liar can be scared into telling the truth, same as an honest man can be tortured into telling a lie."

Giuseppe Dessi, Italy

Claude Simon, France
"To begin with, our perception of the world is deformed, incomplete. Then our memory is selective. Finally, writing transforms."

Arthur Conan Doyle, UK
"I should dearly love that the world should be ever so little better for my presence. Even on this small stage we have our two sides, and something might be done by throwing all one's weight on the scale of breadth, tolerance, charity, temperance, peace, and kindliness to man and beast. We can't all strike very big blows, and even the little ones count for something."

Louis Hemon, France

Karl Vaclav Rais, Czech

Osman Lins, Brasil