How long can you hold your breath? | LitBash 40

If "All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath" then you'd better learn to swim first. Then plunge with writers who were...

Born this week:

Mika Waltari, Finland
"Life is a hot day, perhaps death is a cool night. Life is a shallow bay, perhaps death is a clear, deep sea."

William Golding, UK
"The man who tells the tale if he has a tale worth telling will know exactly what he is about and this business of the artist as a sort of starry-eyed inspired creature, dancing along, with his feet two or three feet above the surface of the earth, not really knowing what sort of prints he's leaving behind him, is nothing like the truth."

Upton Sinclair, USA
"American capitalism is predatory, and American politics are corrupt"

Arturo Barea, Spain

Albert Ehrismann, Swiss

Hanns Cibulka, Germany

H. G. Wells, UK
"Nothing could have been more obvious to the people of the early twentieth century than the rapidity with which war was becoming impossible. And as certainly they did not see it."

Ivan Vazov, Bulgaria

Emmuska Orczy, Hungary / UK

Horace Walpole, UK
"Men are often capable of greater things than they perform. They are sent into the world with bills of credit, and seldom draw to their full extent."

Francis Scott Fitzgerald, USA
"All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath."

Ladislav Fuks, Czech

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."

Died this week:

Italo Calvino, Italy
"I set my hand to the art of writing early on. Publishing was easy for me, and I at once found favor and understanding. But it was a long time before I realized and convinced myself that this was anything but mere chance."

Walter Scott, Scotland
"Revenge is the sweetest morsel to the mouth, that ever was cooked in hell."

Pierre-Henri Simon, France

Prosper Merimee, France

Wilkie Collins, UK
"Men ruin themselves headlong for unworthy women."

Francoise Sagan, France
"Of course the illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but exactly the opposite is true."

Erich Maria Remarque, Germany
"Work does not take much of an artist’s time, on the contrary, it takes
the least time. The idea, however, and its long maturing period is
equally important. Creative work is divided into active and passive."