Caitlin Thomas
Caitlin Thomas
Caitlin Thomaswas the wife of the poet and writer Dylan Thomas. Their marriage was a stormy affair, fuelled by alcohol and infidelity, though the couple remained together until Dylan's death in 1953. After her husband's death she wrote the book Leftover Life to Kill, an account of her self-exile to Italy. She paints a picture of a grieving widow seeking solace in distance, a younger lover, and alcohol...
block winter long
money ... is only important when you have none; and though it may not be everything, it goes a very long way towards blocking up the winter draft of age.
eye insanity creation
Between threading a needle and raving insanity is the smallest eye in creation.
body journalism menace
[On journalists:] They are as disruptive a menace to the public body: as grating turds in the intestines are to the private body.
hurt skins may
[On journalists:] ... however lyingly libellous they may be: nobody can seriously hurt the reputation of a Great person. If he is hurt: he is not Great. They can but scratch at his skin with their mice nails.
pain book learning
none of what I know is out of books. ... I prefer tactual learning. Touching, on the quick of the sore nail, of present, mobile life. To toy, to gnaw, to tear: at the living element of pain. Like at a living drumstick.
eye reality hands
So it is useless to evade reality, because it only makes it more virulent in the end. But instead, look steadfastly into the slit, pin-pointed, malignant eyes of reality: as an old-hand trainer dominates his wild beasts. Take it by the scruff of the neck, and shake the evil intent out of it; till it rattles out harmlessly, like gall bladder stones, fossilized on the floor.
language stifling resignation
resignation, perhaps the most stifling word in the language.
bears ridicule
Love can bear anything better than ridicule.
people creative doe
There is a great gulf between the really creative person and normal people. The totally creative person does not have the rest of his life in proper proportion.
believe thinking limits
There is, happily, no limit to the faith of human nature in believing what it wants to believe.
eye reality hands
Fearful as reality is, it is less fearful than evasions of reality. Look steadfastly into the slit, pinpointed malignant eyes of reality as an old-hand trainer dominates his wild beasts.
opposites advice soul
But there is that about well-intentioned advice that has the opposite effect of the one intended, and causes a Spanish fly of perversity to enter into the hitherto passive soul.
strong drinking order
there is this malign curse laid on dipsomaniacs. That they must absolutely have a drink: in order to feel strong enough to stop drinking.
running creativity effort
Anyone who has attempted to create knows the hellishness of it, which consists in the final inescapability from it. Knows that anything, however deadly humdrum to drug the senses, is preferable to it. Knows the gigantic effort to get started on the boundless, unwieldy, shapeless material; the forest of hesitations; of what to keep and what to throw out; the running-out terror and reluctance in one of finishing.