Category: people

“She achieved her greatest renown for her decision in 1979 to record the nascent art form known as rapping, which had developed at clubs and dance parties in New York City in the 1970s. She was the mastermind behind the Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight,’ the first hip-hop single to become a commercial hit.”

The Brazilian novelist, who has 6.5 million likes on Facebook and 2.4 million Twitter followers, gives a six-point answer to the question, “How can a writer – relatively unknown in the USA – reach so many people?”

“I see too much of myself that I don’t like. But that doesn’t mean I’m negative. … I never approach a role in a relaxed, easy, happy way. It’s as if I’m always looking for shit, for what will make me feel bad.”

“The appointment of a former journalist as the director of the Palace of Versailles outside Paris has provoked a wave of criticism with charges of cronyism levelled at the new chief of the 17th-century château.”

“No doubt, Bierce’s writings were smarter and funnier than the stupid, distinctively silly cynic books of his time. He was a satirist of the first order. But Bierce was angered by these people because he saw himself as … a voice of authority and a harbinger of truth.”

“I’m slowing up with age, I have much more contempt than I used to. … Mother Nature is a pain in the ass. She never knows when to stop. … When was the world supposed to end last, two months ago or whatever? It was a lovely thought.”

Even Dickens’s first biographer, his longtime friend John Forster, “found himself emphasising how many different versions of [Dickens] there were. Seen through his eyes, ‘Dickens’ started to sound suspiciously like a group of friends who merely happened to share the same skin.”

She and her new husband exploited their double star-power, selling hundreds of thousands of albums of their duets, and dropping titbits to the press about how they liked to make love before a performance “to relax the voice”. But she bristles at the suggestion that the marriage was a career booster. “My career is not related to any man, thank God!”

“Ross Macdonald is a forger. And many of his most exquite forgeries – or, more precisely, replicas – are currently seen, if you look closely enough, on the new season of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire.”

“[He] created many of Baghdad’s most famous landmarks” – including the series of crossed-sword arches and a series of statues based on The 1,001 Nights – and “led the effort to recover works of art looted from the National Museum of Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein.”