Today, I’m cheating. No desserts—my glucose levels told me to go to hell and I’m pretty sure that’s where I’ll end if I eat any more flourless chocolate cake. ut every now and then, while I’m hammering away at a novel (as I am right now), I do like me a good inspirational writing quote from some writer out there I admire. Today, on Vladimir Nabokov, Immanuel Kant, Vladimir Lenin, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Charles Mingus, Aaron Spelling, Jack Nicholson and my birthdays, that's what I'm posting.

In order to give yourself the best shot at getting a literary agent to represent your book, you need to be a student of the game. You need to make sure you know what your dream literary agent is hungry for, and you need to give them plenty of it. You should read everything their clients have published in the last two years, or at least the first one or two chapters. If your novel fits in with what you read, you may be on your way to ensuring you have the best chance you can have with that agent.

The hostile takeover of the Kennedy Center and the NEH and the vital grants it provides to artists is an attack on free speech.