And then, T.S. said to me...

October 23, a day for memorable quotations from writers.  On this date in 1804, William Blake wrote to William Hayley, "Dear Sir, excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or engraver into my hand." 

This date in 1950, T.S. Eliot, then 62, told Time magazine, "The years between 50 and 70 are the hardest.  You are always being asked to do things and yet are not decrepit enough to turn them down." 

And, this date in 1978, "The Stories of John Cheever" was published. Cheever said, "A collection of short stories is generally thought to be a horrendous clinker, an enforced courtesy for the elderly writer who wants to display the trophies of his youth, along with the trout flies."

A good day to read Blake or Eliot or Cheever, or all three.