122 Quotes by Michael Dirda

Long ago, I realized that my only talent - aside from the rugged good looks, of course, and the strange power I hold over elderly women - can be reduced to a single word: doggedness.

With concerted effort, I can follow written instructions, but don't ask me to simply grasp how to operate a smartphone.

On any given day, I'm likely to be working at home, hunched over this keyboard, typing Great Thoughts and Beautiful Sentences - or so they seem at the time, like those beautifully flecked and iridescent stones one finds at the seashore that gradually dry into dull gray pebbles.

My wife tells me I should check out 'Downton Abbey', but I gather that series might be almost too intense for my temperate nature.

I long ago ran out of bookshelf space and so, like a museum with its art, simply rotate my books from the boxes to the shelves and back again.

A personal library is a reflection of who you are and who you want to be, of what you value and what you desire, of how much you know and how much more you'd like to know.

My own particular feline companion answers, or rather doesn't answer, to Cinnamon. One of my kids must have given her the name, even though she's mostly gray and white.

Carl Barks was born in Merrill, Oregon, in 1901, grew up in a farming family, and eventually held a number of blue-collar jobs. He knew what it was to be poor and to work hard for a living.

In truth, I'm not really a cat person. Seamus, the wonder dog, still deeply mourned by all who knew him, was just about the only pet I've ever really loved.