{"author":"Michael Dirda","author_id":"Michael+Dirda","total_quotes":23,"quotes":[{"text":"To my mind, 'Dear Brutus' stands halfway between Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' and Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's 'Into the Woods'. Like them, it is a play about enchantment and disillusion, dreams and reality.","author":"Michael Dirda","tags":["reality","mind","night "],"id":4082,"author_id":"Michael+Dirda"},{"text":"Back in the 1950s and '60s, J. M. Barrie's 'Peter Pan' - starring Mary Martin and Cyril Ritchard - was regularly aired on network television during the Christmas season. I must have seen it four or five times and remember, in particular, Ritchard's gloriously camp interpretation of Captain Hook.","author":"Michael Dirda","tags":["television","remember","season "],"id":6413,"author_id":"Michael+Dirda"},{"text":"Most lyric poetry is about love, whether yearned after, fulfilled, or wistfully regretted; what isn't tends to consist of laments and cris du coeur over this, that, and the other.","author":"Michael Dirda","tags":["love","over","fulfilled "],"id":44971,"author_id":"Michael+Dirda"},{"text":"Many readers simply can't stomach fantasy. They immediately picture elves with broadswords or mighty-thewed barbarians with battle axes, seeking the bejeweled Coronet of Obeisance ... (But) the best fantasies pull aside the velvet curtain of mere appearance. ... In most instances, fantasy ultimately returns us to our own now re-enchanted world, reminding us that it is neither prosaic nor meaningless, and that how we live and what we do truly matters.","author":"Michael Dirda","tags":["fairy-tales","fantasy"],"id":88029,"author_id":"Michael+Dirda"},{"text":"With any luck, Heaven itself will resemble a vast used bookstore, with a really good cafe in one corner, serving dark beer and kielbasa to keep up one's strength while browsing, and all around will be the kind of angels usually found in Victoria's Secret catalogs.","author":"Michael Dirda","tags":["good","luck","dark "],"id":88769,"author_id":"Michael+Dirda"},{"text":"Fiction is a house with many stately mansions, but also one in which it is wise, at least sometimes, to swing from the chandeliers.","author":"Michael Dirda","tags":["fiction","reading"],"id":108078,"author_id":"Michael+Dirda"},{"text":"I do think digital media encourages speed-reading, which can be fine if one is simply seeking information. But a serious novel or work of history or volume of poetry is an experience one should savor, take time over.","author":"Michael Dirda","tags":["work","time","history "],"id":111857,"author_id":"Michael+Dirda"},{"text":"'The Admirable Crichton' is probably Barrie's most famous work after 'Peter Pan', nearly a pendant to that classic.","author":"Michael Dirda","tags":["work","classic","admirable "],"id":129274,"author_id":"Michael+Dirda"},{"text":"Sad to say, multi-tasking is beyond me. I read one book at a time all the way through. If I'm reviewing the book, I have to write the review before I start reading any other book. I especially hate it when the phone rings and interrupts my train of thought.","author":"Michael Dirda","tags":["time","reading","hate "],"id":136321,"author_id":"Michael+Dirda"},{"text":"For me, the two weeks between Christmas and Twelfth Night have come to be reserved for desultory reading. The pressure of the holiday is over, the weather outside is frightful, there are lots of leftovers to munch on, vacation hours are being used up.","author":"Michael Dirda","tags":["vacation","reading","weather "],"id":154350,"author_id":"Michael+Dirda"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":23,"pages":3,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}