Michael Dwayne Smith

About Me

I am and am not a salt-filled pancake.

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it." --Pablo Picasso

"The first to apologize is the bravest; the first to forgive is the strongest; and the first to forget is the happiest." --Jacklyn Stewart

"I say, play your own way. Don’t play what the public wants. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you’re doing, even if it does take them fifteen, twenty years." --Thelonious Monk

"To say someone is a bad writer is a really stupid thing to say. There's no such thing as bad writing." --Dorothea Lasky

"Writing is like driving at night in fog. You only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." --E. L. Doctorow

"If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure." --Dan Quayle

"Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it." --Kurt Vonnegut

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." --Hunter S. Thompson

"I've never met a person I couldn't call a beauty." -- Andy Warhol

"Art is spirituality in drag." --Jennifer Yane

"Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face." --John Updike

"We're all just walking each other home." --Ram Dass

"I am a meat Popsicle." --from The Fifth Element

Why do you write?

Because I learned, like O'Hara did, why I'm not a painter.
(http://wings.buffalo.edu/english/faculty/conte/syllabi/377/Frank_O%27Hara.html)

Any favorite authors? Books?

Grief Suite - Bobbi Lurie ♣ The Real Politics of Lipstick - Mary Carroll-Hackett ♣ Venus Drive - Sam Lipsyte ♣ American Monsters - Sezin Koehler ♣ Why Did I Ever - Mary Robison ♣ Elephants in Our Bedroom - Michael Czyzniejewski ♣ Wouldn't You Like to Know - Pamela Painter ♣ America: A Prophecy - Sparrow ♣ You Never Die in Wholes - Kyle Hemmings ♣ Geek Love - Katherine Dunn ♣ Collected Poems - Frank O-Hara ♣ Damn Sure Right - Meg Pokrass ♣ Ask the Dust - John Fante ♣ Counting Myself Lucky - Edward Field ♣ Skin, Inc - Thomas Sayers Ellis ♣ The World Doesn't End - Charles Simic ♣ Black Tickets - Jayne Anne Phillips ♣ Aliens in the Prime of Their Lives - Brad Watson ♣ Airships - Barry Hannah ♣ Justine - Lawrence Durrell ♣ Selected Levis: Revised Edition - Larry Levis ♣ Big World - Mary Miller ♣ Collected Poems - Lynda Hull ♣ Refusing Heaven - Jack Gilbert ♣ Search Party - William Matthews ♣ The Rainbow Stories - William Vollmann ♣ Sleeping It Off in Rapid City - August Kleinzahler ♣ Break It Down - Lydia Davis ♣ To be continued ....