Quote of the Day: Leo Tolstoy

We don’t know why—maybe it’s today’s gray weather in Los Angeles, maybe it’s because we just read Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch (which we enjoyed, at least until the last 70 pages or so, when it felt like Tartt re-litigated the book’s themes to little, if somewhat long-winded, effect)—but Russian literature had been on our minds. Which means that Tolstoy has been on our minds (even though we’re thinking of diving into Dostoevsky’s The Idiot for the first time since college), and we remembered this quote from War and Peace:

“Man cannot possess anything as long as he fears death. But to him who does not fear it, everything belongs. If there was no suffering, man would not know his limits, would not know himself. ”

Steven Mirkin

Steven Mirkin’s diverse career has taken him from politics to pop culture to high art, offering him a front row seat to some of the most fascinating events and personalities of our time: writing speeches, fundraising appeals and campaign materials for Ed Koch, John Heinz and independent presidential candidate John B. Anderson; chronicling the punk/new wave scenes in New York and London; interviewing musicians such as Elton John, John Lydon and Buck Owens; profiling modern masters Julian Schnabel, Paul Schrader and Jonathan Safran Foer; and writing for TV shows including 21, The Chamber, Let's Make A Deal, and Rock Star: INXS.