Katherine Heiny

“The problem with being a writer is that you miss a lot in your life wondering if the things that happen to you are good enough to use in a story, and most of the time they’re not.”

-- Katherine Heiny, "Single, Carefree, Mellow"

Karl Marx

In this excerpt, which includes some advice from his father, when Karl was going to college, we get an idea of Karl’s vulnerable health and his relentless studies.

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Even in the full vigour of youth - before poverty, sleeplessness, bad diet, heavy drinking and constant smoking had taken their inevitable toll - he was a fragile specimen.

“Nine lecture courses seem to me rather a lot and I would not like you to do more than your body and mind can bear,” Heinrich Marx advised, soon after his seventeen-year-old son started at Bonn University in 1835. “In providing really vigorous and healthy nourishment for your mind, do not forget that in this miserable world it is always accompanied by the body, which determines the well-being of the whole machine. A sickly scholar is the most unfortunate being on earth. Therefore, do not study more than your health can bear.” Karl took no notice, then or ever: in later years he often toiled through the night, fuelled by cheap ale and foul cigars.

-- Francis Wheen, “Karl Marx: A Life”

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