Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If people will be censors, let them weigh their words. I mean that the words were unfair by that disproportionateness of the condemnation, which everybody with some conscience must feel to be one of the great difficulties in denouncing a particular person. Every unpleasant dog is only one of many, but we kick him because he comes in our way, and there is always some want of distributive justice in the kicking.
And in the general hardening of outlook that set in ... practices which had been long abandoned ... -- imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public executions, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages and the deportation of whole populations -- not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.
Several times in my life I've gone through long periods without sex or any other kind of physical contact. The hunger it produces is deep and low; it's possible to lose track of it, to forget or fail to perceive how it's emptied everything out of you and made the world papery and thin. Touch starved, you brush against existence like a stick against dry leaves. You become insubstantial yourself, a hungry ghost.
I suppose she chose me because she knew my name; as I read the alphabet a faint line appeared between her eyebrows, and after making me read most of My First Reader and the stock-market quotations from The Mobile Register aloud, she discovered that I was literate and looked at me with more than faint distaste. Miss Caroline told me to tell my father not to teach me any more, it would interfere with my reading.
I looked at him nonplussed. I realized that I have spent so many years being on a diet that the idea that you might actually need calories to survive has been completely wiped out of my consciousness. Have reached point where believe nutritional idea is to eat nothing at all, and that the only reason people eat is because they are so greedy they cannot stop themselves from breaking out and ruining their diets.
Fashion is the great governor of this world; it presides, not only in matters of dress and amusement, but in law, physic, politics, religion, and all other things of the gravest kind; indeed, the wisest of men would be puzzled to give any better reason why particular forms in all these have been at certain times universally received, and at others universally rejected, than that they were in or out of fashion.
Civilization does not engross all the virtues of humanity: she has not even her full share of them. They flourish in greater abundance and attain greater strength among many barbarous people. The hospitality of the wild Arab, the courage of the North American Indian, and the faithful friendships of some of the Polynesian nations, far surpass any thing of a similar kind among the polished communities of Europe.
This exchange marked the beginning of Mr. Malfoy's long campaign to have me removed from my post as headmaster of Hogwarts, and of mine to have him removed from his position as Lord Voldemort's Favorite Death Eater. My response prompted several further letters from Mr. Malfoy, but as they consisted mainly of opprobrious remarks on my sanity, parentage, and hygiene, their relevance to this commentary is remote.
Why was she always so craven, so apologetic? He had always seen Ruth as separate, good and untainted. As a child, his parents had appeared to him as starkly black and white, the one bad and frightening, the other good and kind. Yet as he had grown older, he kept coming up hard in his mind against Ruth's willing blindness, to her constant apologia for his father, to the unshakeable allegiance to her false idol.
He screamed for all he had lost...screamed for the half male he was...screamed for Jane...screamed for who his parents were and what he wished for his sister...screamed for what he had forced his best friend to do...He screamed, and screamed until there was no breath, no consciousness, no nothing. No past or present. Not even himself anymore. And in the midst of the chaos, in the strangest way, he became free.
I've always kind of thought that reviews written by readers for readers are a kind of private space between consumers. It's their right to say anything they like about your material, and authors need to know that and respect that. As for my end, I'm aware of what my sales are, so I know that my books are working in the marketplace, at least for now, and beyond that, I have to just do my thing and stay focused.
She felt detached from her family, and thought it strange how they had lavished so much attention on her, as a child, and then at some appointed, prearranged time they seemed to stop the flow of affection and being the expectations - as if, for a brief phrase, you were expected to absorb love (and get enough), and then, for a much longer and more serious phase, you were expected to fulfill certain obligations.
Ted Seabrooke, my wrestling coach, had a kind of Nietzschean effect on me in terms of not just his estimation of my limited abilities, but his decidedly philosophical stance about how to conduct your life, what you should do to compensate for your limitations. This was essential to me, both as a student - and not a good one - and as a wrestler who was not a natural athlete but who had found something he loved.
It's easier to set off a bomb that kills innocent civilians in a market than it is to plot an assassination, but that obviously was true before as well. I also think it's now easier to get attention for a small attack that goes off in a random market. It's almost like there's a marketplace for terror in the media, and these people are supplying the attacks, knowing that the media will cover them sensationally.
What he wanted was not just to hear about Hailsham, but to remember Hailsham, just like it had been his own childhood. He knew he was close to completing and so that's what he was doing: getting me to describe things to him, so they'd really sink in, so that maybe during those sleepless nights, with the drugs and the paint and the exhaustion, the line would blur between what were my memories and what were his.
The story, I like to say and remember, is always smarter than you—there will be patterns of theme, image, and idea that are much savvier and more complex than what you could come up with on your own. Find them with your marking pens as they emerge in your drafts. Become a student of your work in progress. Look for what your material is telling you about your material. Every aspect of a story has its own story.
A long time ago, in a town with which I used to be familiarly acquainted, there dwelt an elderly person of grim aspect, known by the name and title of Doctor Grimshawe, whose household consisted of a remarkably pretty and vivacious boy, and a perfect rosebud of a girl, two or three years younger than he, and an old maid of all work, of strangely mixed breed, crusty in temper and wonderfully sluttish in attire.
You grow a whole lot more as a writer by getting old stories out of the house and letting new ones come in and live with you until they grow up and are ready to go. Don't let the old ones stay there and grow fat and cranky and eat all the food out of the refrigerator. You have dozens of generations of stories inside you, but the only way to make room for the new ones is to write the old ones and mail them off.
I wish the whole day were like breakfast, when people are still connected to their dreams, focused inward, and not yet ready to engage with the world around them. I realized this is how I am all day; for me, unlike other people, there doesn't come a moment after a cup of coffee or a shower or whatever when I suddenly feel alive and awake and connected to the world. If it were always breakfast, I would be fine.
Perhaps that is our doom, our human curse, to never really know one another. We erect edifices in our minds about the flimsy framework of word and deed, mere totems of the true person, who, like the gods to whom the temples were built, remains hidden. We understand our own construct; we know our own theory; we love our own fabrication. Still . . . does the artifice of our affection make our love any less real?
...the more risks you allow children to take, the better they learn to take care of themselves. If you never let them take any risks, then I believe they become very prone to injury. Boys should be allowed to climb tall trees and walk along the tops of high walls and dive into the sea from high rocks... The same with girls. I like the type of child who takes risks. Better by far than the one who never does so.
You are the most dangerous kind of female the world can ever know. You carry the seeds for your own destruction and the destruction of everyone who loves you. And a great many will love you for your beautiful face for your seductive body; but you will fail them all because you will believe they all fail you first. You are an idealist of the worst kind - the romantic idealist. Born to destroy and self destruct.
I took her into bed with me and propped myself up with pillows against the headboard to let her nurse. As she nursed and the milk came, she began a little low contented sort of singing. I would feel milk and love flowing from me to her as once it had flowed to me. It emptied me. As the baby fed, I seemed slowly to grow empty of myself, as if in the presence of that long flow of love even grief could not stand.
I've gone to big stadium rock concerts at some artist's invitation, and there's this invariable, fascinating and rather sad situation of concentric circles of availability. There are Green Rooms within Green Rooms literally within Green Rooms. There are seven or eight degrees of exclusivity, and within each circle of exclusivity, everyone is so happy to be there, and they don't know that the next level exists.
We're all afraid of the same stuff. Mostly we're afraid that we're secretly not okay, that we're disgusting, or frauds, or about to be diagnosed with cancer. ... We want to teach you how to quiet the yammer ... how you can create comfort, inside and outside, how you can get warm, how you can feed yourself. And even learn to get through silence. ... There is a wilderness inside you, and a banquet. Both. [p. 253]
There is something which unites magic and applied science (technology) while separating them from the "wisdom" of earlier ages. For the wise men of old, the cardinal problem of human life was how to conform the soul to objective reality, and the solution was wisdom, self-discipline , and virtue. For the modern, the cardinal problem is how to conform reality to the wishes of man, and the solution is a technique.
I think that one of the things that has changed the perception is that there are so many more single people. In New York City, it's 47 percent. When you have that many people who are single, they have a bigger voice and they're more willing to speak and say, 'We're not miserable, we're not sitting at home waiting for Mr. or Ms. Right, we're having a good time.' And I think single people have better friendships.
We had come here to have a break from thoughts and the hard work that came with the constant interaction with idiots. Or at least people we considered idiots because they were not mind readers and we had to, patiently, use polite words to explain things that we were thinking when really inside we were fighting the urge to take their heads in our hands and softly and repeatedly thud their foreheads off the wall.
I do believe in this evolution of consciousness as the only thing which we can embark on, or in fact, willy-nilly, are embarked on; and along with that will go the spiritual discoveries and, I feel, the inexhaustible wonder that one feels, that opens more and more the more you know. It's simply that this increasing knowledge constantly enlarges your kingdom and the capacity for admiring and loving the universe.
My mood has changed now. And the sun has gone behind the clouds. I'm in this mood I feel occasionally... this mood where there's a very good friend nearby who I should be phoning. If only I could reach that friend and talk, then everything would be just fine. The dilemma is, of course, I just don't know who that friend is. But in my heart I know my mood is merely me feeling disconnected from my true inner self.
On the other hand, Surrealism has been a part of Romanian literature since forever. Even before Tzara, who was originally Romanian, we had Urmuz, who was a surrealist before the term even existed. During Breton's era too, there was a very active Romanian Surrealist group (Ghérasim Luca, Gellu Naum, etc.) closely related to the French. They had to quit their activities as soon as the Soviet communists took over.
Faith, to my mind, is a stiffening process, a sort of mental starch, which ought to be applied as sparingly as possible. I dislike the stuff. I do not believe in it, for its own sake, at all... My lawgivers are Erasmus and Montaigne, not Moses and St Paul. My temple stands not upon Mount Moriah but in the Elysian Field where even the immoral are admitted. My motto is 'Lord, I disbelieve - help thou my unbelief.
Art itself is essentially ethical; because every true work of art must have a beauty or grandeur of some kind, and beauty and grandeur cannot be comprehended by the beholder except through the moral sentiment. The eye is only a witness; it is not a judge. The mind judges what the eye reports to it; therefore, whatever elevates the moral sentiment to the contemplation of beauty and grandeur is in itself ethical.
The mutability of the past is the central tenet of Ingsoc. Past events, it is argued, have no objective existance, but survive only in written records and in human memories. The past is whatever the records and the memories agree upon. And since the Party is in full control of all records, and in equally full control of the minds of its members, it follows that the past is whatever the Party chooses to make it.
...the act of eating,which hath by several wise men been considered as extremely mean and derogatory from the philosophic dignity, must be in some measure performed by the greatest prince, hero, or philosopher upon earth; nay, sometimes Nature hath been so frolicsome as to exact of these dignified characters a much more exorbitant share of this office than she hath obliged those of the lowest orders to perform.
To be a man, to have been born without knowing it or wanting it, to be thrown into the ocean of existence, to be obliged to swim, to exist; to have an identity; to resist the pressure and shocks from the outside and the unforeseen and unforeseeable acts - one's own and those of others - which so often exceed one's capacities? And what is more, to endure one's own thoughts about all this: in a word, to be human.
The realization of what would happen next settled gradually over Harry in the long minutes, like softly falling snow. "I've got to go back, haven't I?" "That is up to you." "I've got a choice?" "Oh yes." Dumbledore smiled at him. "We are in King's Cross, you say? I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to…let's say…board a train." "And where would it take me?" "On," said Dumbledore simply.
He's a funny man, Dumbledore. I think he sort of wanted to give me a chance. I think he knows more or less everything that goes on here, you know. I reckon he had a pretty good idea we were going to try, and instead of stopping us, he just taught us enough to help. I don't think it was an accident he let me find out how the Mirror worked. It's almost like he thought I had the right to face Voldemort if I could.
A reader's tastes are peculiar. Choosing books to read is like making your way down a remote and winding path. Your stops on that path are always idiosyncratic. One book leads to another and another the way one thought leads to another and another. My type of reader is the sort who burrows through the stacks in the bookstore or the library (or the Web site — stacks are stacks), yielding to impulse and instinct.
So many of my memories are generated by and organized around food: what I ate, what people cooked, what I cooked, what I ordered in a restaurant. My mental palate is also inextricably intertwined with the verbal part of my brain. Food, words, memories all twist together, so it was the obvious way to structure my life. Each memory of food opened up an entire scene for me, it was the key that unlocked everything.
Within a social structure, a familial structure, or a cultural structure of various kinds, there is a substitute for actual freedom. I mean, actual freedom is a very abstract notion; we have no idea what it means, except within a context - freedom to do what? So within these social structures, freedom becomes defined as power, your ability to make choices, and the power relationship within a family, any family.
I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever.
The widow’s eyebrows raised. “Ye’ve got all these nasty pooches to run around with and ye still might die?” “I’m going to go fight with a god, some demons, and a coven of witches who all want to kill me,” I said, “so it’s a distinct possibility.” “Are y’goin’ t’kill ’em back?” “I’d certainly like to.” “Attaboy,” the widow chuckled. “Off y’go, then. Kill every last one o’ the bastards and call me in the mornin’.
Why do you think great leaders and great orations are coincident with wars, revolutions, and the founding or ending of governments and states? Common interests then are so clear that speeches are effortlessly drawn, but at present neither the facts nor the consequences are sufficiently clear to make oratory legitimate. This is the kind of war that will wind on and make fools of its partisans and opponents both.
The desert could not be claimed or owned — it was a piece of cloth carried by winds, never held down by stones, and given a hundred shifting names before Canterbury existed, long before battles and treaties quilted Europe and the East ... All of us, even those with European homes and children in the distance, wished to remove the clothing of our countries. It was a place of faith. We disappeared into landscape.
Fortunately for me, I ran across some girls I could get along with so I could enjoy high school life okay, but it must be awful for kids who don't get along with anybody. We're different from our parents, a completely different species from our teachers. And kids who are one grade apart you are in a different world altogether. In other words, we're basically surrounded by enemies and have to make it on our own.
That night Demosthenes published a scathing denunciation of the population limitation laws. People should be allowed to have as many children as they like, and the surplus population should be sent to other worlds, to spread mankind so far across the galaxy that no disaster, no invasion could ever threaten the human race with annihilation. "The most noble title any child can have," Demosthenes wrote, "is Third.
Most people are chained to their own fear and stupidity and haven’t the sense to level a cold eye at just what is wrong with their lives. Most people will continue on, dissatisfied but never attempting to understand why, or how they might change things for the better, and they die with nothing in their hearts but dirt and old, thin blood - weak blood, diluted - and their memories aren’t worth a goddamned thing.
[As a screenwriter] I have a sense of exile from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and balanced mind. I am a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn't have to be great writing, it doesn't even have to be terribly good. It just has to be mine.
Among all the modernized aspects of the most luxurious of industries, the model, a vestige of voluptuous barbarianism, is like some plunder-laden prey. She is the object of unbridled regard, a living bait, the passive realization of an ideal. No other female occupation contains such potent impulses to moral disintegration as this one, applying as it does the outward signs of riches to a poor and beautiful girl.