Books

Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren't. I'm not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people's lives, never our own.

-- Julian Barnes (19 January 1946-) British novelist and short story writer, Flaubert's Parrot, p 168

Worst Sin

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish literary critic, playwright and essayist, 1925 Nobel Laureate in Literature, The Devil's Disciple, Act II (1901)

Another Flaw

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.

-- Kurt Vonnegut, Hocus Pocus

A Moral

Everything's got a moral, if only you can find it.

-- Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), (1832 - 1898), British author, mathematician, Anglican clergyman, and logician, the Mock Turtle speaking to Alice, in Alice in Wonderland

Which Is This?

There are years that ask questions and years that answer.

-- Zora Neale Hurston (1891-01-07 - 1960-01-28), American folklorist and author, "Their Eyes Were Watching God" (1937)

Being Methodical

He may be mad, but there's method in his madness. There nearly always is method in madness. It's what drives men mad, being methodical.

-- G. K. Chesterton, The Fad of the Fisherman (1922)

The Artist's Business

It is the artist's business to create sunshine when the sun fails.

-- Romain Rolland (1866 - 1944), French writer, 1915 Nobel Laureate in Literature

Paid In Liberty

The price we pay for money is paid in liberty.

-- Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), novelist, essayist, and poet

Disturb The Peace

Most of us, no matter what we say, are walking in the dark, whistling in the dark. Nobody knows what is going to happen to him from one moment to the next, or how one will bear it. This is irreducible. And it's true of everybody. Now, it is true that the nature of society is to create, among its citizens, an illusion of safety; but it is also absolutely true that the safety is always necessarily an illusion. Artists are here to disturb the peace.

-- James Baldwin (1924 - 1987), African-American novelist, short story writer, playwright and essayist, "An interview with James Baldwin" (1961)

Freedom To Offend

What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist.

-- Salman Rushdie, writer (b. 1947)

Eloquence

Action is eloquence.

-- William Shakespeare (baptised 26 April 1564 - 23 April 1616), "Coriolanus", Act III, scene ii

Pains And Heartbreaks

You think your pains and heartbreaks are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who have ever been alive.

-- James Baldwin (1924-1987), African-American novelist, short story writer, playwright and essayist, The New York Times, 1 June 1964

By Speech First

By speech first, but far more by writing, man has been able to put something of himself beyond death. In tradition and in books an integral part of the individual persists, for it can influence the minds and actions of other people in different places and at different times: a row of black marks on a page can move a man to tears, though the bones of him that wrote it are long ago crumbled to dust. In truth, the whole progress of civilization is based upon this power.

-- Sir Julian Sorell Huxley FRS (22 June 1887 - 14 February 1975), English evolutionary biologist, author, humanist and internationalist

Journalism

Journalism is publishing what someone doesn't want us to know; the rest is propaganda.

-- Horacio Verbitsky (b. 1942), Argentinian investigative journalist and author

You Bastard!

Of course, I understand we're all different. But I can't work out where you're coming from. You probably have your reason for doing what you're doing, and in some parallel universe you might be right. I'm a very liberal person, accustomed to seeing other peoples' viewpoints, and that makes it all the more strange that I can't see yours. What sort of character are you? I just can't make any sense of what you're doing. I can't imagine what sort of story you think you're living out. Don't get me wrong, I realize you might just be very stupid -- but that stupid? As it happens, I'm one of the good guys. We defeat the bad guys; that's how we know we're the good guys. If that hurts, then so be it; you've brought it on yourself. You've forced me into seeing you in a way that I don't really approve of, and that makes me even more angry. You Bastard!

-- Professor David Sims, Cass Business School, London, UK, acceptance speech for the Ig Nobel for Literature, for his paper "You Bastard: A Narrative Exploration of the Experience of Indignation within Organizations"

Permanently Personal

Do give books -- religious or otherwise -- for Christmas. They're never fattening, seldom sinful, and permanently personal.

-- Lenore Hershey (1919-1997), editor and writer

Creative Art Is Magic

All creative art is magic, is evocation of the unseen in forms persuasive, enlightening, familiar and surprising, for the edification of mankind, pinned down by the conditions of its existence to the earnest consideration of the most insignificant tides of reality.

-- Joseph Conrad (1857-1924), Polish-born English novelist

Space Otherwise Reserved

If I extrapolate from myself, there's a lot of deceit in the world without a beginning, middle, or end. The way it really works, a lot of the time, is that you suffer from the weight of what happened, from what you said and did, so you lie as therapy. Now the story you make up starts to take up space otherwise reserved for reality. For phenomena you substitute epiphenomena. Skew becomes ascendant. The secondary becomes primary. When it's time to confess, you don't know what you're saying.

-- David Guterson (4 May 1956-), American novelist, short story writer, poet, in "The Other" (2008)

Words Strain

Words strain,
    Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
  Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
    Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.

-- T.S. Eliot, poet (1888-1965)

RIP Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

It is not the level of prosperity that makes for happiness but the kinship of heart to heart and the way we look at the world. Both attitudes are within the power, so that a man is happy so long as he chooses to be happy, and no one can stop him.

-- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (11 December 1918 - 3 August 2008), Russian novelist, dramatist and historian

Right Reasons

Some people are lonely for all the right reasons.

-- Meg Rosoff (1956-) American author, "How I Live Now"

Sane And Happy

Finally, I would like to assure my many Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, and Muslim friends that I am sincerely happy that the religion which Chance has given you has contributed to your peace of mind (and often, as Western medical science now reluctantly admits, to your physical well-being). Perhaps it is better to be un-sane and happy, than sane and un-happy. But it is the best of all to be sane and happy. Whether our descendants can achieve that goal will be the greatest challenge of the future. Indeed, it may well decide whether we have any future.

-- Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE (16 December 1917 - 19 March 2008), British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, "3001: The Final Odyssey" (1997)

I Write On Napkins

I write on napkins. One time, this seventeen-year-old waitress says to me, "Do you write on napkins because it doesn't count?" And bingo. That's exactly why I do it! When you're jotting on a napkin, you're not committing yourself. It's only a napkin, right? You can throw it away. You'd be surprised. It loosens you up. Some of the best stuff I've written has been done on napkins.

-- August Wilson (1945-2005), Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright