Busy Quotes (page 64)
In overlooking, denying, evading this complexity--which is nothing more than the disquieting complexity of ourselves--we are diminished and we perish; only within this web of ambiguity, paradox, this hunger, danger, darkness, can we find at once ourselves and the power that will free us from ourselves. It is this power of revelation that is the business of the novelist, this journey toward a more vast reality which must take precedence over other claims.
James Baldwin
Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful because we're too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.
Steven Spielberg
Henry's universe was modeled on the highball. It was a mixture in which half a pint of the fizziest philosophical and scientific ideas all but drowned a small jigger of immediate experience, most of it strictly sexual. Broken reeds are seldom good mixers. They're far too busy with their ideas, their sensuality and their psychosomatic complaints to be able to take an interest in other people - even their own wives and children. They live in a state of the most profound voluntary ignorance, not...
Aldous Huxley
When you're touched by magic, nothing's ever quite the same again. What really makes me sad is all those people who never have the chance to know that touch. They're too busy, or they just don't hold with make-believe, so they shut the door without really knowing it was there to be opened in the first place.
Charles de Lint
And here now is a bit of doctrine that will make you laugh: Love, O Govinda, appears to me more important than all other matters. To see through the world, to explain it, to scorn it--this may be the business of great thinkers. But what interests me is being able to love the world, not to scorn it, not to hate it and hate myself, but to look at it and myself and all beings with love and admiration and reverence.
Herman Hesse
During dinner at the Dersinghams in "Angel Pavement"..."Do you ever watch rugger, Golspie?" Mr Dersingham demanded down the table."What, rugby? Haven't see a match for years," replied Mr Golspie. "Prefer the other kind when I do watch one."Major Trape raised his eyebrows, "What, you a soccah man? Not this professional stuff? Don't tell me you like that."What's the matter with it?"Oh, come now! I mean, you can't possibly --I mean it's a dirty business, selling fellahs for money and so on, very...
J. B. Priestley
Has the finger of death to be laid on the tumult of life from time to time lest it rend us asunder? Are we so made that we have to take death in small doses daily or we could not go on with the business of living? And then what strange powers are these that penetrate our most secret ways and change our most treasured possessions without our willing it? Had Orlando, worn out by the extremity of his suffering, died for a week, and then come to life again? And if so, of what nature is...
Virginia Woolf