Else Quotes (page 97)
Don't go far off, not even for a day, because I don't know how to say it - a day is longand I will be waiting for you, as inan empty station when the trains areparked off somewhere else, asleep. Don't leave me, even for an hour, because thenthe little drops of anguish will all run together, the smoke that roams looking for a home will driftinto me, choking my lost heart. Oh, may your silhouette never dissolveon the beach, may your eyelids never flutterinto the empty distance. Don't LEAVE me...
Pablo Neruda
The first thing the intellect does with an object is to class it along with something else. But any object that is infinitely important to us and awakens our devotion feels to us also as if it must be sui generis and unique. Probably a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus dispose of it. "I am no such thing," it would say; "I am MYSELF, MYSELF alone.
William James
As his wife, Emilia must know Iago better than anybody else. She does not know, any more than the others, that he is malevolent, but she does know that her husband is addicted to practical jokes. What Shakespeare gives us in Iago is a portrait of a practical joker of a peculiarly appalling kind, and perhaps the best way of approaching the play is by a general consideration of the Practical Joker.
W. H. Auden
As for the human case, the generation of men come and go and are in eternity no more than bacteria upon a luminous slide, and the fall of a republic or the rise of an empire—so significant to those involved—are not detectable upon the slide even were there an interested eye to behold that steadily proliferating species which would either end in time or, with luck, become something else, since change is the nature of life, and its hope.
Gore Vidal
..The fun of talk is to explore, but much of it and all that is irresponsible should not be written. Once written you have to stand by it. You may have said it to see whether you believed it or not. On the question you raised, the effects of wounds vary greatly. Simple wounds which do not break bone are of little account. They sometimes give confidence. Wounds which do extensive bone and nerve damage are not good for writers, nor anybody else."-Interview for the Paris Review, 1956
Ernest Hemingway
I had more positive views. Which made me feel that although I hadn't been taught to assimilate, a person perhaps assimilated without knowing it. I was doing it now. You did it alone, and not with other or for them. And assimilating possibly wasn't so hard and risky and didn't need to be permanent. This state of mind conferred another freedom on me and was like starting life over, or as I've already said, becoming someone else -- but someone who was not stalled but moving, which was the nature...
Richard Ford
What a pity to see a mind as great as Napoleon's devoted to trivial things such as empires, historic events, the thundering of cannons and of men; he believed in glory, in posterity, in Caesar; nations in turmoil and other trifles absorbed all his attention...How could he fail to see that what really mattered was something else entirely?
Paul Valery
At sixteen Sabina took moon baths, first of all because everyone else took sun baths, and second, she admitted, because she had been told it was dangerous. The effect of moon baths was unknown, but it was intimated that it might be the opposite of the sun’s effect. The first time she exposed herself she was frightened. What would the consequences be?
Anais Nin
But I'm afraid it can't be done."Certainly not; it can't be done," repeated the Humbug."Why not?" asked Milo."Why not indeed?" exclaimed the bug, who seemed equally at home on either side of an argument."Much too difficult," replied the king."Of course," emphasized the bug, "much too difficult."You could if you really wanted to," insisted Milo."By all means, if you really wanted to, you could," the Humbug agreed."How?" asked Azaz, glaring at the bug."How?" inquired Milo, looking the same...
Norton Juster