Explaining Quotes (page 36)
It is, as I say, easy enough to describe Holden's style of narration; but more difficult to explain how it holds our attention and gives us pleasure for the length of a whole novel. For, make no mistake, it's the style that makes the book interesting. The story it tells is episodic, inconclusive and largely made up of trivial events. Yet the language is, by normal literary criteria, very impoverished. Salinger, the invisible ventriloquist who speaks to us through Holden, must say everything...
David Lodge
I want to be liked... No, I want to be more than just liked... I want people to say, "that Charlie Brown is a great guy!" And when people are at parties, I want them to look for me, and when I finally arrive, I want them to say, "here comes good ol' Charlie Brown... Now everything will be all right!" I want to be a special person... I want to be needed... It's kind of hard to explain... Do you understand? I mean, do you know what I'm talking about?"Sure, I understand perfectly..."Well?"Forget...
Charles M. Schulz
The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work - that is correctly to describe phenomena from a reasonably wide area. Furthermore, it must satisfy certain esthetic criteria - that is, in relation to how much it...
John von Neumann
I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness-in a landscape selected at random-is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all that I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A...
Vladimir Nabokov