Quotes For Him (page 344)
Well, it’s no use your talking about waking him, said Tweedledum, when you’re only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you’re not real.
I am real! said Alice, and began to cry.
You won’t make yourself a bit realer by crying, Tweedledee remarked: there’s nothing to cry about.
If I wasn’t real, Alice said– half laughing through her tears, it all seemed so ridiculous– I shouldn’t be able to cry.
I hope you don’t think those are real tears? Tweedledee interrupted in a tone of...
Lewis Carroll
When people discuss his plays, he says that he feels like he's standing at customs watching an official ransack his luggage. He cheerfully declares responsibility for a play about two people, and suddenly the officer is finding all manner of exotic contraband like the nature of God and identity, and while he can't deny that they're there, he can't for the life of him remember putting them there. In the end, a play is not the product of an idea; an idea is the product of a play.
Tom Stoppard
He himself, on the other hand, with characteristic humility, avowed his belief that if Providence should see fit to remove him, it would be because of his own unworthiness to perform its humblest mission here on earth. With all this difference of opinion as to the cause of his decline, there could be no question of the fact. His form grew emaciated; his voice, though still rich and sweet, had a certain melancholy prophecy of decay in it; he was often observed, on any slight alarm or other...
Nathaniel Hawthorne
I meant to be uncommonly clever in taking so decided a dislike to him, without any reason. It is such a spur to one's genius, such an opening for wit to have a dislike of that kind. One may be continually abusive without saying any thing just; but one cannot be always laughing at a man without now and then stumbling on something witty.
Jane Austen
Teddy looked at him directly for the first time.
Are you a poet?' he asked.
A poet?' Nicholson said. 'Lord, no. Alas, no. Why do you ask?'
I don't know. Poets are always taking the weather so personally. They're always sticking their emotions in things that have no emotions.' "
- Teddy and Nicholson in "Teddy" (Nine Stories)
J. D. Salinger