Sorting Quotes (page 16)
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It is all very well, in these changing times, to adapt one's work to take in duties not traditionally within one's realm; but bantering is of another dimension altogether. For one thing, how would one know for sure that at any given moment a response of the bantering sort is truly what is expected? One need hardly dwell on the catastrophic possibility of uttering a bantering remark only to discover it wholly inappropriate.
Kazuo Ishiguro
There may be people who like centipedes... Personally, I would regard such an individual with deep suspicion. I have just petted my cat: "And how is this good little cat beast?" Now what sort of man or woman or monster would stroke a centipede on his underbelly? "And here is my good big centipede!" If such a man exists, I say kill him without more ado. He is a traitor to the human race.
William S. Burroughs
Now the best relation to our spiritual home is to be near enough to love it. But the next best is to be far enough away not to hate it. It is the contention of these pages that while the best judge of Christianity is a Christian, the next best judge would be something more like a Confucian. The worst judge of all is the man now most ready with his judgements; the ill-educated Christian turning gradually into the ill-tempered agnostic, entangled in the end of a feud ofwhich he never understood...
Gilbert K. Chesterton
You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst.
Italo Calvino
Superman stands alone. Superman did not become Superman, Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he is Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red S is the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him. Those are his clothes. What Kent wears, the glasses the business suit, that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us. Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark...
Quentin Tarantino
Jamie felt as though her heart would literally take flight from her crest. Damn her and her mouth. “Nick, I was sort of exaggerating about how nasty I was going to act of the plane. Why can’t we just leave Fleas with Max and get going?”
“She’s lying, Nick,” Max said. “You don’t do things her way and she turns into Satan’s daughter.
Janet Evanovich
Look man, we'd probably most of us agree that these are dark times, and stupid ones, but do we need fiction that does nothing but dramatize how dark and stupid it is? In dark times, the definition of good art would seem to be art that locates and applies CPR to those elements of what's human and magical that still live and glow despite the times' darkness. Really good fiction could have as dark a worldview as it wished, but it'd find a way both to depict this dark world AND to illuminate...
David Foster Wallace