Which Quotes (page 36)
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He would have admired one of those fantastic visions, those magic apparitions one sometimes sees in the great theaters of Europe, in which the deafening melodies of an orchestra are made to appear among a deluge of light, a torrent of oriental diamonds and gold surrounded by a diaphanous mist, from which a deity, a sylph comes forward, her feet barely touching the floor encircled and accompanied by a luminous cloud. In her wake flowers shoot forth, a dance bursts out, harmonies awaken, and...
Jose Rizal
In general, one's memories of any period must necessarily weaken as one moves away from it. One is constantly learning new facts, and old ones have to drop out to make way for them. At twenty I could have written the history of my schooldays with an accuracy which would be quite impossible now. But it can also happen that one's memories grow sharper after a long lapse of time, because one is looking at the past with fresh eyes and can isolate and, as it were, notice facts which previously...
George Orwell
TV and popular film and most kinds of 'low' art-- which just means art whose primary aim is to make money-- is lucrative precisely because it recognizes that audiences prefer 100 percent pleasure to the reality that tends to be 49 percent pleasure and 51 percent pain. Whereas 'serious' art, which is not primarily about getting money out of you, is more apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually...
David Foster Wallace
In the dewy wood tinselled with bewildering moonlight, the bumbling, tumbling babies of the fairy creche trip over the hem of her dress, which is no more nor less than the margin of the wood itself; they stumble in the tangled grass as they play with the coneys, the quick brown fox-cubs, the russet fieldmice and the wee scraps of grey voles, blind velvet Mole and striped Brock with his questing snout - all the denizens of the woodland are her embroiderings, and the birds flutter round her...
Angela Carter
Go within and scale the depths of your being from which your very life springs forth. At its source you will find the answer to question whether you must write. Accept it, however it sounds to you, without analyzing. Perhaps it will become apparent to you that you are indeed called to be a writer. Then accept that fate; bear its burden, and its grandeur, without asking for the reward, which might possibly come from without.
Rainer Maria Rilke
What the best fiction does is make powerful affirmations of familiar truths...the trivial fiction which times filters out is that which either makes wrong affirmations or else makes affirmations in a squeaky little voice. Powerful affirmation comes from strong intellect and strong emotions supported by adequate technique.
John Gardner
He that hangs himself is a virgin: virginity murders itself, and should be buried in highways, out of all sanctified limit, as a desperate offendress against nature. Virginity breeds mites, much like a cheese, consumes itself to the very paring, and so dies with feeding his own stomach. Besides, virginity is peevish, proud, idle, made of self-love, which is the most inhibited sin in the canon. Keep it not; you cannot choose but lose by’t! Out with’t! within the year it will make itself two,...
William Shakespeare
He had never said as much before, and I must admit that his words gave me keen pleasure, for I had often been piqued by his indifference to my admiration and to the attempts which I had made to give publicity to his methods. I was proud, too, to think that I had so far mastered his system as to apply it in a way which earned his approval.
Arthur Conan Doyle
Unlike him I had been unable to escape into the simple complexities of science. All he had to do was solve the mystery of the universe, which may be difficult but is not as difficult as living an ordinary life...(How happy scientists are! Why didn't we become scientists, Percival? They confront problems which can be solved. We don't know what we confront. Does it have a name?)
Walker Percy