Worldly Quotes (page 506)
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you see how strangely history repeats itself. Here and now in Bosnia we are seeing images like those of the second world war. I remember that war very well. I was 16 when it began , and 20 when it ended . Then, too, there were Chentniks and Ustasha, and they are again. the difference is that these Chetniks are worse than the Chetniks of that time, these Ustasha worse than those Ustasha. I can say this with complete confidence , because Ustasha of that time didn't destroy the Old Bridge , nor...
Alija Izetbegovic
There are four evidences of divine mercy here below. The favors of God to beings capable of contemplation (these states exist and form part of their experience as creatures). The radiance of these beings, and their compassion, which is the divine compassion in them. The beauty of the world. The fourth evidence is the complete absence of mercy here below.
Simone Weil
It seemed to me that Q. was talking about the nature of the midnight disease, which started as a simple feeling of disconnection from other people, an inability to "fit in" by no means unique to writers, a sense of envy and of unbridgeable distance like that felt by someone tossing on a restless pillow in a world full of sleepers. Very quickly, though, what happened with the midnight disease was that you began actually to crave this feeling of apartness, to cultivate and even flourish within...
Michael Chabon
Way back when the Sam Peckinpah film The Wild Bunch premiered, a woman journalist raised her hand at the press conference and asked the following: “Why in the world do you have to show so much blood all over the place?” She was pretty worked up about it. One of the actors, Ernest Borgnine, looked a bit perplexed and fielded the question. “Lady, did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?” This film came out at the height of the Vietnam War.
I love that ...
Haruki Murakami
I speak and speak,” Marco says, “but the listener retains only the words he is expecting. The description of the world to which you lend a benevolent ear is one thing; the description that will go the rounds of the groups of stevedores and gondoliers on the street outside my house the day of my return is another; and yet another, that which I might dictate late in life, if I were taken prisoner by Genoese pirates and put in irons in the same cell with a writer of adventure stories. It is not...
Italo Calvino
Someone killed my Mother and my Father and my Sister?"Yes, someone did."A Man?"A Man."Which means," said Bod, "you're asking the wrong question."Silas raised an eyebrow. "How so?"Well," said Bod. "If I go outside in the world, the question isn't who will keep me safe from him?"No?"No. It's who will keep him safe from me?
Neil Gaiman
It is perhaps an ugly comment on the American press, but the function of the interviewer on most newspapers is to entertain, not to shed light. . . . An interviewer soon begins to judge public figures on the basis of their entertainment value, overlooking their true importance. It is not easy to get an interview with Professor Franz Boas, the greatest anthropologist in the world, across a city desk, but a mild interview with Oom the Omnipotent will hit the bottom of page one under a...
Joseph Mitchell
