Quote from Books

for readers

2009-10-13T00:22:00.000-07:00

"From reading too much,
and sleeping too little,
his brain dried up on him
and he lost his judgment.

- Miguel de Cervantes - Don Quixote

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There’s more to life than books you know – but not much more.
—Morrissey

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

—Logan Pearsall Smith

Found these two at fivedials.com

2009-09-05T21:00:00.000-07:00

“The powerful always seek to limit freedom by talking of the misuse of freedom, but freedom cannot be called freedom unless one has the right to misuse it... More than evil itself, I have learnt to fear the menace of good that comes in the form of improving others...” (Rabindranath Tagore from Jibansmriti, Rabindra Rachnabali)

quote Camus

2009-07-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

Camus in the preface to the American University edition of The Stranger:

I summarized The Stranger a long time ago, with a remark that I admit was highly paradoxical:

“In our society any man who does not weep at his mother’s funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.” I only meant that the hero of my book is condemned because he does not play the game. In this respect, he is foreign to the society in which he lives; he wanders, on the fringe, in the suburbs of private, solitary, sensual life. And this is why some readers have been tempted to look upon him as a piece of social wreckage. A much more accurate idea of the character, or, at least, one much closer to the author’s intentions, will emerge if one asks just how Meursault doesn’t play the game. The reply is a simple one: he refuses to lie…He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings, and immediately society feels threatened…One would therefore not be much mistaken to read The Stranger as the story of a man who, without any heroics, agrees to die for the truth…."

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“Europe has lived on its contradictions, flourished on its differences, and, constantly transcending itself thereby, has created a civilization on which the whole world depends even when rejecting it. This is why I do not believe in a Europe unified under the weight of an ideology or of a technocracy that overlooked these differences.”

– Albert Camus

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Albert Camus on the book 'The Trial' by Kafka:

We are taken to the limits of human thought. Indeed, everything in this work is, in the true sense, essential. It states the problem of the absurd in its entirety.

2009-07-06T06:15:00.000-07:00

“But I refuse to be the dupe of a kind of magic which is still more feeble than their own, and which brandishes before an eager public albums of coloured photographs, instead of the now vanished masks. Perhaps the public imagines that the charms of the savages can be appropriated through the medium of these photographs. Not content with eliminating savage life, and unaware of having done so, it feels the need feverishly to appease the nostalgic cannibalism of history with the shadows of those that history has already destroyed”

- Claude Lévi-Strauss, A World on the Wane (p.41)

Quotes on Proverbs

2009-05-21T21:55:00.000-07:00

"The genius, wit and spirit of a nation are discovered in its proverbs." - Francis Bacon.

"Proverbs embody the current and practical philosophy of an age or nation." - William Fleming.

"Proverbs teach the real people's speech, and open up the hitherto sealed book of the native mind" - John Beames.

found it in preface of 'A Dictionary of Kashmiri Proverbs and Sayings' by James Hinton Knowles (1885).

Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever

2009-01-19T05:13:00.000-08:00

‘...the technical structure of the archiving archive also determines the structure of the
archivable content even in its very coming into existence and in its relationship to the
future. The archivization produces as much as it records the event.’
- Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever p.17

2009-01-03T08:29:00.000-08:00

To make a start more swift than weighty, Hail Muse.

- The Golden Gate, Vikram Seth

Youth is a country.

- The Brainfever Bird, I. Allan Sealy

I was on the whole very pleased with my day – not many conflicts and worries, above all not too much self-criticism.

- The English Teacher, R.K. Narayan

some Great first few lines

2009-01-03T08:03:00.000-08:00

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

- One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

May I, Monsieur, offer my services without running the risk of intruding?

- The Fall, Albert Camus

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

- A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.

- The Go-Between, L.P. Hartley

The best thing would be to write down everything that happens from day to day.

- Nausea, Jean-Paul Sartre

Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear.

- The Plot Against America, Philip Roth

If I am out of my mind, it’s all right with me, thought Moses Herzog.

- Herzog, Saul Bellow

I am a sick man… I am an angry man.

- Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I was the shadow of the waxwing slain

By the false azure in the windowpane

- Pale Fire, Vladimir Nabokov

The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.

- A Bend in the River, V.S. Naipaul

Every account of the origins of the state starts from the premise that “we” – not we the readers but some generic we so wide as to exclude no one – participate in its coming into being.

- Diary of a Bad Year, J.M. Coetzee

A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.

- The End of the Affair, Graham Greene

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

- 1984, George Orwell

The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.

- Murphy, Samuel Beckett

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

- Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.

- The Trial, Franz Kafka

This is a true story, but I can’t believe it’s really happening.

- London Fields, Martin Amis

I don’t believe in God, but I miss him.

- Nothing to be Frightened of, Julian Barnes

The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything recurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum!

- The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

Enough.

- last line of Rabbit at Rest, John Updike

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You can find 100 such lines here

first page of Grimus

2008-11-04T04:02:00.000-08:00

Go, go, go, said the bird; human kind
Cannot bear very much reality

(T.S. Eliot)

Come, you lost atoms, to your Centre Draw,
And be the Eternal Mirror that you saw;
Rays that have wandered into darkness wide,
Return, and back into your sun subside.

(FARID-U-Din' ATTAR,
The Conference of Birds, trans. Fitzgerald)

Crow straggled, limply bedraggled his remnant.
He was his own leftover, the spat-out Scrag
He was what his brain could make nothing of.

(TED HUGHES,
Crow's Playmates)

The sands of Time are steeped in new Beginnings.

(IGNATIUS Q. GRIBB,
The All-Purpose Quotable Philosophy)

- First page of Grimus by Salman Rushdie.

victim, James Baldwin

2008-11-04T03:58:00.000-08:00

"The victim who is able to articulate the situation of a victim has ceased to be a victim, he or she has become a threat!"

- James Baldwin (August 2, 1924–November 30, 1987). He was an American novelist, writer, playwright, poet, essayist, and civil rights activist.

O, the conflicting selves jostling and joggling

2008-10-30T23:23:00.000-07:00

"O, the conflicting selves jostling and joggling within these bags of skin. No wonder we are unable to remain focused on anything for very long; no wonder we invent remote-control channel-hopping devices. If we turned these instruments upon ourselves we'd discover more channels than a cable or satellite mogul ever dreamed of [...]"

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

Minnami, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan

2008-10-30T02:54:00.000-07:00

"Minnami, Gut mag alkan, Pern dirstan"

"My darling, God makes hungry, the Devil thirsty."
- Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

Salman Rushdie quotes it in The Satanic Verses.

a letter from Henry James Sr. to his two sons

2008-10-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

"Every man who has reached even his intellectual teens begins to suspect that life is no farce; that it is not genteel comedy even; that it flowers and fructifies on the contrary out of the profoundest tragic depths of the essential dearth in which its subject's roots are plunged. The natural inheritance of everyone who is capable of spiritual life is an unsubdued forest where the wolf howls and the obscene bird of night chatters."

Salman Rushdie quoting Henry James Sr. in his book The Satanic Verses, Chapter VII The Angel Azraeel.
According to Paul Brains's notes for The Satanic Verses:
The passage here quoted comes in fact from Henry James, Sr.’s book, Substance and Shadow (1866), p. 75. It is quoted in William James’ introduction to his father’s writings, collected in the volume entitled The Literary Remains of the Late Henry James (1884) but is not presented by him as a letter. The passage
is most readily available in Matthiessen (156). David Windsor points out that Rushdie evidently encountered the passage as the epigraph to José Donoso’s novel, The Obscene Bird of Night where the quotation is (mis-) attributed thus: “Henry James Sr., writing to his sons Henry and William.”

Was That An Insult?

2008-09-27T06:38:00.000-07:00

The only gracious way to accept an insult is to ignore it;
if you can’t ignore it, top it; if you can’t top it;
if you can’t top it, laugh at it;
if you can’t laugh at it, it’s probably deserved

- J Russel Lynes

Either he’s dead or my watch has stopped.

- Groucho Marx

I regard you with an indifference bordering on aversion.

- Robert L Stevenson

He looked as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.

- Raymond Chandler

He’s liked, but he’s not well liked.

- Arthur Miller

I could never learn to like her, except on a raft at sea with no other provisions

- Mark Twain

Fine words! I wonder where you stole them.

- Jonathan Swift

He would stab his best friend to write an epigram on his tombstone.

- Oscar Wilde

He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire

- Winston Churchill

He had a big head and a face so ugly it became almost fascinating.

- Ayn Rand

He had a winning smile, everything else was a loser.

- George C Scott

The tautness of is face sours ripe grapes.

- William Shakespeare

He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.

- George Bernard Shaw

He was distinguished for ignorance; for he had only one idea and that was wrong.

- Benjamin Disraeli

The Tao of Physics, India, LHC

2008-09-10T04:34:00.000-07:00

"Modern physics had shown that the rhythm of creation and destruction is not only manifest in the turn of the seasons and in the birth and death of living creatures, but is also the very essence of inorganic matter. For modern physicists...Shiva's dance is the dance of subatomic matter."

- Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics.

To celebrate India's connection to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Experiment, India's Department of Atomic Energy gifted a two-metre bronze statue of Nataraja (Dancing Shiva ) to CERN on June 18, 2004 with a plaque that had the above lines of Fritjof Capra engraved on it.

quote Horror

2008-09-08T09:27:00.000-07:00

"Sometimes we all go mad"
- Norman Bates

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"What was the worst thing you've ever done?"
"I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me...the most dreadful thing..."

- Ghost Story

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"You may go wherever you wish in the castle except where the doors are locked, where of course, you will not wish to go."

- Count Dracula to Jonathan Harker

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"Truly effective horror cuts you in half, to use a nice dismemberment metaphor, and then pulls you apart. Ambivalence is at the heart of horror - things that are gruesome can also be strangely compelling. half of you wants to look, or to know, and the other half doesn't. One response is about pleasure and the other about pain, and it is the business of horror to put the two in touch with each other."

- Clive Barker, A-Z of Horror

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"Horror is not a genre, like the mystery or science fiction or the wester. It is not a kind of fiction...Horror is an emotion"

- Douglas Winter in his introduction to Prime Evil

opening paragraph of The Haunting of Hill House

2008-09-08T08:39:00.000-07:00

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream. Hill house, not sane, stood by itself against its hills, holding darkness within; it had stood so for 80 years and might for 80 more. Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."

- The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

The paragraph is believed to the the single greatest opening paragraph in horror fiction.

Quotes by Mark Twain

2008-09-01T05:15:00.000-07:00

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

There are many excuses for our sins, but the most popular is providence.

I never let my schooling interfere with my education.

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.

Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.

Training is everything. the peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but a cabbage with a college education.

James Ahmed, Guerrillas, Naipaul

2008-09-01T01:22:00.000-07:00

“When everybody wants to fight
there’s nothing to fight for.
Everybody wants to fight his own little war,
Everybody is a guerrilla.”

- James Ahmed, the protagonist of V.S. Naipaul's Novel, Guerrillas

Orwellian Quotes

2008-09-01T00:54:00.000-07:00

According to George Orwell:

All people are equal but some people are more equal than others.

The best way to end a war is to lose it.

Political language - and this is true with variations of all political parties - is designed to make lies sound truthful, murder respectable and to give an appearance of solidarity to pure wind.

As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for socialism is its adherents.

Poverty frees eccentrics from ordinary standards of behavior, just as money frees people from work.

2008-08-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

History is the most dangerous product evolved from the chemistry of the intellect. Its properties are well known. It causes dreams; it intoxicates whole people; gives them false memories; quickens their reflexes; keeps their old wounds open; torments them in their repose; leads them into delusions, either of grandeur or persecution; and makes nations bitter, arrogant, insufferable and vain.

- Paul Valery; History and Politics

2008-08-01T07:58:00.000-07:00

The Master and Margarita,

Mikhail Bulgakov

'For instance, do you see this chunk of land, washed on one side by the
ocean? Look, it's filling with fire. A war has started there. If you look
closer, you'll see the details.'
Margarita leaned towards the globe and saw the little square of land
spread out, get painted in many colours, and turn as it were into a relief
map. And then she saw the little ribbon of a river, and some village near
it. A little house the size of a pea grew and became the size of a matchbox.
Suddenly and noiselessly the roof of this house flew up along with a cloud
of black smoke, and the walls collapsed, so that nothing was left of the
little two-storey box except a small heap with black smoke pouring from it.
Bringing her eye stffl closer, Margarita made out a small female figure
lying on the ground, and next to her, in a pool of blood, a little child
with outstretched arms.
That's it,' Woland said, smiling, 'he had no time to sin. Abaddon's
work is impeccable.'

2008-08-01T07:45:00.000-07:00

In 1980, when Milan Kundera heard that his novel 'The Joke' was being described as a “major indictment of Stalinism” he quickly contradicted this saying

“Spare me your Stalinism. The Joke is a love story.”

2008-05-27T08:14:00.000-07:00

[…] I do not know why, but I have never seen a machine that, however perfect in the philosophers' description, is perfect in its mechanical functioning. Whereas a peasant’s billhook, which no philosopher has ever described, always functions as it should […]

- William of Baskerville in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose

2008-04-22T03:37:00.000-07:00

It took me years to draw close to the Jew within me. I had to get rid of many prejudices within me and to meet many Jews in order to find myself in them. Anti-Semitism directed at oneself was an original Jewish creation. I don’t know of any other nation so flooded with self-criticism. Even after the Holocaust, Jews did not seem blameless in their own eyes. On the contrary, harsh comments were made by prominent Jews against victims, for not protecting themselves and fighting back. The ability of Jews to internalize any critical and condemnatory remark and castigate themselves is one of the marvels of human nature.
The feeling of guilt has settled and taken refuge among all the Jews who want to reform the world, the various kinds of socialists, anarchists, but mainly among Jewish artists. Day and night the flame of that feeling produces dread, sensitivity, self-criticism, and sometimes self-destruction. In short, it isn’t a particularly glorious feeling. Only one thing may be said in its favor: it harms no one except those afflicted with it.

~ Aharon Appelfeld, a Hebrew-language author, who did not learn the language until he was a teenager.