Quotes by Critics - Page 13

We have to go. I'm almost happy here.
Orson Scott Card
Yet, whether to the glory or to the shame of human nature, in what we call pleasure (with an excess of scorn, perhaps) there are abysses as deep as those of love.
Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly
But most of those to whom Ender's Game feels most important are those who, like me, feel themselves to be perpetually outside their most beloved communities, never able to come inside and feel confident of belonging.
Orson Scott Card
Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind.
Henri-Frédéric Amiel
Then as we passed down this Passage we were knocked against certain Women of the Town, who gave us Eye-language, since there were many Corners and Closets in Bedlam where they would stop and wait for Custom: indeed it was known as a sure Market for Lechers and Loiterers, for tho' they came in Single they went out by Pairs. This is a Showing-room for Whores, I said.And what better place for Lust, Sir Chris. replied, than among those whose Wits have fled?
Peter Ackroyd
People go around mourning the death of God; it's the death of sssin that bothers me. Without ssin, people aren't people any more, they're just ssoul-less sheep.
John Updike
The only impeccable writers are those who never wrote.
William Hazlitt
I want to make it clear before we begin that I think your purpose is to learn and mine is to help you to learn, or to make you learn, though I doubt either of you has to be made. I have very little interest in writing out progress reports on you, or sticking to form charts, or anything else that interferes with our basic purposes. If there is anything you want to learn and have the necessary background to handle, I'll be ready to help you whether or not it is something that formally falls among the things I'm supposed to teach you. If you don't have the background, I'll help you get it. In return, I want you to do something for me. It's been many years since I was last a tutor, so I expect you to point out to me when I fail to observe some ritual that Mr. Quince holds essential. Fair enough?
Alexei Panshin
At the beginning of the war…I had to look in on the War Office, and in a room I found a fellow…What do you think he was doing…what the hell do you think he was doing? He was devising the ceremonial for the disbanding of a Kitchener battalion. You can’t say we were not prepared in one matter at least…. Well, the end of the show was to be: the adjutant would stand the battalion at ease; the band would play Land of Hope and Glory, and then the adjutant would say: There will be no more parades…. Don’t you see how symbolical it was—the band playing Land of Hope and Glory, and then the adjutant saying: There will be no more parades?…For there won’t. There won’t, there damn well won’t. No more Hope, no more Glory, no more parades for you and me any more. Nor for the country…nor for the world, I dare say… None… Gone… Napoo finny! No…more…parades!
Ford Madox Ford
Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
George Bernard Shaw
Bosch is great because what he imagines in color can be translated into justice.
Edward Dahlberg
He had sprung from a rigid Puritan stock, and had been brought up to think much more intently of the duties of this life than of its privileges and pleasures.
Henry James
The official erasure of any existence before enslavement – as if black Americans did not exist before the yolk and the chains and whip – has always created a passion for us.Black people need to find out. We have to find out Who We Are and Where We Come From.
Bonnie Greer
Consciousness was upon him before he could get out of the way.
Kingsley Amis
While we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the cells.
George Bernard Shaw
Innocence is a bleeding wound without a bandage, a wound that opens with every casual knock from casual passers-by. Experience is an armour.
Hilary Mantel
Sacrifices are no sacrifices when they are repaid a thousand fold.
William Hazlitt
At present", Keynes said in 1926, "everything is politics, and nothing policies.
Richard Davenport-Hines
You never give such relationships a thought, To give a thought, to take a thought is a function of dissociation, distance. You can't exercise memory until you've removed yourself from memory's source.
Joyce Carol Oates
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinion.
James Russell Lowell
Better to have the trust of the people than their respect. With trust, their respect could be earned later; without it, respect could never be deserved, and so to have it would be like poison.
Orson Scott Card
We were all journalists, professional truth-seekers, but one thing we knew about the truth that laymen were prone to disregard was that it need not be literal or factual; the unpredictable human personality was itself a fact.
Walter Kirn
While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?
George Bernard Shaw
Whatever may have been said of the satiety of pleasure and of the disgust which usually follows passion, any man who has anything of a heart and who is not wretchedly and hopelessly blasé feels his love increased by his happiness, and very often the best way to retain a lover ready to leave is to give one's self up to him without reserve.
Théophile Gautier
Englishmen never will be slaves they are free to do whatever the Government and public opinion allow them to do.
George Bernard Shaw
For a second, two seconds, they had exchanged an equivocal glance, and that was the end of the story. But even that was a memorable event, in the locked loneliness in which one had to live.
George Orwell
Let me tell you something: you can not write good fiction about ideas. You can only write good fiction about people.
Theodore Sturgeon
Fantastic literature has been especially prominent in times of unrest, when the older values have been overthrown to make way for the new; it has often accompanied or predicted change, and served to shake up rational Complacency, challenging reason and reminding man of his darker nature. Its popularity has had its ups and downs, and it has always been the preserve of a small literary minority. As a natural challenger of classical values, it is rarely part of a culture's literary mainstream, expressing the spirit of the age; but it is an important dissenting voice, a reminder of the vast mysteries of existence, sometimes truly metaphysical in scope, but more often merely riddling.
Franz Rottensteiner
From ... the age of five or six, I knew that when I grew up I should be a writer. ... I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so with the consciousness that I was outraging my true nature and that sooner or later I should have to settle down and write books.
George Orwell
Destruction is like a snow-ball rolled down a Hill, for its Bulk encreases by its own swiftness and thus Disorder spreads.
Peter Ackroyd
The Englishman is under no constitutional obligation to believe that all men are created equal. The American agony is therefore scarcely intelligible like a saint's self-flagellation viewed by an atheist.
John Updike
In some remote regions of Islam it is said a woman caught unveiled by a stranger will raise her skirt to cover her face.
Raymond Mortimer
Like editing, gardening requires infinite patience; it requires an essential selflessness, and optimism.
Joyce Carol Oates
I wonder sometimes if I'm not, after all, a piece in some other player's game, following blindly his grand designs without ever knowing that my path along the board is only a feint, while the important matters are played out elsewhere by other men. But whether there's some grand design really matters little to me. My only hope was this: To see what might be, to believe that it should be, and then to do all I could to bring it to pass, whatever the cost. When a life spins out as joyfully as mine has done, then the price, one paid so painfully, is now recalled in gladness. I have received full value. Here among the shepherds, my cup is filled with the water of life; it overflows.
Orson Scott Card
The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.
George Bernard Shaw
Ah. Well, it stands for Freedom From Morality. We don't think healthy amorality happens naturally." "But you're not amoral," I pointed out. I would trust you to keep your word any time. You don't steal. I've never known you to harm anyone except enemy soldiers in time of war." He laughed. "I didn't say 'immoral', I said amoral. You really didn't read your guidebook. A person who has a compulsive need to break moral commandments is as much a prisoner as the person who feels bound to obey them. And the human brain is hardwired to produce moral commandments. That is why we think you have to train young people to keep them from developing morality and blocking their pursuit of pleasure. I teach it because --" "It gives you an outlet for your sadistic urge to confuse children.
John Barnes
When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowardly to retreat. But when writing goes smoothly–why then one certainly should keep on working, since it would be stupid to stop. Consequently one is always writing or should be writing.
Joyce Carol Oates
She took particular comfort in certain familiar sights and sounds that marked her day: the buzz of the fluorescent lights, the pale figures sprawled silent and motionless over their reading, the reassuring feel of her book cart as she wheeled it down the aisle, and the books themselves, symbols of order on their backs - young adulthood reduced to "YA," mystery reduced to a tiny red skull.
T.E.D. Klein
HIGGINS [sitting down beside her] Rubbish! you shall marry an ambassador. You shall marry the Governor-General of India or the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or somebody who wants a deputy-queen. I'm not going to have my masterpiece thrown away on Freddy.LIZA. You think I like you to say that. But I haven't forgot what you said a minute ago; and I won't be coaxed round as if I was a baby or a puppy. If I can't have kindness, I'll have independence.HIGGINS. Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.LIZA [rising determinedly] I'll let you see whether I'm dependent on you. If you can preach, I can teach. I'll go and be a teacher.HIGGINS. What'll you teach, in heaven's name?LIZA. What you taught me. I'll teach phonetics.HIGGINS. Ha! Ha! Ha!
George Bernard Shaw
There are countless reasons for reading, but when you’re young and uncertain of your identity, of who you may be, one of the most compelling is the quest to discover yourself reflected in the pages of a book.
Michael Cart
None but the brave deserves the fair.
John Dryden
A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being.
William Hazlitt
You know how writers are... they create themselves as they create their work. Or perhaps they create their work in order to create themselves.
Orson Scott Card
We work in the dark - we do what we can - we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.
Henry James
Love thou thy dreamAll base love scorning,Love thou the windAnd here take warningThat dreams alone can truly be,For 'tis in dream I come to thee.Ezra Pound, The Songtrad. Ungaretti:Ama il tuo sogno Ama il tuo sognoOgni inferiore amore disprezzando,Il vento amaEd accorgiti quiChe i sogni solo possono veramente essere,Perciò in sogno a raggiungerti m’avvio.
Ezra Pound
Love I never associated with the senses, it was not even passion that I wanted; it was a conscious, subtle, elaborate sensuality, which I knew not how to procure.
Arthur Symons
The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.
George Bernard Shaw
– I’m going to be a writer, he reminded Milo.– And you won’t need literature?– I’ll write my own.
Caleb Crain
A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content.
Theodore Sturgeon
The gateway to the underworld is seen as part antiquity and part theatre. Welcome to the lower depths.
Peter Ackroyd
Fiction becomes visual by becoming verbal
William H. Gass
That's the problem with winning right from the start, thought Ender. you lose friends.
Orson Scott Card
Human life is basically a comedy. Even its tragedies often seem comic to the spectator and not infrequently they actually have comic touches to the victim. Happiness probably consists largely in the capacity to detect and relish them.
H.L. Mencken
None but those who are happy in themselves can make others so.
William Hazlitt
Puritanism - the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy.
H.L. Mencken
All the things I really like to do are either immoral illegal or fattening.
Alexander Woollcott
Discretion is not the better part of biography.
Lytton Strachey
The more we do the more we can do the more busy we are the more leisure we have.
William Hazlitt
...In this place you could not feel anything, except pain and foreknowledge of pain.
George Orwell
It's not my fate to give up--I know it can't be.
Henry James