List quotes
6 quotes, most recent first. Quoting does not necessarily imply agreement: think for yourself.
Soon after A Wizard of Earthsea came out in England it received a review in a science-fiction periodical which took the book to task for being "consolatory" and "reassuring". Well, fair enough, I thought, if the consolation is false, if the reassurance is unwarranted; but are consolation and reassurance inherently false, unwarranted - foolish, soft, silly, childish - sentimental? Are we writers only to threaten, terrify, and depress our readers with our ruthless honesty: have we not as good a right to offer them whatever comfort we've come by honestly?
I wrote the reviewer and told him what I thought, and that I thought I had Tolkien to back me up. He wrote back nicely enough saying that of course he hadn't been thinking of the book as being written for children. Apparently it is permissible to reassure or console children, but not adults
Such an attitude seems to me to be based on a strange notion that the Common Reader is so happy, so foolishly confident, so stupidly trustful, that the Common Writer's whole duty is to convince him that life is hard and full of grief and that there is no consolation. Most adults I know already know that life is hard and full of grief; and they look for both confirmation of this knowledge, and consolation for it, in art.
Reference: quoted in The Guardian: Books, 13-Feb-2004
Link: http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/sciencefiction/story/0,6000,1144428,00.html
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed opon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
Reference: excerpt from 'The Second Coming', W.B.Yeats, Collected Poems (Great Britain: Picador, 1990), p. 210-11
From all my lame defeats and oh! much more,
From all the victories I seemed to score
With cleverness shot forth on Thy behalf,
At which, while angels weep, the audience laugh,
From all my proofs of Thy divinity,
Thou, who would'st give no sign, deliver me.Reference: The Apologists Evening Prayer, source unknown
‘God’s will has been to redeem men, and open the way of salvation to those who seek it, but men have shown themselves so unworthy that it is right for God to refuse to some, for their hardness of heart, what he grants to others by a mercy they have not earned.
‘If he had wished to overcome the obstinacy of the most hardened, he could have done so by revealing himself to them so plainly that they could not doubt the truth of his essence, as he will appear on the last day with such thunder and lightning and such convulsions of nature that the dead will rise up and the blindest will see him. This is not the way he wished to appear when he came in mildness because so many men had shown themselves unworthy of his clemency, that he wished to deprive them of the good they did not desire. It was therefore not right that he should appear in a manner manifestly divine and absolutely capable of convincing all men, but neither was it right that his coming should be so hidden that he could not be recognized by those who sincerely sought him. He wished to make himself perfectly recognizable to them. Thus wishing to appear openly to those who seek him wioth all their heart and hidden from those who shun him with all their heart, he has qualified our knowledge of him by giving signs which can be seen by those who seek him, and not by those who do not.
‘There is enough light for those who desire to see, and enough darkness for those of a contrary disposition.’
Reference: Blaise Pascal (1623-62), exceprt from Pensees #149 in Pensees rev.ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1995), p. 50
Link: http://www.ccel.org/p/pascal/pensees/
After the climb
After time turns design to despair
It is good
Nothing's fair
It's all who you know
And after the fall
After all of our strivings are dust
Even so
Good for us
It's all who you know Reference: ‘It's all who you know’, written by Steve Taylor, performed by Newsboys, recorded on Take me to your leader, 1996
Link: http://www.newsboys.com
(A conversation between Dennis, an builder's labourer and Nino, an recent Italian migrant, in 1950’s Sydney, Australia.)
[Dennis] said after she went back in the house, ‘Silly bitch. How c'n yer knock down a wall without makin’ a mess? Women.’
‘No woman likes to see her home in ruins, Dennis.’
‘No, they want ut all prettied up an’ smellin’ o’ polish an’ disinfectant like the Martin Place dyke. That’s the way they want a man ter be, too. ’Ave a shave. Change those dirty old trousers. Get yer hair cut. They give me a pain.’
‘They are nice, sometimes.’
‘Yeah. Sometimes. Not bloody often, but.’
‘If all men thought as you do, there would not be any children. There would not be any people. The human race would cease to exist.’
‘Bloody good thing too.’
‘You would not have been born.’
‘Another bloody good thing.’
‘You do not really mean what you say.’
‘Course I meant ut. Man’s a bloody nuisance from the time he starts. Howlin’ fer tucker, an’ dirtyin’ his nappies, an’ getting’ sent ter school an’ doing everythin’ wrong and gettin’ belted. Then ’e grows up an’ starts workin’. If ’e don’t work ’e don’t eat. Workin’ an’ eatin’ an’ sleepin’. Workin’ an’ eatin’ an’ sleepin’. Then ’e drops dead an’ some other poor coot’s gotta bury ’im before ’e starts ter stink. An’ then the bloody maggots get him, an’ that’s that. Wot’s good about ut?’
‘But Dennis, that is when a man begins to live. After he is dead.’
‘How der you know? Has anybody ever come back ter tell yer wot a lot o’ fun ’e’s havin’ playin’ a harp?’
‘Do you not believe in God?’
‘Look around yer ’an see this grass. Growin’ an’ dyin’. Look at the animals. Growin’ an’ dyin’. Look at us. Everything an’ everybody growin’ an’ dyin’ an bein’ et by something else. If there is a God, He’s got a bloody queer sense o’ humour.’
‘There is a God, Dennis. This grass — these animals. They do not happen accidentally. These hands with which we work. They are wonderful machines. A man could not make them. The brain which directs them, and with which we think… what a marvellous machine is that.’
‘Yeah. I know. I know. Ut’s bloody marvellous. An animal’s brain’ bloody marvellous too, ain’t ut?’
‘Indeed it is.’
‘Well I ate a coupla them fer breakfast yesterday.’
‘I do not understand what you are trying to prove Dennis.’
‘Not tryin’ ter prove anything. The whole thing stinks, that’s all. Don’t make sense.’
‘You would not expect an animal to understand what is in the mind of a man, so how can we understand what is in the mind of God. He is much further above us than we are above the animals.’
‘Why don’t you hire a hall?’
‘I do not understand.’
‘Yer orter be on a soap box in the Domain. Ut’s all bloody marvellous, but if we don’t get the rest o’ them bricks out, Joe’s liable ter give us the sack, an’ then we don’t eat.’
‘Why do you work Dennis, if there is only death at the end of it? Why not die now?’
‘Because I like eatin’, that’s why.’
Reference: Nino Culotta, They're a Weird Mob (Sydney: Ure Smith, 1957), p.97-99.
