For me the novel is character creation. Style is nice, plot is nice, structure is OK, social significance is OK, symbolism worms its way in, timeliness is OK too, but unless the characters convince and live the book’s got no chance. LARRY MCMURTRY
ONE OF THE SADDEST LESSONS OF HISTORY is this: if we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply to painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back. CARL SAGAN
TAYLOR CALDWELL—–1900-1985. “Captains and the Kings”
MANKIND ADORES ITS BETRAYERS AND MURDERS ITS SAVIORS.
IT IS INEVITABLE, that eventually the people will demand absolute security from the state . . . and absolute security is absolute slavery.
IT IS A STERN FACT of history that no nation that rushed to the abyss ever turned back. Not ever, in the long history of the world. We are now on the edge of the abyss. Can we, for the first time in history, turn back? It is up to you.
CORRUPT citizens breed corrupt rulers, and it is the mob who finally decides when virtue shall die.
FREEDOM was given to humanity by God. but, governments, if they can help it, never give freedom. They just hand out slavery with slogans.
WHEN A NATION threatens another nation the people of the latter forget their factionalism, their local antagonisms, their political differences, their suspicions of each other, their religious hostilities, and band together as one unit. Leaders know that and that is why so many of them whip up wars during periods of national crisis, or when the people become discontented and angry. This is the explanation of all wars, all racial and religious hatreds, all massacres and all attempts at genocide.
LEARNING SHOULD BE A JOY and full of excitement. It is life’s greatest adventure; it is an illustrated excursion into the minds of the noble and the learned.
I LIKE ANIMALS because they are not consciously cruel and don’t betray each other.
NO WOMAN has ever been an authentic genius of the stature of men, but that does not enrage me.
THE MORE WANTS A MAN HAS, THE LESS FREEDOM.
We are not old unless we desire to be.
PEOPLE ARE SCARED TO DEATH OF DYING. I AM THE OPPOSITE.
READING, NOT JUST AN ESCAPE, BUT AN EXERCISE IN LIVING.
ELIA KAZAN 1909-2003 FILM DIRECTOR “On the Waterfront”.
WONDER IS OUR NEED TODAY, NOT INFORMATION.
THE REAL CHALLENGE is not simply to survive. Hell, anyone can do that. It’s to survive as yourself, undiminished.
LOOK for the contradictions in every character, especially in your heroes and villains. No one should be what they first seem to be. Surprise the audience.
NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE NARCISSISM OF A WRITER.
YOU’VE GOT TO keep fighting; you’ve got to risk your life every six moths to stay alive.
THE WRITER, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don’t dare reveal.
I VALUE PEACE, too, when it is not bought at the price of fundamental decencies.
I WAS ALWAYS A SELF-CONSCIOUS PERSON.
GRANDMA MOSES 1860-1961. ARTIST
LIFE IS WHAT YOU MAKE IT.
PEOPLE SHOULD TAKE TIME TO BE HAPPY.
I look back on my life like a good day’s work, it was done and I am satisfied with it.
I LIKE TO PAINT something that leads me on and on into the unknown, something that I want to see away on beyond.
I’LL GET AN INSPIRATION and start painting; then I’ll forget everything, everything except how things used to be and how to paint it so people will know how we used to live.
I PAINT from the top down. From the sky, then the mountains, then the hills, then the houses, then the cattle and then the people.
EVEN NOW / I AM NOT OLD. / I never think of it, and yet / I am a grandmother to eleven grandchildren.
IF I HADN’T STARTED PAINTING, I WOULD HAVE RAISED CHICKENS.
A PRIMITIVE ARTIST IS AN AMATEUR WHOSE WORK SELLS.
IF you know something’ well, you can always paint it but people would be better off buy-in’ chickens.
ONWARD AND UPWARD . . .
ELIZABETH 1. 1533-1603. ROYALTY
A CLEAR AND INNOCENT CONSCIENCE FEARS NOTHING.
I MAY NOT BE A LION, but I am lions cub and I have a lion’s heart.
THE PAST CANNOT BE CURED.
I OBSERVE AND REMAIN SILENT.
THE DOUBT OF FUTURE FOES EXILES MY PRESENT JOY.
WORDS ARE LEAVES, the substance consists of deeds, which are the true fruits of a good tree.
I WOULD RATHER BE A BEGGAR AND SINGLE THAN A QUEEN AND MARRIED.