Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[Angst]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Writing books is the closest men ever come to childbearing.
- Norman Mailer
May 4, 1948: Pulitzer Prize-winner Norman Mailer published his first novel, the wartime saga The Naked and the Dead, 65 years ago today.

(and I don't think that is even close...)

"The Olympics can no more lose money than a man can have a baby."

--Jean Drapeau, Mayor of Montreal, prior to the 1976 summer Olympics. The Olympics subsequently lost money and cost the city of Montreal over $1 billion dollars. In Canada, the 1976 Summer Olympics were referred to as "Jean Drapeau's baby"

[BenG]

“This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”

― Walt Whitman, Preface to Leaves of Grass

[kennyc]

“ I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it’s much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I’m not absolutely sure of anything, and then many things I don’t know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we’re here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little, but if I can’t figure it out, then I go on to something else. But I don’t have to know an answer. I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn’t frighten me. ”
~ Richard Feynman; (Born 95 years ago today, May 11, 1918)

[poohbear_nc]

"By the cigars they smoke, and the composers they love, ye shall know the texture of men's souls."
John Galsworthy, Forsyte Saga

[poohbear_nc]

"The extremity of personal absence had just overtaken him."
Henry James, A Small Boy and Others

Spoiler:

Henry James describing the death of Edgar Allen Poe, as only Henry James could phrase it.

Spoiler:

Translation: "He's dead Jim"

[WT Sharpe]

.....The English-speaking world may be divided into (1) those who neither know nor care what a split infinitive is; (2) those who do not know, but care very much; (3) those who know and condemn; (4) those who know and approve; and (5) those who know and distinguish. Those who neither know nor care are the vast majority, and are a happy folk, to be envied by the minority classes.
..........— Henry Watson Fowler (1858 – 1933), English schoolmaster, lexicographer, and author. Quoted in "Apostrophe now: Bad grammar and the people who hate it" by Tom de Castella, BBC News Magazine.

[BenG]

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

— American composer John Cage, quoted in Richard Kostelanetz (1988) Conversing with Cage

[BenG]

Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.
— Mickey Spillane, Writers on Writing interview (1986)

[covingtoncat73]

Everyone probably knows this one but I do love it so...

"Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you."
Tyrion - A Game of Thrones, George R R Martin.

[Gazella]

Originally Posted by BenG

Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.
— Mickey Spillane, Writers on Writing interview (1986)

Thanks for posting this! So true ...

[kennyc]

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it's forever.
- Carl Sagan

[astrangerhere]

"In the far reaches of an infinite cosmos, there’s a galaxy that looks just like the Milky Way, with a solar system that’s the spitting image of ours, with a planet that’s a dead ringer for earth, with a house that’s indistinguishable from yours, inhabited by someone who looks just like you, who is right now reading this very book and imagining you, in a distant galaxy, just reaching the end of this sentence. And there’s not just one such copy. In an infinite universe, there are infinitely many. In some, your doppelganger is now reading this sentence, along with you. In others, he or she has skipped ahead, or feels in need of a snack and has put the book down. In others still, he or she has, well, a less than felicitous disposition and is someone you’d rather not meet in a dark alley."

Brian Green in The Hidden Reality:Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos

[astrangerhere]

Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

XL from "A Shropshire Lad" by A.E. Houseman

[Angst]

I wanted to share this but wasn't sure where to put it. This thread is as good as any.

Taylor Mali

[bfisher]

"Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,
And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,
And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions,
I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not"

Walt Whitman's "When Lilacs last In The Dooryard Bloom'd"