1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
3346
3522
5443
5619
5949
5950
5951
5952
5953
6757
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| ce1f5f2 | Now, another way to think about this is that Shakespeare's ego was so very insatiable he thought he could speak for everybody: a black duke, a transvestite girl, a carefree prince, a mad king. But we tend not to think of it that way, in Britain, instead we consider Shakespeare's breed of impersonality among the highest literary virtues. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 10f84f5 | It's hard to keep apocalypse consistently in mind, especially if you want to get out of bed in the morning. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 1777ed4 | I thought of that William Gibson quote: "The future is already here--it's just not evenly distributed yet." | Zadie Smith | ||
| e6e36a2 | Here's the funny thing about literary criticism: it hates its own times, only realizing their worth twenty years later. And then, twenty years after that, it wildly sentimentalizes them, out of nostalgia for a collective youth. Condemned cliques become halcyon "movements" annoying young men, august geniuses." | Zadie Smith | ||
| abfa77d | Every moment happens twice: inside and outside, and they are two different histories. Outside | Zadie Smith | ||
| ddec3c1 | Portnoy was not Roth and he was not real, but in him is enshrined a genuine Rothian freedom, created by Roth, once impossible, now fully realized, a freedom which anyone can now easily access. You don't even have to read the book: you are already living in the world that Portnoy touched and changed. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 9cd9416 | certainly don't write as a public service. But I am aware, at least as a reader, that remarkable acts of art-making--bold, perverse, unbeholden, free--have had the side effect of changing the weather in a country, in a people, at a certain historical moment, and finally in me, conferring freedoms for which I am now very grateful. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 3d82508 | When I find myself sitting at dinner next to someone who knows just as much about novels as I do but has somehow also found the mental space to adore and be knowledgeable about opera, have strong opinions about the relative rankings of Renaissance painters, an encyclopedic knowledge of the English Civil War, of French wines--I feel an anxiety that nudges beyond the envious into the existential. How did she find the time? | Zadie Smith | ||
| 99f0a3f | Early on, for better or worse, I chose whose child I wanted to be: the child of the novel. | Zadie Smith | ||
| cdd70fb | All the difficult work of attunement and acceptance has already been done by others. Smart critics, other painters, appreciative amateurs. They kicked the door open almost a century ago--all I need do is walk through it. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 2800fe0 | But it's my sense that no matter how many rooms you have, and however many books and movies and songs declaim the wholesome beauty of family life, the truth is "the family" is always an event of some violence. It's only years later, in that retrospective swirl, that you work out who was hurt, in what way, and how badly." | Zadie Smith | ||
| 20dee4c | Janet Jackson kicked off this curious phenomenon, Madonna continued it, Beyonce is its apex. Here dancing is intended as a demonstration of the female will, a concrete articulation of its reach and possibilities. The lesson is quite clear. My body obeys me. My dancers obey me. Now you will obey me. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 3fdef4b | But equally you can't fight for a freedom you've forgotten how to identify. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 8fd07fd | has never been hard for me to pay my taxes because I understand it to be the repaying of a large, in fact, an almost incalculable, debt. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 7dfeb15 | It's only recently that I had any idea that how a person felt about libraries--not schools or hospitals, libraries--could even represent an ideological split. I thought a library was one of the few sites where the urge to conserve and the desire to improve--twin poles of our political mind--were easily and naturally united. | Zadie Smith | ||
| fd55733 | Peele gets to the core of what contemporary entitlement looks like--concern with one's personal rights combined with non-interest in one's duties | Zadie Smith | ||
| fa86aa5 | It's not just a matter of free books. A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three-dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal. | Zadie Smith | ||
| c071608 | He was no great believer in destiny, Archie, but on reflection it did seem that a special effort of predestination had ensured his life had been picked out for him like a company Christmas present--early, and the same as everyone else's. | Zadie Smith | ||
| a9de607 | Generally, women can't do this, but men retain the ancient ability to leave a family and a past. They just unhook themselves, like removing a fake beard, and skulk discreetly back into society, changed men. | Zadie Smith | ||
| c61bd6d | She wore her sexuality with an older woman's ease, and not (as with most of the girls Archie had run with in the past) like an awkward purse, never knowing how to hold it, where to hang it, or when to just put it down. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 7d22548 | Clara was a teenage girl like any other; the object of her passion was only an accessory to the passion itself, a passion that through its long suppression was now asserting itself with volcanic necessity. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 2109936 | Now, how do the young prepare to meet the old? The same way the old prepare to meet the young: with a little condescension; with low expectation of the other's rationality; with the knowledge that the other will find what they say hard to understand, that it will go beyond them (not so much over the head as between the legs); and with the feeling that they must arrive with something the other will like, something suitable. Like Garibaldi bi.. | Zadie Smith | ||
| f3f22db | Ahol en nelkulozest, igazsagtalansagot, szegenyseget lattam, ott Granger egyszeruseget, az anyagiassag hianyat, a kozossegi elet szepseget vette eszre - ami gyokeres ellentete volt az amerikai letformanak, amelyben o felnott. Ahol en tobbnejuseget, nogyuloletet, anyatlan gyermekeket lattam (anyam gyermekkori szigetet, csak meg hangsulyosabban, hagyomanyokkal megerositve), ott o emlekezett a hatodik emeleti apro garzonra, amelyben kettesben .. | Zadie Smith | ||
| 0f1e3d7 | Amnesia was the price of immortality. | Algis Budrys | ||
| 5df46f1 | It isn't given to very many men to have their dreams come true in their lifetimes. | Algis Budrys | ||
| 227357a | The universe has resources of death which we have barely begun to pick at. | Algis Budrys | ||
| 22d697e | kidnapped? | Louise Fitzhugh | ||
| e8e9caf | I'm feeling a little sauvage | Helen Ericson | ||
| 50df7fb | The dead must not rise--they undermine everything their dying created. | Algis Budrys | ||
| 21d6a17 | Today might not be so good. But tomorrow, you got another chance to | David Baldacci | ||
| 6f77a15 | Never try to reason with a man who can see the blade swinging for his head. | Algis Budrys | ||
| 28950bd | Man, is it wrong to miss being young and sure of yourself? | Algis Budrys | ||
| ba458b3 | to take it easy," he said defensively." -- | David Baldacci | ||
| 3e72c4d | Loss of dignity is after all one of the basics to a good punchy gag. | Algis Budrys | ||
| 6758710 | clay, collodion to make scars | David Baldacci | ||
| d38b345 | I'm just an information processor like any other living thing. | Algis Budrys | ||
| 90e34b3 | Today is a hard day." Sometimes, there are hard days. Days stretched so tight with pain that they seem as if they can allow no room for hope." | hard-day hope hopeful pain room time | Libba Bray | |
| 3498a32 | People will disappoint you. The question to ask is whether you can learn to live with the disappointment and move on. | Libba Bray | ||
| 13f9bb6 | You want to know what pain is? Try running out of Advil when you've got a Category Five period. I've had cramps that would make grown men beg for a bullet between the eyes. | Libba Bray | ||
| 79efaac | Marlowe grinned. "That so? I couldn't disagree more. Is that Nietzsche talking? Ah, the Germans. We have a factory in Germany, you know. Actually, Germany is a fine example, so let's take Germany: They were crushed in the Great War. Their debt was staggering. A pound of bread cost nearly three billion Marks! The Reichsmark was practically worthless--you'd have better luck papering your house with it than trying to buy goods or pay your bill.. | Libba Bray | ||
| 4b84389 | Can we agree to this point? But once human beings have free will, they also have the ability to make choices--and commit evil. Thus, this very good thing, free will, allows the possibility of evil into our fine world. | Libba Bray | ||
| 5a4b8c4 | if there's anything I'm starting to learn about people it's (a) that they are fundamentally suspicious and afraid of anyone who is "different," and (b) that fear makes them do and say asinine things." | Libba Bray | ||
| dd80e02 | What fresh hell is this?" Adina muttered." | Libba Bray | ||
| 542708d | I have seen what a handful of girls can do. They can hold back an army if necessary, so please don't tell me it isn't possible. | Libba Bray |