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Quotes by Writer
"Ethics is the triumph of freedom over facticity."
54
"Everybody, soon or late, sits down to a banquet of consequences."
54
"Honesty is to truth as prow is to stern. Honesty appears first and truth appears last. The interval between varies in direct proportion to the size of ship. With anything of size, truth takes a long time in coming. Sometimes it only manifests itself posthumously."
54
"Guilt is anger directed at ourselves - at what we did or did not do. Resentment is anger directed at others - at what they did or did not do."
54
"I'd have been a filmmaker or a cartoonist or something else which extended from the visual arts into the making of narratives if I hadn't been able to shift into fiction."
54
"In stating these matters, I speak an open and disinterested language, dictated by no passion but that of humanity. To me, who have not only refused offers, because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful. Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good."
54
"Our feelings of anxiety are genuine but confused signals that something is amiss, and so need to be listened to and patiently interpreted -- processes which are unlikely to be completed when we have to hand, in the computer, one of the most powerful tools of distraction ever invented. The entire internet is in a sense pornographic, a deliverer of a constant excitement that we have no innate capacity to resist, a seducer that leads us down paths that for the most part do nothing to answer our real needs."
54
"I approach serious subjects, and I like to have the good guys win and have the parents among the good guys."
54
"I like working with people. I believe change can only come through collaboration."
54
"Books are divided into two classes, the books of the hour and the books of all time."
54
"The younger and healthier a woman is and the more her new and glossy body seems destined for eternal freshness, the less useful is artifice; but the carnal weakness of this prey that man takes and its ominous deterioration always have to be hidden from him...In any case, the more traits and proportions of a woman seem contrived, the more she delighted the heart of man because she seemed to escape the metamorphosis of natural things. The result is this strange paradox that by desiring to grasp nature, but transfigured, in woman, man destines her to artifice."
54
"How talented was death. How many expressions and manipulations of hand, face, body, no two alike."
54
"Isn't that exactly the definition of biography? An artificial logic imposed on an 'incoherent succession of images'?"
54
"Loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they too, fade away."
54
"There is one advantage to having nothing, it never needs repair."
54
"But you knoe, she's right. Every single day, each time I see her face, see her, it's utterly precious."
54
"College had little effect on me. I'd have been the same writer if I'd gone to MIT, except I'd have flunked out sooner."
53
"Not everything written on Kafka is Kafkology. How then to define Kafkology? By a tautology: Kafkology is discourse for Kafkologizing Kafka. For replacing Kafka with the Kafkologized Kafka."
53
"Take yourself out of the center of other people's universe - it will free you up and let the universe turn more easily."
53
"You can't be truly rude until you understand good manners."
53
"If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind, what is the significance of a clean desk?"
Mind,
53
"Make three correct guesses consecutively and you will establish a reputation as an expert."
53
"The more I thought of the McClure offer the less I thought of it. So I told him last night I was satisfied where I was, and that the $75 he offered me was no inducement."
53
"When a man and a woman have an overwhelming passion for each other, it seems to me, in spite of such obstacles dividing them as parents or husband, that they belong to each other in the name of Nature, and are lovers by Divine right, in spite of human convention or the laws."
53
"All human beings are interconnected, one with all other elements in creation."
53
"Never trust the translation or interpretation of something without first trusting its interpreter."
53
"It's impossible to move, to live, to operate at any level without leaving traces, bits, seemingly meaningless fragments of personal information."
53
"The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the centre of each and every town or city."
53
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