“Her cry was the saddest sound of orgasm that I had ever heard.”
Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood
Source: Norwegian Wood
Source: More Than Human (1953), Chapter 1 “The Fabulous Idiot”, p. 1
Context: The idiot heard the sounds, but they had no meaning for him. He lived inside somewhere, apart, and the little link between word and significance hung broken.
“Her cry was the saddest sound of orgasm that I had ever heard.”
Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood
Source: Norwegian Wood
Source: Macbeth, Act V, scene v.
Context: Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer
Source: Froi of the Exiles
Arthur Rubinstein (1887–1982) Polish-American classical pianist
and I said, "Yes, I do mean it."
Vladimir Horowitz, quoted in Harold C. Schonberg, Horowitz: his life and music (1992)
About
Vladimir Horowitz (1903–1989) American classical pianist and composer
and I said, "Yes, I do mean it."
quoted in Harold C. Schonberg, Horowitz: his life and music
“For you to love something, you must have seen and heard it for a long time, you idiots.”
Francis Picabia (1879–1953) French painter and writer
Original: (fr) Pour que vous aimiez quelque chose il faut que vous l'ayez vu et entendu depuis longtemps tas d'idiots.
Source: Sign for a Dada festival (March 1920)
“Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound.”
Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene
Canto 12, stanza 70
The Faerie Queene (1589–1596), Book II
“I have heard an atheist defined as a man who had no invisible means of support.”
John Buchan (1875–1940) British politician
A play on words commonly used referring to vagrants or paupers as having "no visible means of support" financially, speaking to the Law Society of Upper Canada, (21 February 1936); published in Canadian Occasions (1940), p. 201. Buchan's source for this definition remains unknown. The witticism was repeated by Harry Emerson Fosdick in his On Being a Real Person (1943), ch. 1, with due acknowledgement to Buchan, and was again used by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen in Look magazine (December 14, 1955). The credit for this line is therefore often wrongly given to Fosdick or to Sheen. Credit has also been given to the conductor Walter Damrosch (1862-1950).
Canadian Occasions (1940)