
Quoting her mother's statement after her son's birth, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
Helen in A Trojan Ending (London: Constable, 1937)
Quoting her mother's statement after her son's birth, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
I might think about it a little bit, and 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 the 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.
Source: No Ordinary Genius (1994), p. 239, from interview in "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" (1981): video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEwUwWh5Xs4&t=48m10s
"We Are The Few" from "Everything Goes Numb" (2003) http://risc.perix.co.uk/lyrics/sm/egn/06/
“Do not trust the horse, Trojans.
Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even when they bring gifts.”
Equo ne credite, Teucri.
quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.
Source: Aeneid (29–19 BC), Book II, Lines 48–49; Trojan priest of Apollo warning against the wooden horse left by the Greeks.
“I have turned my entire attention to Greek. The first thing I shall do, as soon as the money arrives, is to buy some Greek authors; after that, I shall buy clothes.”
Ad Graecas literas totum animum applicui; statimque ut pecuniam accepero, Graecos primum autores, deinde vestes emam.
Letter to Jacob Batt (12 April 1500); Collected Works of Erasmus Vol 1 (1974)
Variant translation: When I get a little money I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes.
“Some things you don't have to tell. Some things, between sisters, are understood.”
Source: That Summer
A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Collective Ownership of Code and Text
On how he would like to be remembered (1994)
Context: Oh, I don't know — that's a hell of a question — I don't tend to look at my stuff that way. I just look at it a book at a time. Something like the Amber books are in a different class. I try not to anticipate. I don't know what I'll be writing a few years from now. I have some ideas — I have lots of different things I want to try. I almost don't really care what history thinks. I like the way I'm being treated right now.