“Why, one wonders, does lightning strike in one place rather than another?”
P 86
The Search Warrant (2000)
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Patrick Modiano 42
French writer 1945Related quotes

“It was a room where you had no reason for sitting in one place rather than in another.”
Ch. 54 http://books.google.com/books?id=A2wOAAAAQAAJ&q=%22It+was+a+room+where+you+had+no+reason+for+sitting+in+one+place+rather+than+in+another%22&pg=PA187#v=onepage
Middlemarch (1871)
“Oh, talk about lightning striking twice. Another goal scrubbed out for the United States.”
United States v. Algeria http://www.listenonrepeat.com/watch/?v=DALDkkXodRU (23 June 2010).
2010s, 2010, 2010 FIFA World Cup

Letter to K.S. Barantsevich (March 3, 1888)
Letters
“I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.”
Source: How to Argue and Win Every Time (1995), Ch. 6 : The Power of Prejudice : Examining the Garment, Bleaching the Stain, p. 98
Source: How to Argue & Win Every Time: At Home, At Work, In Court, Everywhere, Everyday
“I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.”
Source: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968), Ch. 1 : Black Shiny FBI Shoes

“I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph”
On Ken Kesey, in Ch. I : Black Shiny FBI Shoes
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)
Context: He talks in a soft voice with a country accent, almost a pure country accent, only crackling and rasping and cheese-grated over the two-foot hookup, talking about —
"—there's been no creativity," he is saying, "and I think my value has been to help create the next step. I don't think there will be any movement off the drug scene until there is something else to move to —"
— all in a plain country accent about something — well, to be frank, I didn't know what in the hell it was all about. Sometimes he spoke cryptically, in aphorisms. I told him I had heard he didn't intend to do any more writing. Why? I said.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph," he said.
He talked about something called the Acid Test and forms of expression in which there would be no separation between himself and the audience. It would be all one experience, with all the senses opened wide, words, music, lights, sounds, touch —
lightning.

Vol. II, Ch. VI, p. 152.
(Buch II) (1893)