“Literature is idiosyncratic arrangements in horizontal lines in only twenty-six symbols, ten arabic numbers, and about eight punctuation marks.”

Public conversation with Lee Stringer, in Like Shaking Hands With God (1999)
Various interviews

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Kurt Vonnegut318

American writer 1922–2007

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“[On the need for ultra high definition television] The problem with television isn't the number of horizontal scanning lines. It's the lines of dialogue spoken by the actors.”

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Museums for the New Millennium: Proceedings, museumstudies.si.edu, 2017-03-12 http://museumstudies.si.edu/millennium/proceed8.htm,

“Alas! So there is no escape from the question. Not for me, not for anyone! Then life is just breathing or running behind infinite number of questions? And then, what question is really? And what answer is too? This too a question. I observe the question mark carefully. And Eureka! I didn't know that my answer was encrypted and hidden in that symbol of a question mark. The dot below the curved stroke in a question mark symbolizes Zero as the question's answer itself, I never knew. Punctuation marks are so carefully crafted, I never knew!”

P. L. Deshpande (1919–2000) Marathi writer, humourist, actor, dramatist

citation needed
From his various literature

“If the masc. [masculine] is the vertic. [vertical] line, then a man will recognize this element in the rising line of a forest; in the horizont. [horizontal] lines of the sea he will see his complement. Woman, with the horizont. line as element, sees herself in the recumbent lines of the sea, and her complement in the vert. lines of the forest.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

[on his two paintings 'Sea' and ' Trees', both made in 1912 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Trees%2C_1912%2C_Mondrian.jpg <br class="br">note in his sketchbook, undated but c. 1912; as quoted in Mondrian, - The Art of Destruction, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 70 <br class="br">1910's

“M, you see, is four, and D is four too, and H is eight, and four and four and eight are sixteen, which is made up of one and six, which make seven—my number.”

Margaret Keane (1927) American artist

Page 48.
1965, Cited by Jane Howard

“every story written is
marks upon a page
The same marks,
repeated, only
differently arranged”

Max Barry (1973) Australian writer

Source: Lexicon

“Horizontal mathematising leads from the world of life to the world of symbols.”

Hans Freudenthal (1905–1990) Dutch mathematician

Source: Revisiting Mathematics Education (1991), p. 41

“Of all the punctuation marks; he told me ellipses were his favorites.”

Patrick Modiano (1945) French writer

Suspended Sentences (1993)

“Gaiety of tone is the luminous dominant, of tint, the warm dominant, of line, lines above the horizontal
Calmness of tone is the equality of dark and light; of tint, of warm and cool, and the horizontal for line.
Sadness of tone is the dark dominant; of tint, the cool dominant, and of line, downward directions.”

Georges Seurat (1859–1891) French painter

Quotes, 1881 - 1890, Letter to Maurice Beaubourg', August 1890

“A man, to use an old-fashioned phrase, of some twenty-eight summers, he gave the impression at the moment of having experienced at least that number of very hard winters.”

P.G. Wodehouse book A Pelican at Blandings

A Pelican at Blandings (1969)

“A criticism with which we have become familiar in this country is that an alarmingly large number of students receiving university education, and the universities are responsible for wastage and unnecessary duplication of teaching arrangements…

… Take the whole of British India with a population of two hundred and sixty-three million. India has only sixteen universities and the number of their students will be about one lac and twenty thousand. The total expenditure on higher education in India is less than four crores rupees.

Let me now turn to other countries. The British Isles afford a good illustration for comparison from the point of view of population which is about is about forty five million; but the number of universities is as many as sixteen – what we have for the whole of India – and fifty-five thousand students receive instructions under their jurisdiction. About six crores and forty lacs of rupees are spent on higher education only in England and Wales. To universities alone within this area the state annually contributes two crores and twenty-seven lacs of rupees.”

Syama Prasad Mookerjee (1901–1953) Indian politician

Speech delivered at Calcutta University Convocation on 22nd February 1936.
Source: one crore is equal to ten million
Source: ten lacs is equal to one million

“Literature is idiosyncratic arrangements in horizontal lines in only twenty-six symbols, ten arabic numbers, and about eight punctuation marks.”

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Kurt Vonnegut318

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