On Writing Poetry (1995)
Context: My English teacher from 1955, run to ground by some documentary crew trying to explain my life, said that in her class I had showed no particular promise. This was true. Until the descent of the giant thumb, I showed no particular promise. I also showed no particular promise for some time afterwards, but I did not know this. A lot of being a poet consists of willed ignorance. If you woke up from your trance and realized the nature of the life-threatening and dignity-destroying precipice you were walking along, you would switch into actuarial sciences immediately. If I had not been ignorant in this particular way, I would not have announced to an assortment of my high school female friends, in the cafeteria one brown-bag lunchtime, that I was going to be a writer. I said "writer," not "poet;" I did have some common sense. But my announcement was certainly a conversation-stopper. Sticks of celery were suspended in mid-crunch, peanut-butter sandwiches paused halfway between table and mouth; nobody said a word. One of those present reminded me of this incident recently — I had repressed it — and said she had been simply astounded. "Why?," I said. "Because I wanted to be a writer?" "No," she said. "Because you had the guts to say it out loud."
Harry Harlow (1905–1981) American psychologist
in interview with Carol Tavris, as cited in Love According To Harry Harlow http://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/love-according-to-harry-harlow#.WE2jv33d7cs, t the Association for Psychological Science's Observer, by Deborah Blum, January 2012.
Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron
Lefroy, C.J., Persse v. Kinneen (1859), (Lr. Rep.) L. T. Vol. 1 (N. S.), 78.
About
“I did have an inkling that I was going to be a writer. That was my intention.”
Jane Jacobs (1916–2006) American–Canadian journalist, author on urbanism and activist (1916-2006)
Interview in Toronto Canada (6 September 2000), by Jim Kunstler, Metropolis Magazine (March 2001)
Paul Bourget (1852–1935) French writer
The Age for Love
Context: I remember, the reasoning of a man determined to arrive that I tried to lull to sleep the inward voice that cried, "You have no right to put on paper, to give to the public what this noble writer said to you, supposing that he was receiving a poet, not a reporter." But I heard also the voice of my chief saying, "You will never succeed."
Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter
Quote (1899), # 67, in The Diaries of Paul Klee, translation: Pierre B. Schneider, R. Y. Zachary and Max Knight; publisher, University of California Press, 1964
1895 - 1902
“A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.”
Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor
“It is sometimes said, common sense is very rare.”
Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher
On dit quelquefois, le sens commun est fort rare... <br class="br"> Philosophical Dictionary ('Sens Commun') https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Voltaire_-_Dictionnaire_philosophique_portatif,_6e_%C3%A9dition,_tome_2.djvu/209 (1767). <br class="br">Compare Juvenal, Satires, viii:73: <br class="br">Original Latin: rarus enim ferme sensus communis in illa fortuna http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/juvenal/8.shtml. <br class="br">Published translation in French (1731): Il est fort rare qu'on conserve le Sens commun dans une si haute fortune. https://books.google.com/books?id=lFBkAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA335&dq=%22Le+sens+commun%22+%22fort+rare%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjepqeYtNfLAhUS3mMKHb30BdkQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=%22il%20est%20fort%20rare%22&f=false <br class="br">English translation: For rarely are civic sympathies [alternative translation: common sense] to be found in that rank". <br class="br">Citas, Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)
Connie Willis book To Say Nothing of the Dog
Source: To Say Nothing of the Dog (1998), Chapter 17 (p. 297)
