“I find the world and all it contains extremely fascinating. Is this sinful?”
Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor
Section 4
Short fiction, Nightwings (1968)
Interview on ABC This Week http://web.archive.org/web/20060717235153/http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2006/69026.htm, July 16, 2006.
“I find the world and all it contains extremely fascinating. Is this sinful?”
Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor
Section 4
Short fiction, Nightwings (1968)
Sam Harris (1967) American author, philosopher and neuroscientist
[Sam Harris, 7 February 2006, http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20060207_reality_islam/, Sam Harris on the Reality of Islam, Truthdig.com, 2006-10-16]
2000s
“You can actually do extremely well out of not getting a Nobel prize,”
Jocelyn Bell Burnell (1943) British scientist
Beautiful Minds (2010)
Context: You can actually do extremely well out of not getting a Nobel prize, and I have had so many prizes, and so many honours, and so many awards, that actually, I think I've had far more fun than if I'd got a Nobel Prize - which is a bit flash in the pan: You get it, you have a fun week, and it's all over, and nobody gives you anything else after that, cos they feel they can't match it.
Philip Pullman (1946) English author
Surefish interview (2002)
Context: I'm caught between the words 'atheistic' and 'agnostic'. I've got no evidence whatever for believing in a God. But I know that all the things I do know are very small compared with the things that I don't know. So maybe there is a God out there. All I know is that if there is, he hasn't shown himself on earth.
But going further than that, I would say that those people who claim that they do know that there is a God have found this claim of theirs the most wonderful excuse for behaving extremely badly. So belief in a God does not seem to me to result automatically in behaving very well.
Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books
Alan Moore on Anarchism (2009)
Tony Banks (1942–2006) British politician
"Obituary: Tony Banks" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4591310.stm, BBC News, 9 January 2006. <br class="br">comments on constituency work after standing down as an MP
Kay Redfield Jamison (1946) American bipolar disorder researcher
Source: An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness
Jean Dubuffet book Prospectus et tous écrits suivants
on his series 'Corps de Dame'
As quoted in Jean Dubuffet, Works, writings Interviews, ed. Valerie da Costa and Fabrice Hergott; Ediciones Polígrafa, Barcelona 2006
1960-70's, Prospectus et tous écrits suivants, 1967
Max Eastman (1883–1969) American activist
Source: Stalin's Russia and the Crisis in Socialism (1940), p. 149
“All the historical books which contain no lies are extremely tedious.”
Anatole France book The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard
Les livres d'histoire qui ne mentent pas sont tout fort maussades.
La Bûche [The Log] (December 24, 1849)
The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881)
Variant: History books that contain no lies are extremely dull.