“The Ramans do everything in threes.”
Rendezvous with Rama (1972)
1970s
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Arthur C. Clarke 207
British science fiction writer, science writer, inventor, u… 1917–2008Related quotes
“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on.”
As quoted in The Harper Book of Quotations (1993) edited by Robert I. Fitzhenry, p. 261
General sources
Variant: In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
“Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.”
"Sometimes", § 5
Red Bird (2008)
Context: Two or three times in my life I discovered love.
Each time it seemed to solve everything.
Each time it solved a great many things
but not everything.
Yet left me as grateful as if it had indeed, and
thoroughly, solved everything.
Messieurs, nous avons un maître, ce jeune homme fait tout, peut tout, et veut tout.
Speaking of Napoleon I of France, reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1922), "Character", p. 105.
Source: The Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 1830-1857
AI Podcast, December 30, 2019, Algorithms, Complexity, Life, and The Art of Computer Programming https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BdBfsXbST8,
“Not being able to do everything is no excuse for not doing everything you can.”
The Paris Review interview (2010)
Context: Three things are in your head: First, everything you have experienced from the day of your birth until right now. Every single second, every single hour, every single day. Then, how you reacted to those events in the minute of their happening, whether they were disastrous or joyful. Those are two things you have in your mind to give you material. Then, separate from the living experiences are all the art experiences you’ve had, the things you’ve learned from other writers, artists, poets, film directors, and composers. So all of this is in your mind as a fabulous mulch and you have to bring it out. How do you do that? I did it by making lists of nouns and then asking, What does each noun mean? You can go and make up your own list right now and it would be different than mine. The night. The crickets. The train whistle. The basement. The attic. The tennis shoes. The fireworks. All these things are very personal. Then, when you get the list down, you begin to word-associate around it. You ask, Why did I put this word down? What does it mean to me? Why did I put this noun down and not some other word? Do this and you’re on your way to being a good writer. You can’t write for other people. You can’t write for the left or the right, this religion or that religion, or this belief or that belief. You have to write the way you see things.