In response to a question during a congressional hearing about whether the U.S. should modify its Afghan strategy in response to six U.S. soldiers being killed by Afghan soldiers between Feb. 23 and March 1. As quoted in Key commanders have their say on Afghanistan http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/key-commanders-have-their-say-on-afghanistan/2012/03/07/gIQAOukuxR_story.html (2012) by Walter Pincus, The Washington Post
“Few novels or plays could exist without at least one troublemaker in the group, and perhaps life couldn’t either.”
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Theater
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Mignon McLaughlin 278
American journalist 1913–1983Related quotes
Nobel Prize lecture (12 December 1976)
General sources
Context: A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life. It tells us that for every human being there is a diversity of existences, that the single existence is itself an illusion in part, that these many existences signify something, tend to something, fulfill something; it promises us meaning, harmony, and even justice.
J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 107
Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)
“The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.”
Variant text: The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does compete with life.
The Art of Fiction http://public.wsu.edu/~campbelld/amlit/artfiction.html (1884)
Quoted in Amnesty International's essay "From Prisoner to President – A Tribute"
Hey, some people on tumblr are wondering if writers feel upset or get a thrill when they kill their characters. Care to enlighten us?, John Green's tumblr, Tumblr, January 1, 2013, July 15, 2014 http://fishingboatproceeds.tumblr.com/post/39363824562/hey-some-people-on-tumblr-are-wondering-if-writers,
Source: Sun and Steel (1968), p. 87.
Context: Only through the group, I realised — through sharing the suffering of the group — could the body reach that height of existence that the individual alone could never attain. And for the body to reach that level at which the divine might be glimpsed, a dissolution of individuality was necessary. The tragic quality of the group was also necessary, the quality that constantly raised the group out of the abandon and torpor into which it was prone to lapse, leading it to an ever-mounting shared suffering and so to death, which was the ultimate suffering. The group must be open to death — which meant, of course, that it must be a community of warriors.