
“If you aren't giving people something to talk about, you've become too dull.”
Source: The Mermaid Chair
Source: The Masked City (2015), Chapter 15 (p. 201)
“If you aren't giving people something to talk about, you've become too dull.”
Source: The Mermaid Chair
1960s, Address to Cornell College (1962)
G 32
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook G (1779-1783)
“Don't talk to me about your hideous reality! What does it mean — reality?”
Pt. 1, Ch. 4
Sentimental Education (1869)
Context: Don't talk to me about your hideous reality! What does it mean — reality? Some see things black, others blue — the multitude sees them brute-fashion. There is nothing less natural than Michael Angelo; there is nothing more powerful! The anxiety about eternal truth is a mark of contemporary baseness; and art will become, if things go on in that way, a sort of poor joke as much below religion as it is below poetry, and as much below politics as it is below business. You will never reach its end — yes, its end! — which is to cause within us an impersonal exaltation, with petty works, in spite of all your finished execution.
"Something Special", written by Springfield
Lyrics, Stay Awhile: I Only Want to Be with You (1964)