Quotes about bit
page 7

“After sleeping late on Sunday, I was back at my desk that afternoon. I had two prime considerations. First, I wanted to be certain that the tapes were not a trap for the committee or that there was a significant bit of missing information that we lacked; experience taught me that matters of this importance do not usually fall into your lap without more complications that are immediately apparent. Second, if our information was legitimate, I wanted to be sure the White House was fully aware of what was to be disclosed so that it could take appropriate action. Legalisms aside, it was inconceivable to me that the White House could withhold the tapes once their existence was made known. I believed it would be in everyone’s interest if the White House realized, before making any public statements, the probable position of both the majority and the minority of the Watergate committee. Even though I had no authority to act for the committee, I decided to call Fred Buzhardt at home. Buzhardt was the only White House staff member with whom I had had any substantial contact. He had been unassuming and straightforward in his dealings with me. He never tried to enlist me in any White House strategy, to suggest that I relay confidential information, or to so any of the things that were probably assumed by many of the so-called sophisticates in Washington.”

Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor

page 86
At That Point in Time, Warning the White House about the Watergate tapes

Home, Sleep, Housing

“Radical Islam has seen us for what we are: a soft touch. It sees that political correctness is like a drug that we just can't stop injecting, even though we know it's going to kill us. And they're taking full advantage of that, turning our sense of fairness against us, and making us despise ourselves for one of our best qualities. And any concession made will be seen as a sign of weakness to be exploited further, because there is no dialogue with radical Islam. It doesn't want to be agreed with, it wants to be obeyed. It thinks it has the God-given right, aptly enough, to make the rules, not just for Muslims, but for everyone, and some of us, frankly, think that's a little bit too much to ask.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"More demands from Islam" (9 October 2007) http://youtube.com/watch?v=mHh0NdR5Jh0 2007

God, Thinking, Sense

“"Tighter and Tighter" was actually written around the same time as "Black Hole Sun." In fact, I did a demo with four songs on it to play for the band. "Black Hole Sun," "Sounds Like Days," "Tighter and Tighter" and a song called "Anxious." We blew off "Anxious" entirely and recorded "Tighter and Tighter" for the last record. It was the last song we did. It was number 16 and we ran out of studio time. We had the rhythm tracks done and it was just needing vocals and my guitar solos. We just ran out of time. It was falling flat anyway. I changed the arrangement a little bit.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Soundgarden Era

Change, Time, Sun

“I don’t want to punish anybody, but there are an extraordinary number of people who I might want to kill…I think it would be a good thing to make everybody come before a properly appointed board just as he might come before the income tax commissioner and say every 5 years or every 7 years…just put them there and say, ‘Sir or madam will you be kind enough to justify your existence…if you’re not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little bit more then clearly we cannot use the big organization of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive. Because your life does not benefit us and it can’t be of very much use to yourself.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

“George Bernard Shaw reopens capital punishment controversy”, Paramount British Pictures (March 5, 1931)
1930s

Life, People, Thinking

“Please let your 'hot-blooded iconoclasm' slumber a bit longer, and for a while permit me simply to be your Madonna. It's meant to be for your own good, do you believe that? Keep your mind on art, our gracious muse, dear. Let us both plan to paint all this week. And then early Saturday I shall come to you.”

Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876–1907) German artist

In a letter to her husband Otto Modersohn, after 12 September 1900; as quoted in Voicing our visions, – Writings by women artists; ed. Mara R. Witzling, Universe New York, 1991, p. 200
1900 - 1905

Art, Painting

“To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds and watch, their renewal of life, this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do.”

Charles Dudley Warner (1829–1900) American writer

Preliminary.
My Summer in a Garden (1870)

Life

“Only someone as puffed up and demented as John Maynard Keynes, every left wing fascist's sainted mentor in this connection, could manage to convince himself that taxing America's Productive Class can restore it to prosperity. In point of fact, it's like screwing for chastity, guzzling alcohol for sobriety, or gorging to fight gluttony. It's like killing indiscriminately for peace — oops, Democrats, Republicans and their moral and spiritual ilk have devoutly believed that particular bit of perverse nonsense since at least the War of 1812.”

L. Neil Smith (1946) American writer

"A Little Austrian Flea".

War, Alcohol, Peace, Fight

“If my car should be in such a position where I can't quite see what's going on, can't get a good enough look, I'm not the least bit shy about asking the police to bring the bodies over a little closer to the car. "Pardon me, officer, would you mind dragging that twisted-looking chap over here a little closer to the car, please? My wife has never seen anyone shaped quite like that. Look at that, Sugar Lips! That's his ribcage sticking out the glove compartment. Thank you, officer, that'll be all. You can throw him back on the pile."”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

"Traffic Accidents: Keep Movin'!"
Complaints and Grievances (2001)

Cars

“In Swami Dayananda's view, the term Arya was not coterminous with the term Hindu. The classical meaning of the word Arya is 'noble'. It is used as an honorific term of address, used in addressing the honoured ones in ancient Indian parlance. The term Hindu is reluctantly accepted as a descriptive term for the contemporary Hindu society and all its varied beliefs and practices, while the term Arya is normative and designates Hinduism as it ought to be…. Elsewhere in Hindu society, 'Arya' was and is considered a synonym for 'Hindu', except that it may be broader, viz. by unambiguously including Buddhism and Jainism. Thus, the Constitution of the 'independent, indivisible and sovereign monarchical Hindu kingdom' (Art.3:1) of Nepal take care to include the Buddhist minority by ordaining the king to uphold 'Aryan culture and Hindu religion' (Art.20: 1)…. The Arya Samaj's misgivings about the term Hindu already arose in tempore non suspecto, long before it became a dirty Word under Jawaharlal Nehru and a cause of legal disadvantage under the 1950 Constitution. Swami Dayananda Saraswati rightly objected that the term had been given by foreigners (who, moreover, gave all kinds of derogatory meanings to it) and considered that dependence on an exonym is a bit sub-standard for a highly literate and self-expressive civilization. This argument retains a certain validity: the self-identification of Hindus as 'Hindu' can never be more than a second-best option. On the other hand, it is the most practical choice in the short run, and most Hindus don't seem to pine for an alternative.”

Koenraad Elst (1959) orientalist, writer

2000s, Who is a Hindu, (2001)

Religion, Art, Dependency

“You and me are a good bit alike. We're neither of us good lookin', and we're both as sour as we look.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett The Secret Garden

Ben
The Secret Garden (1909)

“The fears of recession in the aftermath of Black Monday have turned to fears of the economy racing ahead too fast, with inflation edging up and a substantial current account deficit…people understandably feel more confident about their future than they've done for decades, but as a result they have been borrowing more and saving less…coming on top of a massive income investment boom, it's all been just a bit too much of a good thing.”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

Speech to the Conservative Party Conference (13 October, 1988).

People, Fear, Feeling, Confidence

“When modern horror films or fundamentalists talk about “demons,” they mean something very different than what Socrates meant by the term. It was a lot closer to what I was talking about: the essential drive, the highest self, if you like. So maybe there is a connection, when I met, or appeared to meet, a demon. It was a little bit frightening at first, but after a while we found that we got on OK and we could have a civilized conversation, and I found him very engaging, very pleasant. And it struck me that this was a brilliant literal example of the process of demonization. That when I had approached the demon with fear and loathing, it was fearsome and loathsome. When I approached it with respect, then it was respectable. And I thought, All right, there’s a kind of mirroring that is going on here that is probably applicable to a wide number of social situations. The people or classes of people that we demonize, and that we treat with fear and loathing, respond accordingly. We are projecting a persona of manner of behavior upon them, as well as responding to a manner of behavior that’s already there. When we’re looking at the flaws in their personality that we are able to recognize, the fact that we can recognize them suggests that they are probably in some way a version of flaws that we have ourselves.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

As quoted in ""HEY, YOU CAN JUST MAKE STUFF UP." Differences between magic and art: None" https://www.believermag.com/issues/201306/?read=interview_moore, by Peter Bebergal, The Believer, (2013). The Believer interview (2013)

People, Fear, Way, Behavior

“God bless my soul, woman, the more personal you are the better! This is a story of human beings — not dummies! Be personal — be prejudiced — be catty — be anything you please! Write the thing your own way. We can always prune out the bits that are libellous afterwards!”

Agatha Christie book Murder in Mesopotamia

Dr Reilly
Murder in Mesopotamia (1936)

God, Way, Soul, Personality

“You know, sometimes, I don't know why,
But this old town just seems so hopeless.
I ain't really sure, but it seems I remember the good times
Were just a little bit more in focus.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Here Comes My Girl, written with Mike Campbell
Lyrics, Damn The Torpedoes (1979)

Time

“[P]ain is a marvelous purifier... It is not necessary to beat the child into submission; a little bit of pain goes a long way for a young child. However, the spanking should be of sufficient magnitude to cause the child to cry genuinely.”

James Dobson (1936) Evangelical Christian psychologist, author, and radio broadcaster.

From Dare to Discipline, pages 6 and 7
1970s

Pain, Way, Cry

“A rhyme's
…
a barrel of dynamite.
A line is a fuse
that's lit.
The line smoulders,
the rhyme explodes –
and by a stanza
a city
is blown to bits.”

Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930) Russian and Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor

"A Conversation with the Inspector of Taxes about Poetry" (1926); translation from Chris Jenks Visual Culture (London: Routledge, 1995) pp. 86-7

“When I am in India I gravitate to the poor and forgotten; in the fields I love photographing the workers who eek out a living and a little bit of food from the earth. All of this has everything to do with this area, as Western New York has many people working in the fields as migrant families.”

Manuel Rivera-Ortiz (1968) American photographer

Buffalo Rising interview (2007)

Love, People, Family, Food

“Everything is a bit of darkness, even light itself.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Todo es un poco de oscuridad, hasta la misma luz.
Voces (1943)

Light

“I’ve made some things for you, Constant Reader; you see them laid out before you in the moonlight. But before you look at the little handcrafted treasures I have for sale, let’s talk about them for a bit, shall we? It won’t take long. Here, sit down beside me. And do come a little closer. I don’t bite.
Except … we’ve known each other for a very long time, and I suspect you know that’s not entirely true.
Is it?”

Stephen King book The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, Introduction (2015)

Time

“I am so far away from being the person I want to be. I am a terrible person and I am overwhelmed with guilt. I am paralyzed with shame and fear. If I work hard at improving myself each day, I may get a little tiny bit better, but I won't get much better—I'll never be great. It's too late for me. I've really blown it.”

John S. Hall (1960) Poet, author, singer, lawyer

November 22
Quotes from Daily Negations (2007)

Fear, Personality

“Roger: It does a little bit of both I think it depends on the band. On a band that is enormously huge like Metallica it definitely hurts cause people are just going to download their stuff-period. But a smaller band maybe that hasn’t sold anything but has been able to have some good shows and get some fans out because of their MySpace or whatever you know what I mean. Using the Internet as a tool to promote the band is awesome. My sisters’ band doesn’t have a CD or whatever but they constantly pull 100 kids at their shows because they promote heavily on the internet and they stay in touch with their fans that way so it can be either or. For Less Than Jake we’re right in the middle. We definitely get a lot of paths to talk about the band, and interviews, and stuff for sale, and you know what I mean MySpace’s and Facebook’s all that kind of stuff there’s a presence there that definitely helps the band. But at the same time I know we’re one of the bands that is a victim of a lot of downloading so there you go.”

Roger Manganelli (1973) American musician

People, Way, Thinking, Sister

“It was a historic event. Not unfortunately because of its scale. Unpleasant to think about, but in terms of the scale it’s not that unusual. I did say it’s the worst, probably the worst instant human toll of any crime. And that may be true. But there are terrorist crimes with effects a bit more drawn out that are more extreme, unfortunately. Nevertheless, it’s a historic event because there was a change. The change was the direction in which the guns were pointing. That’s new. Radically new.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Quotes 2000s, 2001, The New War Against Terror, 2001

Thinking, Change

“I always play with everybody,” said Honoré. “It is my vocation. God put me on the earth to do with people what cats do to mice. Play with them, chew the last bit of life out of them, them pick them up in my mouth and drop them on people’s doorsteps. That is the business of literature.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Source: The Tales of Alvin Maker, Heartfire (1998), Chapter 6.

Life, God, People, Cats

“Now I have no idea how this has come about - probably a rumour spread by my enemies - but apparently there's a general belief among some sections of the surf community that I am a bit of a drop-in artist.”

Tom Carroll

Carroll's "bronzed emperor" column in Australia's Surfing Life magazine (edition unknown, the column about drop-ins).

Communication, Idea

“I've been educated in some pretty lively barrooms, like the Cedar Bar in New York. And I went to high school with Frank Stella and when he got out of college he went to New York and started painting… I was working with sculpture in a kind of dilatory way, and he said to come up and work in his tiny loft when he wasn't there. At the same time I sort of dabbled in a little bit of painting, and a kind of confusion. I was an eye, ear, nose, and throat person too… One day Frank Stella just said to me, 'Look, if you paint another painting I'm going to cut off your hands.' I asked, 'Can't I become a good painter?' Frank said, 'No, because you are a good sculptor now.' That's really my formal education…. the company of artists is the great education. We educate each other. I've learned from older, wiser people by the old Greek method of sitting down and drinking with them. And that's how I received my education.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 27 - quote referring to his close art-friend, American Minimal Art artist Frank Stella

People, Education, School, Way

“So the Free Man is Free. Absolutely Free. Not just a little bit free. Not cut off from all of this. That's not the nature of His Freedom—humorlessness relative to the world still, non-pleasure still. No, in His Freedom He becomes capable of humor in life, capable of pleasure, or enjoyment, in the forms that are arising. That is the fullness of God-Realization. All of the humorless, pleasureless forms of experience that are often associated with God-Realization in the traditions are not God-Realization in Truth.”

Adi Da Samraj (1939–2008) American writer

Sex, Laughter, and Real-God-Realization 1975

http://www.fearnomorezoo.org/literature/slg.php

Life, God, Pleasure, Truth

“There is a widespread view that the war against jihadism and totalitarianism involves only differences of emphasis. In other words, one might object to the intervention in Iraq on the grounds that it drew resources away from Afghanistan - you know the argument. It's important to understand that this apparent agreement does not cover or include everybody. A very large element of the Left and of the isolationist Right is openly sympathetic to the other side in this war, and wants it to win. This was made very plain by the leadership of the "anti-war" movement, and also by Michael Moore when he shamefully compared the Iraqi fascist "insurgency" to the American Founding Fathers. To many of these people, any "anti-globalization" movement is better than none. With the Right-wingers it's easier to diagnose: they are still Lindberghians in essence and they think war is a Jewish-sponsored racket. With the Left, which is supposed to care about secularism and humanism, it's a bit harder to explain an alliance with woman-stoning, gay-burning, Jew-hating medieval theocrats. However, it can be done, once you assume that American imperialism is the main enemy. Even for those who won't go quite that far, the admission that the US Marine Corps might be doing the right thing is a little further than they are prepared to go - because what would then be left of their opposition credentials, which are so dear to them?”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

"Love, Poverty and War" http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=C78DC231-4599-4745-9CA5-A398398916A0, FrontPageMagazine.com (2004-12-29). 2000s, 2004

Hate, War, People, Understanding

“Arms trade. If there was a legitimate trade, they'd sell those things - guns and bombs - in a supermarket. It would be like a cosmetics demonstration, and you'd have a little bit of shopping music in the background. And so, here's our arms trade demonstrator. 'Hello, and welcome to our new "Twilight of the World" range - our stunning new collection for nuclear winter. Now, for those persistent racial problems, why not try our new ethnic cleanser, "Pogrom"? Apply vigorously to the affected area, and then wipe off the face of the earth. For persistent outbreaks, to eliminate those last spots of resistance, why not try our new "I Can't Believe It's Not a Kalashnikov"? Go on, leaders, treat yourself. Tell yourself "I want it, I need it, I'll have it". Now, for those particularly sensitive areas, why not try our new range, "U. N."? It's entirely cosmetic; it does nothing. Apply half-heartedly with our new hand-wringing cream. Now, people often come up to me and say "Can you save my face?" Well, I can. So for those secret little deals - those secret little Iraqi liaisons - why not try "Embargo", the mark of the middleman? Now, for a touch of mystery, why not visit the "Missing Body Shop"? Collect your free nail remover and watch your problems disappear. Now, you're probably sitting there thinking "Oh, I'm such a hideous old blood-soaked dictator of a thing; nobody will deal with me". How wrong you are! We are sole suppliers to the US government of "Turn-a-Blind-Eye Liner" - use always in conjunction with "Oil of Kuwaiti", a touch of "Massacre" and blusher. Oh, you won't need that. I'm Marlene from the House of Charnel. Thank you for your time and patience. And for that finishing touch - for those romantic evenings when you really want to take the enemy out - why not try our stunning new nerve gas, "Paralyse" by Calvin Klein.' (Linda Live 1993)”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

Stand-up

People, Secret, World, Music

“After half a lifetime of poking fun at Bernard Shaw's materialism Kingsmill was not above touching the despised sage for ten quid. Even in the Australian school of literary morals, we weren't allowed to slag a man and put the bit on him simultaneously: it had to be one or the other.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Richard Ingrams at Doubting Castle'
Essays and reviews, From the Land of Shadows (1982)

School

“When someone like Kurt Cobain or Jack White comes out, they didn’t go, “He sounds just like Muddy Waters,” did they? They just said, “He’s great, he sounds like him.” When women come out and men write about them, they tend to write about them in a way that other men can understand, which sometimes can seem a bit patronizing.”

Shingai Shoniwa (1981) British musician

http://venuszine.com/stories/music/4102.php

Women, Men, Way, Understanding

“All Faith is false, all Faith is true: Truth is the shattered mirror strown
In myriad bits; while each believes his little bit the whole to own.”

Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) British explorer, geographer, translator, writer, soldier, orientalist, cartographer, ethnologist, spy, lin…

The Kasîdah of Hâjî Abdû El-Yezdî (1870)

Truth, Faith, Falseness

“The meaning of the word "gay" has changed. It used to mean all colourful and happy and homosexual, but now it's a word children use to describe something that's a little bit meh. "You're eating Weetabix? Oh, that's so gay."”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

Like, Totally (2006)

Happiness, Children, Change

“In my opinion, so much of it is really about what you had in mind when you got into it: was it only that you wanted to be a rockstar and see your name in lights? I never really had those kinds of dreams. I knew I loved music and I knew that when I sang in a certain way it made my chest and my whole stomach tickle and I liked it. It still does that same thing to me; I know I’m doing it right when it makes my core tingle a little bit. I get the same feeling when I’m painting a picture or when I get into that almost hypnotic state of writing – those things are incredible and those are the kinds of things that attract me to creativity.”

Brandon Boyd (1976) American rock singer, writer and visual artist

When asked about intention for a magazine in Berlin (http://www.pulse-berlin.com/)

Love, Dreams, Music, Way

“It sweetens every bit of work to think that I am doing it in humble, far-off, yet real imitation of Jesus.”

Elizabeth Prentiss (1818–1878) American musician, hymnwriter

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 250.

Thinking

“Michael Atkinson vows to continue to 'fight' violent media. Which seems a bit like trying to turn the tide back with a water pistol.”

Ben Croshaw (1983) English video game journalist

20 January 2010
Twitter

Water, Fight

“In the reckless phrase of the confirmed joiner in the fight for whatever relief oppressed humanity was fighting for, I had volunteered "to be useful wherever and however I could best serve," and was drafted into a Communist outfit all unknowing; this no doubt because my name was on the list of contributors to funds in aid of Sacco and Vanzetti for several years. Even from Mexico, I sent what bits of money I could, when I could, to whatever group solicited at the moment: I never inquired as to the shades of political belief because that was not what was important to me in that cause, which concerned common humanity.”

Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist

The Never-Ending Wrong (1977)

Money, Fight

“I did quite a lot of TV shows over the latter half of 2004 - all those 100 Greatest and 100 Worst and all that kind of stuff. So I was a little bit overexposed. But I think you need to do that once in your career, and that's how you become famous. You get overexposed once, and then people know your name and you can relax a bit.”

Jimmy Carr (1972) British comedian and humourist

Peter Ross (August 14, 2005) "The Joker As the face of Channel 4 he's known for his sharp suits and sharper one-liners, but what has spurred Jimmy Carr on during his swift rise from anonymity to ubiquity?", The Sunday Herald.

People, Thinking

“(speaking in a solemn tone to a group of young school children) Now you know that your headmistress, Miss Davis, was going to come in here and just check that you were all going to be well behaved. She can’t do that because, as many of you probably know, she can’t be here today, er, because her pants fell down earlier on. It’s not funny. If any of you see her, don’t make a fuss because it’s a bit embarrassing for her, OK? Alright? It’s not funny.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

TV Series and Specials (Includes DVDs), Trick of the Mind (2004–2006)

Children, School

“I was born on the planet Earth, into the middle of the twentieth century, that period in the history of the race when man succeeded in casting off many of the inhibitions and taboos laid upon him by tradition, reveled for a brief time, and then discovered that it didn’t make a bloody bit of difference that he had. He was still just as dead when he died, and he was still faced with every life-death problem that had confronted him before, compounded by the fact that Malthus was right.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 4 (p. 72)

Life, Death, History, Problem

“Talking about the particles, I know I don't have any special theory of particles. It's just the way it came out and that's the way I want to do it. Also, there are advantages to particles: you can't break them; they don't break apart. They don’t have any rigid connections; there are no rigid connections to break. The particles are always shifting around a little bit and you have to kick them back into shape. It's like tuning a piano every once in a while. I like the idea of something being permanent by being non-rigid, being absolutely non-rigid but not having a rigid form that can be broken. But a theory of particles, I don’t know. Maybe late one night after a few drinks I explained to Lucy Lippard a theory of particles. I'm sure I didn't remember the next day.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 30

Way, Idea, Drink, Night

“You will understand,” said the Weaponeer, “that a pattern for events exists. It is the function of such as myself to shape events so that they will fit the pattern.” He bent, with a graceful sweep of arm, and seized a small jagged pebble. “Just as I can grind this bit of rock to fit a round aperture.”
Kergan Banbeck reached forward, took the pebble, tossed it high over the tumbled boulders. “That bit of rock you shall never shape to fit a round hole.”
The Weaponeer shook his head in mild deprecation. “There is always more rock.”

Jack Vance book The Dragon Masters

“And there are always more holes,” declared Kergan Banbeck.
Section 2
The Dragon Masters (1962)

Understanding

“We're adapted to the meta-reality, which means that we're adapted to that which remains constant across the longest spans of time. And that's not the same things that you see around you day to day. They're just like clouds, they're just evaporating, you know? There are things underneath that that are more fundamental realities, like the dominance hierarchy, like the tribe, like the danger outside of society, like the threat that other people pose to you, and the threat that you pose to yourself. Those are eternal realities, and we're adapted to those. That's our world, and that's why we express all those things in stories. Then you might say, well how do you adapt yourself to that world? The answer, and I believe this is a neurological answer, is that your brain can tell you when you're optimally situated between chaos and order. The way it tells you that is by producing the sense of engagement and meaning. Let's say that there's a place in the environment that you should be. So what should that place be? Well, you don't want to be terrified out of your skull. What good is that? And you don't want to be so comfortable that you might as well sleep. You want to be somewhere where you are kind of on firm ground with both of your feet, but you can take a step with one leg and test out new territory. Some of you who are exploratory and emotionally stable are going to go pretty far out there into the unexplored territory without destabilizing yourself. And some people are just going to put a toe in the chaos, and that's neuroticism basically - your sensitivity to threat that is calibrated differently in different people. And some people are more exploratory than others. That's extroversion and openness, and intelligence working together. Some people are going to tolerate more chaos in their mixture of chaos and order. Those are often liberals, by the way. They're more interested in novel chaos, and conservatives are more interested in the stabilization of the structures that already exist. Who's right? It depends on the situation. That's why liberals and conservatives have to talk to each other, because one of them isn't right and the other is wrong. Sometimes the liberals are right and sometimes the liberals are right, because the environment is unpredictable and constantly changing, so that's why you have to communicate. That's what a democracy does. It allows people of different temperamental types to communicate and to calibrate their societies. So let's say you're optimally balanced between chaos and order. What does that mean? Well, you're stable enough, but you're interested. A little novelty heightens your anxiety. It wakes you up a bit. That's the adventure part of it. But it also focuses the part of your brain that does exploratory activity, and that's associated with pleasure. That's the dopamine circuit. So if you're optimally balanced - and you know you're there if you're listening to an interesting conversation or you're engaged in one…you're saying some things that you know, and the other person is saying some things that they know - and what both of you know is changing. Music can model that. It provides you with multi-level predictable forms that can transform just the right amount. So music is a very representational art form. It says, 'this is what the universe is like.' There's a dancing element to it, repetitive, and then little variations that surprise you and produce excitement in you. In doesn't matter how nihilistic you are, music still infuses you with a sense of meaning because it models meaning. That's what it does. That's why we love it. And you can dance to it, which represents you putting yourself in harmony with these multiple layers of reality, and positioning yourself properly.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

"The selection pressure that women placed on men developed the entire species. There's two things that happened. The men competed for competence, since the male hierarchy is a mechanism that pushes the best men to the top. The effect of that is multiplied by the fact that women who are hypergamous peel from the top. And so the males who are the most competent are much more likely to leave offspring, which seems to have driven cortical expansion."
Concepts

Love, Women, Men, People

“I gave him a look that said 'go on, get up if you want some more'. I've thrown a fair few benders like that in other bouts but to do it against someone of his experience is a bit special.”

Ricky Hatton (1978) English former professional boxer

Hatton retains his IBO light welterweight title and seems pleased with his efforts in the fourth round over Mexico's Jose Luis Castillo. http://news2.thdo.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/funny_old_game/6238650.stm Ricky on other boxers (Sourced)

“I thought being invisible would be great. Then I started thinking about it. It would be a bit creepy standing around and watching people. Don't you think? Then I thought a power that allowed you to light fires would be handy. I would be dangerous if you couldn't handle it, but I always have trouble at home finding matches to light candles. So if I could just walk around and light the candles with my finger, that would be kind of cool.”

Gwyneth Paltrow (1972) American actress, singer, and food writer

People, Home, Thinking, Light

“When I was out in the bars drinking and fighting I was a little bit less of a peacemaker than I would be if I'd had a coupla hits of a joint and gone and laid down somewhere.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

Willie Nelson: 'If We Made Marijuana Legal, We'd Save a Whole Lotta Money and Lives', Michael, Hann, May 17, 2012, May 20, 2012, The Guardian, Guardian News and Media Ltd. http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/may/17/30-minutes-with-willie-nelson,

Drink, Fight

“It seems evident from his unpublished piece that his reading of the Mill-Taylor letters gave Hayek a bit of a shock. He knew, of course, from the Autobiography that Mill had an elevated opinion of Mrs. Taylor. The letters seem to have convinced Hayek that she dominated him. Hayek would doubtless have seen this as a weakness, and he might well have lost some respect for Mill as a result. It may also have provided a convenient explanation for Hayek for why a great mind like Mill might nonetheless “desert” the liberal camp. (Hayek’s hope to lead others to the same conclusion might have helped motivate him to write the book on the correspondence between Mill and Taylor.) Given what has sometimes been said about the dominating personality of Hayek’s second wife, one wonders whether Hayek would later in his life have felt even more commonalities with Mill.”

Bruce Caldwell (economist) (1952) economic historian

"Hayek and Mill", History of Political Economy (2008)

Life, Books, Hope, Motivation

“I didn't find out she was actually the Queen of the Fey until some time later. Bit of a shock, but I think we could've made a go of it, if she hadn't been so dead set on wiping out the human race.”

Tom Holt (1961) British writer

You Don't Have To Be Evil To Work Here, But It Helps (2006)

Thinking, Time, Dead

“There is no gene “for” such unambiguous bits of morphology as your left kneecap or your fingernail. […] Hundreds of genes contribute to the building of most body parts and their action is channeled through a kaleidoscopic series of environmental influences: embryonic and postnatal, internal and external. Parts are not translated genes, and selection doesn't even work directly on parts.”

Stephen Jay Gould book The Panda's Thumb

"Caring Groups and Selfish Genes", p. 91
The Panda's Thumb (1980)

Parting

“I have always been ambitious, no doubt about that. I always felt like I had to reach the dizzy heights of fame and success or whatever the heights are of a number of given professions I have dabbled in, to prove myself, "Stripper of the year" a bafta or whatever, for me it was by creating something interesting and entertaining or moving, but not by compromising the thing I was creating, that thing had to reach those heights, I guess it's about being accepted and loved a bit or a lot.”

Stella Vine (1969) English artist

Stella Vine blog, http://web.archive.org/20060421143212/stellavine.blogspot.com/2006/03/harry-pye.html 2006-03-11 On ambition and creative drive.

Love, Success

“I've experienced all kinds of discrimination," Oshima says. "Only people who've been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I'm as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Eliot calls hollow men. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they're doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don't want to. Like that lovely pair we just met." He sighs and twirls the long slender pencil in his hand. "Gays, lesbians, straights, feminists, fascist pigs, communists, Hare Krishnas-none of them bother me. I don't care what banner they raise. But what I can't stand are hollow people. When I'm with them I just can't bear it, and wind up saying things I shouldn't. With those women I should've just let it slide, or else called Miss Saeki and let her handle it. She would have given them a smile and smoothed things over. But I just can't do that. I say things I shouldn't, do things I shouldn't do. I can't control myself. That's one of my weak points.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 19, Oshima

Love, Women, Men, Pain

“I think the control I had over my work was less than adequate. There was nothing wrong with the good bits in my poems, it’s just that they were packed around with lots and lots of bad bits, and I think that the only way I’ve improved in the last several decades [... ] is that I’ve learned to leave out the bad bits. I’m not sure you do improve beyond that.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

From a conversation with Peter Porter broadcast on ABC Radio, Australia in the program 'Book Talk' on Saturday 15 October 2005
Television and radio

Way, Thinking, Learning

“Let me say a little bit about the Reform party because I want you to be very clear on what the Reform party is and is not… The Reform party is very much a leader-driven party.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

1990s, Speech to the Council for National Policy (1997)

“I think it’s a good idea to tie Peter Mandelson to a van. Such an act would be cruel and barbaric and inhuman. But it would at least cheer everyone up a bit.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

Sunday Times November 8, 2009 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/jeremy_clarkson/article6907747.ece

Idea, Thinking

“By and large, horror fiction is the most difficult to domesticate because part of the point is that it's one step ahead – or behind – everybody else's taste. And I'm not really convinced I'd like it to change. There's something very healthy about horror fiction being always a little bit on the outside. It's the wild-dog genre.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

The Advocate (Feb. 21, 1995)

Dogs, Change, Parting

“Holists, either irredundant or redundant commit mistakes due to simple over-generalization (for example, that (β) always implies "Bushy Tail" which is true for only some subspecies) or systemic over-generalization to render the classification scheme more rational or symmetrical than it actually is (for example, falsely naming a subspecies "Bit QL" on the evidence that Q stands for "4-legged" and L stands for "Linear" together with the valid inference that a 4-legged linear creature exists.
A serialst is prone to list the subspecies by examining picture cards in Class A. If he is to be successful, he checks the relevance of the information entering his list by forming single predicate hypotheses.”

Gordon Pask (1928–1996) British psychologist

Source: Learning Strategies and Individual Competence (1972), p. 275.

Success, Falseness

“I must get off for a bit or I'll bonnet Joggleberry or get up and propose a national monument to Guy Fawkes or something silly.”

John Buchan book The Power-House

Source: The Power-House (1916), Ch. 1 "Beginning of the Wild-Goose Chase"

Guy

“When we look into the face of every single refugee, especially the children and women, we can feel their suffering. A human being who is a bit more fortunate has the duty to help them. On the other hand, there are too many now. Europe, for example Germany, cannot become an Arab country. Germany is Germany. There are so many that in practice it becomes difficult. [F]rom a moral point of view too, I think that the refugees should only be admitted temporarily. The goal should be that they return and help rebuild their countries.”

Tenzin Gyatso (1935) spiritual leader of Tibet

As quoted in "Dalai Lama says 'too many' refugees in Europe" http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/Dalai-Lama-says-too-many-refugees-in-Europe/articleshow/52522387.cms, The Times of India (31 May 2016)

Women, Children, Feeling, Thinking

“Rolling Stone: What was your headspace at the time of Superunknown? A lot of the lyrics are dark.
Cornell: I don't know if I would say I was in a particularly dark or moody headspace more than other times. I feel the lyrics have to be born from the music. Or if I had a lyrical idea, separate from Soundgarden music, I knew if it would work with the band because it tended to reflect what the music was and what the feeling of the music was – which was usually somewhat dark and somber or moody, or over-the-top, visceral, aggressive angry.
Rolling Stone: So it wasn't an especially dark time?
Cornell: No, not that I remember. No more than usual. I think that I always struggled with depression and isolation, so those could come out. I think that the mood of Seattle to me, and the way that I always interpreted that mood was something that was always a little bit introspective and dark. And I wouldn't say "depressing," but introspective in a way that could be moodier and darker.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Interview with Rolling Stone, 2014 https://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/soundgardens-chris-cornell-on-superunknown-depression-w483113, On depression and suicide

Music, Way, Feeling, Idea

“Life with a Jolly Parent is a bit like life in a holiday camp. The beds are too small and there's an outbreak of Salmonella every five minutes.”

Peter Corey (1946) British writer

Coping With series, Coping With Parents (1989)

Life, Parent, Holiday

“A city’s architecture is always a bit like a constructed, psychological version of its people.”

Jacques Herzog (1950) Swiss architect

elbphilharmonie.de https://www.elbphilharmonie.de/elbphilharmonie-projekt-herzogdemeuron.en.

People

“Those who betray or subvert the Constitution are guilty of sedition and/or treason, are domestic enemies and should and will be punished accordingly. It also stands to reason that anyone who sympathizes with the enemy or gives aid or comfort to said enemy is likewise guilty. I have sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic and I will. And I will because not only did I swear to, but I believe in what it stands for in every bit of my heart, soul and being. I know in my heart that I am right in my struggle, Steve. I have come to peace with myself, my God and my cause. Blood will flow in the streets, Steve. Good vs. Evil. Free Men vs. Socialist Wannabe Slaves. Pray it is not your blood, my friend.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

Letter to Steve Hodge.
1990s

Men, God, Peace, Soul

“I saw quite a bit of the Great Calcutta Killing of August 16-17, 1946 with my own eyes. There were a large number of dead bodies lying on the streets. There were many more floating down the Hooghly. I saw an extensive destruction of private and public property by fire as well as by mob fury. The death and desolation all around moved me to despair about human nature itself. But I did not try to find the causes of this holocaust or to fix its responsibility on the political movement which had provoked it. Instead, I wrote a long article, The Devil Dance In Calcutta, in which I held both Hindus and Muslims equally responsible for this meaningless massacre.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

How I became a Hindu (1982)

Death, Lying, Nature, Dance

“No.3 Commando was very anxious to be chums with Lord Glasgow, so they offered to blow up an old tree stump for him and he was very grateful and said don't spoil the plantation of young trees near it because that is the apple of my eye and they said no of course not we can blow a tree down so it falls on a sixpence and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever and he asked them all to luncheon for the great explosion.
So Col. Durnford-Slater DSO said to his subaltern, have you put enough explosive in the tree?. Yes, sir, 75lbs. Is that enough? Yes sir I worked it out by mathematics it is exactly right. Well better put a bit more. Very good sir.
And when Col. D Slater DSO had had his port he sent for the subaltern and said subaltern better put a bit more explosive in that tree. I don't want to disappoint Lord Glasgow. Very good sir.
Then they all went out to see the explosion and Col. DS DSO said you will see that tree fall flat at just the angle where it will hurt no young trees and Lord Glasgow said goodness you are clever.
So soon they lit the fuse and waited for the explosion and presently the tree, instead of falling quietly sideways, rose 50 feet into the air taking with it ½ acre of soil and the whole young plantation.
And the subaltern said Sir, I made a mistake, it should have been 7½ not 75. Lord Glasgow was so upset he walked in dead silence back to his castle and when they came to the turn of the drive in sight of his castle what should they find but that every pane of glass in the building was broken.
So Lord Glasgow gave a little cry and ran to hide his emotions in the lavatory and there when he pulled the plug the entire ceiling, loosened by the explosion, fell on his head.
This is quite true.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Letter to his wife (31 May 1942)

Disappointment, Mathematics, Tree, Silence

“Well, Lyndon, you may be right and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but I'd feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once.”

Sam Rayburn (1882–1961) lawmaker from Bonham, Texas

To Lyndon Johnson, regarding Johnson's attendance at his first Cabinet meeting (under Kennedy); reported in David Halberstam, The Best and the Brightest (1972), Introduction.

Feeling, Intelligence

“I think I'm a sober person. I think the press tries to make you into something a little bit different. In my case, a little bit of a wild man, I'm not, I'm actually not. I'm a very sober person.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

During an interview on 60 Minutes (11 November 2016)
2010s, 2016, November

Thinking, Personality

“Pilgrim gets 1 hacked daughter,
And all we get are 40 hack reporters,
Uptown 100 skirts are bleeding,
And Mr. Evangilist says She's hit, ev'ry little bit.”

Nick Cave (1957) Australian musician

Song lyrics, Junkyard (1982), She's Hit

Daughters

“Then we have computer science. It is true that software cannot exercise its powers of lightness except through the weight of hardware. But it is the software that gives the orders, acting on the outside world and on machines that exist only as functions of software and evolve so that they can work out ever more complex programs. The second industrial revolution, unlike the first, does not present us with such crushing images as rolling mills and molten steel, but with "bits" in a flow of information traveling along circuits in the form of electronic impulses. The iron machines still exist, but they obey the orders of weightless bits.”

Italo Calvino book Six Memos for the Next Millennium

Six Memos for the Next Millennium (1988) , "Lightness"
English translation: Patrick Creagh (1996).

World, Travel, Exercises, Light

“Men don't come to see other women to help take out the garbage and if they wanted to put up the screens they would have stayed home. So mistresses tend to get a steady diet of whipped cream, but no meat and potatoes, and wives often get the reverse, when both would like a bit of each.”

Merle Shain (1935–1989) Canadian writer

Some Men are More Perfect Than Others (1973)

Women, Men, Home, Help

“I think that physics is about escaping the prison of the received thoughts and searching for novel ways of thinking the world, about trying to clear a bit the misty lake of insubstantial dreams, which reflect reality like the lake reflects the mountains.”

Carlo Rovelli Quantum gravity

Source: Quantum gravity (2004), p. xvii

World, Dreams, Way, Search

“All journalism is investigative to a greater or lesser extent, but investigative journalism – though it is a bit of a tautology – is that because it requires more, it's where the investigative element is more pronounced.”

Alan Rusbridger (1953) British newspaper editor

Rusbridger (1999) cited in: Hugo De Burgh (2008) Investigative journalism. p. 17.
1990s

“By this time I had discovered that all the gamey bits were cut out of the school texts, because I had a Shakespeare of my own; the Ontario Department of Education was hard at its impossible task of trying to educate the masses without in any permanent way inflaming their minds.”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Shakespeare over the Port (1960)

Education, School, Way, Time

“The first thing you’ve got to do is tell yourself that the shitheads are wrong…Not just a little bit wrong, but irremediably, absolutely, and endemically wrong. Nothing you can say or do will stop their being wrong. They’re damned to eternal wrongness, and that’s God’s will.”

Sheri S. Tepper book Grass

Source: Grass (1989), Chapter 7 (pp. 140-141)

God

“When I think back on Kong, that was like difficult too, because there was no reality in making that movie. There was so much that was left to my own devices and imagination. And when I had to play a scene opposite a 45-foot ape, that was bit taxing on your imagination because obviously there was nothing there, you know.”

Jessica Lange (1949) American actress

New Again: Jessica Lange http://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/new-again-jessica-lange/#_ (June 29, 2016)

Imagination, Thinking, Reality

“Only when the habit of one's consciousness to see in paintings bits of nature, Madonna's and shameless nudes.... has disappeared, shall we see a pure painting composition. I have transformed myself into the nullity of forms and pulled myself out of the circle of things, out of the circle-horizon in which the artist and forms of nature are locked.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

as quoted in: Marc Chagall, – a Biography, Sidney Alexander, Cassell, London, 1978, p. 178
1910 - 1920

Nature, Painting

“Man's role is uncertain, undefined, and perhaps unnecessary. By a great effort man has hit upon a method of compensating himself for his basic inferiority. Equipped with various mysterious noise-making instruments, whose potency rests upon their actual form's being unknown to those who hear the sounds — that is, the women and children must never know that they are really bamboo flutes, or hollow logs, or bits of elliptic wood whirled on strings — they can get the male children away from the women, brand them as incomplete, and themselves turn boys into men. Women, it is true, make human beings, but only men can make men.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

Source: 1940s, Male and Female (1949), p. 84 as cited in: John Whiting, Eleanor Hollenberg Chasdi, Roy D'Andrade (2006) Culture and Human Development: The Selected Papers of John Whiting. p. 240

Women, Men, Children, Boy

“I remember when I was eight, my friends thought it was a little bit unusual that I was going off to Europe or to Asia, and playing concerts. And they would go to Tower (Records) and see my CD out. So that was a little different! But, I guess they've gotten used to it now, and really could not care less," she asserted. "It's nice because most of my friends are not musicians, and it keeps me grounded.”

Sarah Chang (1980) violinist

Korean Quarterly 1998 http://www.koreanquarterly.org/Summer98/sarahchang.asp

“On Steve's dancing ability- er, it's just like a bit of weird art”

Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer

Podcast Series 3 Episode 4
On Stephen Merchant

Art, Dance

“Telephones are like women. No one really knows anything about them. One fine day, something goes wrong; you try to find out why, no good, you swear, you shake them up a bit and all is well.”

André Maurois (1885–1967) French writer

Les silences du colonel Bramble (The Silence of Colonel Bramble)

Women

“We don't know what organization is. …We do know that complex adaptive systems have to be nonlinear and capable of storing information. …We know a little bit about what distinguishes an adaptive complex system from a nonadaptive system, such as turbulent fluid flow.”

J. Doyne Farmer (1952) American physicist and entrepreneur (b.1952)

The Third Culture: Beyond the Scientific Revolution (1995)

“I guess the other thing I find a little bit on the downside is that all the papers can now be downloaded off the web. That bothers me a little because I think in the old days, when you picked up the journal, you kind of looked at everything on the back of it, the titles, and there were things you didn’t know that much about or that you had a faint connection with, and maybe you looked at the paper; maybe you read the abstract at least. Nowadays, you just dial up what you’re interested in; you don’t see any of the rest of the literature. I do worry over this kind of compartmentalization of astronomy, which I think has gotten to be a bit out of hand…”

Robert Kraft (astronomer) (1927–2015) American astronomer

Interview of Robert Kraft by Patrick McCray on August 1-2, 2002, Niels Bohr Library & Archives, American Institute of Physics.

Literature, Thinking, Reading

“I make that --- twice now, on a Monday I let returning Iraqi injured soldiers come to the premises. The most beautiful people I've ever seen. But they're missing arms and legs, they're with their wives, sometimes they're with their girlfriends. And the tears are coming down the faces of these people. I mean, thousands and maybe hundreds of thousands, and the Iraqis that have been just maimed and killed. This war is a horrible thing. Now, President Bush says he's religious. And yet 400,000 people, the way I count it, have died, and probably millions have been badly maimed and injured. What's going on? What's going on? And the day we pull out it's going to explode. We're keeping the lid on a little bit. It's still a catastrophe, but the day we pull out, because they're in a civil war. Whether we want to admit it or not, they're in a civil war.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Interview on "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0703/16/sitroom.03.html (16 March 2007) 2000s

War, People, Beauty, Way

“Entertainment has to come hand in hand with a little bit of medicine. Some people go to the movies to be reminded that everything's okay. I don't make those kinds of movies. That, to me, is a lie. Everything's not okay.”

David Fincher (1962) American film director

The Curious Case of David Fincher (2007)

People, Lie

“Well, there were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”

Diana, Princess of Wales (1961–1997) First wife of Charles, Prince of Wales

Responding to the question "Do you think Mrs Parker Bowles was a factor in the breakdown of your marriage?" in an interview with Martin Bashir http://www.bbc.co.uk/politics97/diana/panorama.html on BBC Panorama (20 November 1995)

Marriage

“About the accident itself I can say very little. Almost nothing. It involved something falling from the sky. Technology. Parts, bits. That's it, really: all I can divulge. Not much, I know.
It's not that I'm being shy. It's just that—well, for one, I don't even remember the event. It's a blank: a white slate, a black hole. I have vague images, half-impressions: of being, or having been—or, more precisely, being about to be—hit; blue light; railings; lights of other colours; being held above some kind of tray or bed. But who's to say my traumatized mind didn't just make them up, or pull them out from somewhere else, some other slot, and stick them there to plug the gap—the crater—that the accident had blown? Minds are versatile and wily things. Real chancers.”

Tom McCarthy (writer) book Déjà vu

Source: Remainder (2005), Ch. 1.

Light, Parting

“We have to be tough. It's time we're going to be a little bit tough, folks. We're taken advantage by every nation in the world, virtually. It's not going to happen any more.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

White House suggests US may still accept Australia refugees despite clash https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/02/donald-trump-australia-refugees-malcolm-turnbull-phone-call (2 February 2017) 2010s, 2017, February

World, Time

“Even read in such broken bits Origen is real food and drink. You can feel it being absorbed, right away, into your very blood. How terse, how compact he is! All this modern stuff is barley-water in comparison.”

Ida Friederike Görres (1901–1971) Austrian writer and noble

Broken Lights p. 87 Diaries 1951-1952.

Food, Feeling, Drink, Water

“My attitude to writing is.. it's like when you do wallpapering, you know, you remember where all the little bits are that don't meet, you think: "Oh my God that's horrible…" And then your friends come and say: "Who did this wallpapering? It's terrific!"”

Harrison Birtwistle (1934) British composer

Interviewed by Dan Warburton, July 8, 1995. http://www.paristransatlantic.com/magazine/interviews/birtwistle.html

God, Thinking

“I wasn't into glam-rock. I was just into him. I never really saw him as glam-rock. Actually, I liked T-Rex too. Electric Warrior was great. But Bowie made me think. I just got lost in it—Man Who Sold the World, Hunky Dory, Ziggy Stardust—that era. I thought it was just magical, although I was dead impressionable then. But I though he looked brilliant—I still do. I hated the following he had though, especially around the Aladdin Sane era—it just destroyed his mystique. He doesn't hold that mystique for me now—he's just a normal bloke, I suppose. But I remember in 1972 when he was on the telly doing "Starman"—I couldn't believe it! It was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It's meant to be a bit of an embarrassing admission now to have liked that kind of thing, but I really did. And I remember when I grew out of it and I couldn't get into Ziggy Stardust the way I used to. I felt really sad about it. I played it and nothing happened.”

Ian McCulloch (1959) singer, musician

Describing how he feels about David Bowie
NME (1980)

Hate, World, Sadness, Way

“Only six months ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with the censorship and book-burning in the future, wrote to tell me of this exquisite irony. Judy-Lynn Del Rey, one of the new Ballantine editors, is having the entire book reset and republished this summer with all the damns and hells back in place.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 (1953), Coda (1979)

Books, Fear, Hell, Reading

“I count the columned waves at war
With Titan elements; and they,
In martial splendor, storm the bar
And shake the world, these bits of spray.”

Joaquin Miller (1837–1913) American judge

The Building of the City Beautiful (1905), Ch. V : How Beautiful!, p. 48.

War, World

“Beautifully written… the webs of imagery that Harris has so carefully woven… contains writing of which our best writers would be proud… there is not a singly ugly or dead sentence…' - or so sang the critics. Hannibal is a genre novel, and all genre novels contain dead sentences - unless you feel the throb of life in such periods as 'Tommaso put the lid back on the cooler' or 'Eric Pickford answered' or 'Pazzi worked like a man possessed' or 'Margot laughed in spite of herself' or 'Bob Sneed broke the silence.' What these commentators must be thinking of, I suppose, are the bits when Harris goes all blubbery and portentous (every other phrase a spare tyre), or when, with a fugitive poeticism, he swoons us to a dying fall: 'Starling looked for a moment through the wall, past the wall, out to forever and composed herself…' 'It seemed forever ago…' 'He looked deep, deep into her eyes…' 'His dark eyes held her whole…' Needless to say, Harris has become a serial murderer of English sentences, and Hannibal is a necropolis of prose.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

Review of Hannibal by Thomas Harris, p. 240
The War Against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 (2001)

Life, Feeling, Thinking, Silence

“Life is a transforming flood that fills up empty containers and then spills out of them on its way to fill up more. The shape and number of vessels submerged by the flood doesn't make a bit of difference.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995)

Life, Way

“I can live with doubt, and uncertainty, and not knowing. I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers, and possible beliefs, and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything. There are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask "Why are we here?" I might think about it a little bit, and if I can't figure it out then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose — which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell. Possibly. It doesn't frighten me.”

Richard Feynman book The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

Source: No Ordinary Genius (1994), p. 239, from interview in "The Pleasure of Finding Things Out" (1981): video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEwUwWh5Xs4&t=48m10s

Way, Feeling, Thinking, Universe

“The followers of Derrida are pathetic, snuffling in French pockets for bits of pieces of a deconstructive method already massively and coherently presented — and with a mature sense of the sacred — in Buddhism and Hinduism.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sex, Art and American Culture : New Essays (1992), Junk Bonds and Corporate Raiders : Academe in the Hour of the Wolf, p. 214

Sense

“The fact that Fred and I were in no way similar - nor were we the best male dancers around never occurred to the public or the journalists who wrote about us…Fred and I got the cream of the publicity and naturally we were compared. And while I personally was proud of the comparison, because there was no-one to touch Fred when it came to "popular" dance, we felt that people, especially film critics at the time, should have made an attempt to differentiate between our two styles. Fred and I both got a bit edgy after our names were mentioned in the same breath. I was the Marlon Brando of dancers, and he the Cary Grant. My approach was completely different from his, and we wanted the world to realise this, and not lump us together like peas in a pod. If there was any resentment on our behalf, it certainly wasn't with each other, but with people who talked about two highly individual dancers as if they were one person. For a start, the sort of wardrobe I wore - blue jeans, sweatshirt, sneakers - Fred wouldn't have been caught dead in. Fred always looked immaculate in rehearsals, I was always in an old shirt. Fred's steps were small, neat, graceful and intimate - mine were ballet-oriented and very athletic. The two of us couldn't have been more different, yet the public insisted on thinking of us as rivals…I persuaded him to put on his dancing shoes again, and replace me in Easter Parade after I'd broken my ankle. If we'd been rivals, I certainly wouldn't have encouraged him to make a comeback.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Gene Kelly interviewed in Hirschhorn, Clive. Gene Kelly, A Biography. W.H Allen, London, 1984. p. 117. ISBN 0491031823.

People, World, Shoe, Way

“The fear of missing out means today's media, more than ever before, hunts in a pack. In these modes it is like a feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits. But no-one dares miss out.”

Tony Blair (1953) former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Lecture on Our Nation's Future - Public Life http://web.archive.org/20071029204355/www.number10.gov.uk/output/Page11923.asp, Reuters, 12 June 2007. 2000s

People, Fear, Tear

“My serve used to be a weakness and I don't think it's a weakness anymore. I'm trying to come a lot more to the net and trying to be more offensive — not in terms of hitting the ball harder, which I think is quite hard for me to hit it any harder than I do — but in terms of building the point and coming to the net and being offensive at the net. A lot of the top girls barely do (come to net) except like Mauresmo or Henin does it a little bit, but a lot of girls don't do it.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

Source: Tennis Week "The Tennis Week Interview: Sania Mirza"

Girl, Thinking

“Some of my friends good-humoredly – and some a little bit severely – have called me a 'mystic.' Well I'd like to say this about any w:mysticism I may suppose to have. If an arch-angel from heaven were to come, and were to start giving me, telling me, teaching me, and giving me instruction, I'd ask him for the text. I'd say, 'Where's it say that in the Bible? I want to know.' And I would insist that it was according to the scriptures, because I do not believe in any extra-scriptural teachings, nor any anti-scriptural teachings, or any sub-scriptural teachings. I think we ought to put the emphasis where God puts it, and continue to put it there, and to expound the scriptures, and stay by the scriptures. I wouldn't – no matter if I saw a light above the light of the sun, I'd keep my mouth shut about it 'til I'd checked with Daniel and Revelation and the rest of the scriptures to see if it had any basis in truth. And if it didn't, I'd think I'd just eaten something I shouldn't, and I wouldn't say anything about it. Because I don't believe in anything that is unscriptural or that is anti-scripture.”

Aiden Wilson Tozer (1897–1963) American missionary

What Difference Does the Holy Spirit Make?

God, Truth, Angels, Thinking

“Like any major intellectual contribution, Keynes's ideas were bitterly criticized. To many people it seems obvious that massive economic slumps must have deep roots. To them, Keynes's argument that they are essentially no more than a problem of mixed signals, which can be cured by printing a bit more money, seems unbelievable.”

Paul Krugman book Peddling Prosperity

Source: Peddling Prosperity (1994), Ch. 1 : The Attack on Keynes

Money, People, Idea, Problem

“I don’t believe in fashion dictatorship, and I find that anybody who follows the dictates of fashion is a bit lost. I’m excited by style, not so much by fashion.”

Marc Jacobs (1963) American fashion designer

Jonkers, Gert (2003). "Friendly homosexual fashion designer likes dogs but finds fashionable men terribly unsexy" http://www.buttmagazine.com/Issues/7_Jacobs.html buttmagazine.com (accessed April 19, 2007) On his perfect customer

Fashion

Quotes about bit page 7

Quotes about bit
page 7