Quotes about cover
page 3

“The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Handwritten note responding to a question about posing nude, as quoted in International Herald Tribune (5 October 1984)
Variant: The body is meant to be seen, not all covered up.

“I'm screaming for help and everybody's acting as if I'm singing Ethel Merman covers…”

David Foster Wallace book Infinite Jest

Source: Infinite Jest

Singing, Help

“One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.”

Harold Pinter (1930–2008) playwright from England

Writing for the Theatre (1962)
Source: Various Voices: Prose, Poetry, Politics
Context: The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don't hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, and anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness. (14)

Way

“I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them--with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.”

Eudora Welty book One Writer's Beginnings

One Writer's Beginnings(1984)
Context: It had been startling and disappointing to me to find out that story books had been written by people, that books were not natural wonders, coming up of themselves like grass. Yet regardless of where they came from, I cannot remember a time when I was not in love with them -- with the books themselves, cover and binding and the paper they were printed on, with their smell and their weight and with their possession in my arms, captured and carried off to myself.

Love, Books, Time

“The book she had been reading was under her pillow, pressing its cover against her ear as if to lure her back into its printed pages.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Books, Reading

“I assure you, princess, if you saw the real me, you’d run for cover. (Zarek)
Only if I knew you’d be waiting under that cover for me. (Astrid)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Waiting, Princess

“Have you ever heard a blindfolded octopus unwrap a cellophane-covered bathtub?”

Norton Juster book The Phantom Tollbooth

Source: The Phantom Tollbooth

“Mo Nighean donn," he whispered," mo chridhe. My brown lass, my heart."
Come to me. Cover me. Shelter me. a bhean, heal me. Burn with me, as I burn for you.”

Diana Gabaldon book The Fiery Cross

Source: The Fiery Cross

Heart

“He'll love and hate equally under cover, and esteem it a species of impertinence to loved or hated again.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

Love, Hate

“Some people say "if we split up, we can cover more ground"-with blood”

Seth Grahame-Smith (1976) US fiction author

Source: How to Survive a Horror Movie

People

“The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the globe . . . The sea is only a receptacle for all the prodigious, supernatural things that exist inside it. It is only movement and love; it is the living infinite.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Love, Sea

“The covers of this book are too far apart.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Books

“The cemetery is an open space among the ruins covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

Preface
Source: Adonais (1821)

Love, Death, Thinking, Winter

“Too often I would hear men boast of the miles covered that day, rarely of what they had seen”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Men

“Adrian looked away from me and down to where my hand covered his. I blushed and pulled away. “Sorry” I’d probably freaked him out”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

“I got ready for bed and crawled in. The covers were comfortable and warm, but the pillow was just too weird. It gave me neck cramps, so I put it on the floor and went to sleep without it.
My first big mistake.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Sleep

“I like the cover," he said. "Don't Panic. It's the first helpful or intelligible thing anybody's said to me all day.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Intelligence, Help

“You can cover a great deal of country in books.”

Andrew Lang (1844–1912) Scots poet, novelist and literary critic

Books, Country

“… and Jo laid the rustling sheets together with a careful hand, as one might shut the covers of a lovely romance, which holds the reader fast till the end comes, and he finds himself alone in the work-a-day world again.”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

Love, World

“William untucked the covers and stood, making a mental list of everything he'd need for the coming trip. A few blades, serrated and non serrated. A vial of acid. A bone saw. A spiked paddle. A cat-o'-nine-tails. And a bag of Gummy Bears.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Secret

Cats

“Where would I find enough leather
To cover the entire surface of the earth?
But with leather soles beneath my feet,
It’s as if the whole world has been covered.”

Šantidéva (685–763) 8th-century Indian Buddhist monk and scholar

§ 5.13
Bodhicaryavatara, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life
Context: Where would there be leather enough to cover the entire world? With just the leather of my sandals, it is as if the whole world were covered. Likewise, I am unable to restrain external phenomena, but I shall restrain my own mind. What need is there to restrain anything else?

World

“I love you,' Rachael said. 'If I entered a room and found a sofa covered with your hide I'd score very high on the Voigt-Kampff test.”

Philip K. Dick book Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Source: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Love

“I'll cover you in flowers someday, Julie-girl.”

Lurlene McDaniel (1944) American writer

Source: Don't Die, My Love

Girl, Flowers

“One time I actually cleaned out my closet so good I ended up on the cover of Time magazine.”

Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress

Time

“Their house had real hard-cover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.”

David Sedaris book Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

Variant: Their house had real hardcover books in it, and you often saw them lying open on the sofa, the words still warm from being read.
Source: Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

Books, Lying, Reading, Housing

“Two days after my dad's funeral, my mom went on a mission. I never understood it until then--that sometimes a spy doesn't need a cover so much as she needs a shield.”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Moms

“The sun rose like a stripper, keeping its glory well covered by cloud till it seemed there'd be no show at all.”

Clive Barker book Cabal

Source: Cabal

Sun

“I thought about all the things I was suddenly able to do—like fight with a sword and summon a magical shell of armor. Those were not things I covered in home school.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

School, Home, Fight

“So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

Source: Middlesex

Love, Men, Boy

“There are no new stories. It all depends on how you handle them. In romances the characters are going to fall in love with each other; you know that when you see the syrupy cover. It's how get there that's the fun.”

Jude Deveraux (1947) American writer

Love, Dependency

“My books hold between their covers every story I've ever known and still remember, or have now forgotten, or may one day read; they fill the space around me with ancient and new voices.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

Books, Reading

“Really? That would be a first. I'm the son of, Jason. I might as well be covered in blood or sewage, the way people treat me. I don't belong anywhere. I'm not even from this. But that's not enough to set me apart.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

People, Way

“Paintings are seldom guilty and often framed for crimes they did not commit. Some cover holes-holes in walls, holes in lives. Some make holes-in wallets, holes in hearts… in negative space.”

Marilyn Manson (1969) American rock musician and actor

Heart, Painting

“I go back to my room and lie under the covers, trying not to think of Gale and thinking of nothing else.”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Source: Catching Fire

Lie, Thinking

“I cover my face with my arms because this isn't happening. It isn't possible. For someone to make Peeta forget he loves me… no one can do that.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

Love, Forgetting

“to know a piece of grass, you’ve got to see the ground that grew it. Maybe that’s why I remember every detail of that night, every inch of ground we covered, as I followed Zach to the place that had made him, seeing them both with fresh eyes.”

Ally Carter book Only the Good Spy Young

Source: Only the Good Spy Young

Grass, Night

“I watched a lot of YouTube videos of cute geeky girls playing '80s cover tunes on ukuleles. Technically, this wasn't part of my research, but I had a serious cute-geeky-girls-playing-ukuleles fetish that I can neither explain nor defend.”

Ernest Cline book Ready Player One

Source: Ready Player One

Girl, Parting

“words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Hope, Joy

“People who advocate simplicity have money in the bank; the money came first, not the simplicity. (from inside the cover)”

Douglas Coupland The Gum Thief

JPod (2006)
Source: The Gum Thief

Money, People

“Agh-uhh!” the baboon grunted. He turned and waddled up the stairs. Unfortunately, the Lakers jersey didn’t completely cover his multicolored rear.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

“This book will take you two days to read. Did you even see the cover? It’s mostly pink. If you’re reading this book every night for months, something is not right.”

Mindy Kaling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Source: Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Books, Reading, Night

“Hey, look—youris saying something."
Artemis had a vast mental reserve of scathing comebacks at his disposal, but none of them covered girlfriend insults. He wasn't even sure if it was an insult. And if it was, who was being insulted? Him or the girl?”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Girl

“Nakedness has no color: this can come as news only to those who have never covered, or been covered by, another naked human being.”

James Baldwin book No Name in the Street

Source: No Name in the Street

Color

“I wonder whether there is such a thing as a sense of individuality. Is it all a facade, covering a deep need to belong? Are we simply pack animals desperately trying to pretend we are not?”

Rabih Alameddine (1959) Lebanese-American painter and writer.

Source: I, The Divine: A Novel in First Chapters

Sense, Animals

“She gave me the jabs and said I was covered for every worst-case scenario, including being bitten by a dirty chimp. I told her this is why we have over-population problems. Why are idiots who annoy dirty chimps being protected?”

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

Source: An Idiot Abroad: The Travel Diaries of Karl Pilkington

Problem

“When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Source: Keeping a Rendezvous

Books, Reading

“Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Source: The Waste Land

Winter, Forgetting

“And books, they offer one hope -- that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.”

Anne Rice book Blackwood Farm

Source: Blackwood Farm (2002)
Context: "No, but one can feel desperate at any age, don't you think? The young are eternally desperate," he said frankly. "And books, they offer one hope – that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.

Books, Hope, Universe

“I'm jus' pain covered with skin.”

John Steinbeck book The Grapes of Wrath

Source: The Grapes of Wrath

Pain

“The oversized chairs are white; the walls, covered with occasional landscape paintings, are white; and the plush carpet is the whitest of all. I'm insanely glad I didn't bring a cup of grape juice with me.”

Wendy Mass (1967) American children's writer

Painting

“Loneliness watches and sights, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over… himself, fully dressed, shoes and all. He’s going to make me sleep with him again tonight, i just know it.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Shoe, Sleep, Loneliness

“Everybody thinks I'm this delicate little girl. But you can't tell a book by it's cover.' To which she added a momentary smile.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Books, Smile, Girl, Thinking

“Okay, first thing tomorrow we hit the streets around Taccone's place. Somebody saw something.'

'I got it covered.'

'The DiMarcos might be in town.'

'Actually, they're in jail.'

'All seven of them?'

Hale shrugged. 'It was an interesting October.”

Ally Carter book Heist Society

Source: Heist Society

“A man on a thousand mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, 'Today I'm going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

Sleep, Forgetting

“The aim of literature… is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.”

Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

"Florence Green is 81".
Source: Come Back, Dr. Caligari (1964)
Context: His examiner... said severely: "Baskerville, you blank round, discursiveness is not literature." "The aim of literature," Baskerville replied grandly, "is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart."

Literature, Heart

“The question of the stranger in a society which estranges everybody from it--while forcing everybody to assimilate their own alienation--takes cover under dubious and sinister masks.”

Norman Manea (1936) Romanian writer

Question

“A rich man's faults are covered with money, but a surgeon's faults are covered with earth.”

Abraham Verghese book Cutting for Stone

Source: Cutting for Stone

Money

“For several long moments we remained locked together, and I think I covered her hair with small sacred kisses, her perfume crucifying me with memories.”

Anne Rice book Merrick

Source: Merrick

Kiss, Thinking, Memory

“Boys think girls are like books, If the cover doesn't catch their eye they won't bother to read what's inside.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Variant: Boys think girls are like books, If the cover doesn't catch their eye they won't bother to read what's inside.

Books, Girl, Boy, Thinking

“Its a perfectly good face, Sparhawk."
"It covers the front of my head. What else can you expect from a face?”

David Eddings book The Diamond Throne

Source: The Diamond Throne

“The truth is we never stop being children, terrible children covered in sores and knotty veins and tumors and age spots, but ultimately children, in other words we never stop clinging to life because we are life.”

Roberto Bolaño book 2666

Source: 2666

Life, Children, Truth, Age

“He smiled as Will handled the flask gingerly. 'there's a glass bottle inside, but it's padded with straw and protected by the leather covering. It's quite safe. Just be careful how you handle it.”

John Flanagan (1873–1938) Irish-American hammer thrower

Smile

“Old books that we have known but not possessed cross our path and invite themselves over. New books try to seduce us daily with tempting titles and tantalizing covers.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

Books

“Nothing is as tedious as the limping days,
When snowdrifts yearly cover all the ways,
And ennui, sour fruit of incurious gloom,
Assumes control of fate’s immortal loom”

Charles Baudelaire book Le Spleen de Paris

Source: Paris Spleen

Fate, Way

“But what happens when her beauty is torn from her like a cover from a book? Will he care to read her then, although her pages speak of nothing but love for him?”

Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) American writer

Love, Books, Beauty, Reading

“There's no way you're going to get a quote from us to use on your book cover.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Metropolitan Police Spokesperson
Source: Wall and Piece (2005)

Books, Way, Quotes

“I have another friend who gets what I’m really like, and I get her. She scares me. Did you ever see yourself times ten in another person and want to cover your eyes?”

Megan Abbott book The Fever

Source: The Fever

Time, Personality

“Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.”

Leo Tolstoy book Anna Karenina

(voice of Anna) C. Garnett, trans. (New York: 2003), Part 7, Chapter 24 p. 685
Source: Anna Karenina (1875–1877; 1878)

Love, Wise

“My mother would take the Band-Aid off, clean the wound, and say, “Things that are covered don’t heal well.” Mother was right. Things that are covered do not heal well.”

T.D. Jakes (1957) American bishop

Source: Healing the Wounds of the Past

“When the horse was little, Massie had covered the walls with posters of young fillies that she thought Brownie would find sexy.”

Lisi Harrison (1970) Canadian writer

Source: Revenge of the Wannabes

Horse

“Here was a torture that Greek inventors of the Feast and the Stone had omitted from their Hades: the Blanket of Self-Deception. A lovely warm blanket as far as it covered the soul in torment, but it never quite covered everything.”

Jonathan Franzen book The Corrections

Source: The Corrections

Love, Soul

“And so I went through the looking glass, stepped into the netherworld, where up is down and food is greed, where convex mirrors cover the walls, where death is honor and flesh is weak. It is ever so easy to go. Harder to find your way back.”

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Death, Food, Way

“They say the seeds of what we will do are in all of us, but it always seemed to me that in those who make jokes in life the seeds are covered with better soil and with a higher grade of manure.”

Ernest Hemingway book A Moveable Feast

Source: A Moveable Feast (1964), Ch. 11

Life

“But then the girl moved, and smiled, and pulled her hand from the grate- a gorgeous green stone clutched tightly in her grasp. It was covered with dust and cobwebs, but it was uncracked and unharmed.
And, of course, completely fake.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: Uncommon Criminals

Smile, Girl

“He had this old southern idea of what a lady should be. A lady should not carry a gun and spend most of her time covered in blood and corpses. I had two words for that attitude.
Yeah, those are the words.”

Laurell K. Hamilton (1963) Novelist

Idea, Time

“Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels wound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Love, Life, People

“Now don’t you be covering for him, Ash. (She wagged her finger at Nick.) Are you driving? (Cherise)
No, Mom. I’m sitting. (Nick)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon Night Embrace

Source: Night Embrace

Moms

“Now, I'm not very vain. If I'd ever been, making my living covered in various grease and dirt mixtures would have cured me quickly. Still, I wasn't up to facing two sexy men when I had one eye swollen mostly shut and half of my face black and blue.”

Patricia Briggs book Blood Bound

Source: Blood Bound

Men

“The best thing about the bedroom was the bed. I liked to stay in bed for hours, even during the day with covers pulled up to my chin. It was good in there, nothing ever occurred in there, no people, nothing.”

Charles Bukowski book Ham on Rye

Source: Ham on Rye

People

“Cold and silence. Nothing quieter than snow. The sky screams to deliver it, a hundred banshees flying on the edge of
the blizzard. But once the snow covers the ground, it hushes as still as my heart.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Silence, Heart, Flying

“Something inside me shuts down and I'm too numb to feel anything. It's like watching complete strangers in another Hunger Games. But I do notice they omit the part where I covered her in flowers.

Right. Because even that smacks of rebellion.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Hunger, Feeling, Game, Flowers

“Homework is not an option. My bed is sending out serious nap rays. I can't help myself. The fluffy pillows and warm comforter are more powerful than I am. I have no choice but to snuggle under the covers.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Help

“He looked as if he'd stepped straight off the cover of one of those romance novels she ordered from Amazon. com so she didn't have to be embarassed by some supercilious male clerk in the bookstore.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Kiss of the Highlander

“Normal, in our house, is like a blanket too short for a bed--sometimes it covers you just fine, and other times it leaves you cold and shaking; and worst of all, you never know which of the two it's going to be.”

Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper

Source: My Sister's Keeper

Time, Housing

“Rarely do we invest the time to open the book of another's life. When we do, we are usually surprised to find its cover so misleading and its reviews so flawed.”

Richard Paul Evans (1962) American writer

Life, Books, Time

“Love, however, cannot be forbidden. The more that flame is covered up, the hotter it burns. Also love can always find a way. It was impossible that these two whose hearts were on fire should be kept apart. (Pyramus and Thisbe)”

Edith Hamilton book Mythology

Source: Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

Love, Way, Heart

“Some nights I need to be held. Tonight I'm a listener. So nice to lie in rumpled sheets and listen. Cover me with words.”

Don DeLillo book Libra

Source: Libra

Lie, Night

“You give her all your french fries, even when she won't give you back onion rings,' Sophie says. 'And when you say her name it sounds different.'

How?'

Sophie thinks. 'Like it's covered with blankets.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

Thinking

“Oh, good grief! I’ve never had a man pick me up before and not grunt like he’s dying. I’m in heaven. Marry me, Ash, please! (Pam)
I would say yes, but I come with more baggage than even Samsonite can cover. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

“The more clearly we express it that the whole weight of our future victories will lie on our enemies, the more, in my opinion, will it tend to shorten the war. We have covered a considerable distance towards peace. The Entente no longer has any possibility of beating us economically. Do they think they can beat us militarily, now that our position in the West has become better that it ever was? If the statesmen of the Entente wanted understanding, they ought to have taken advantage of the situation now, when the Reich Chancellor has offered them the hand of understanding. They are playing a wanton game with their misguided peoples. Let the example of Russia be a warning to them. Russia, which offered us the hand of understanding, could have obtained a good peace of understanding if she had not risked this peace through the arrogance of Trotsky. May this struggle bring us victory, but may it also bring the benefits of this victory for Germany's future.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

1910s, Speech in the Reichstag, 18 March 1918

War, People, Lie, Peace

“A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter XII: The Minister's Vigil

“He commenced a systematic search of the cabin; but his attention was soon riveted by the books which seemed to exert a strange and powerful influence over him, so that he could scarce attend to aught else for the lure of the wondrous puzzle which their purpose presented to him.
Among the other books were a primer, some child's readers, numerous picture books, and a great dictionary. All of these he examined, but the pictures caught his fancy most, though the strange little bugs which covered the pages where there were no pictures excited his wonder and deepest thought.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book Tarzan of the Apes

Source: Tarzan of the Apes (1912), Ch. 7 : The Light of Knowledge

Books, Search

“Like proselytization, desecrating and demolishing the temples of non-Muslims is also central to Islam…. India too suffered terribly as thousands of Hindu temples and sacred edifices disappeared in northern India by the time of Sikandar Lodi and Babur. Will Durant rightly laments in the Story of Civilization that "We can never know from looking at India today, what grandeur and beauty it once possessed". In Delhi, after the demolition of twenty-seven Hindu and Jain temples, the materials of which were utilized to construct the Quwwat-ul-Islam masjid, it was after 700 years that the Birla Mandir could be constructed in 1930s. Sita Ram Goel has brought out two excellent volumes on Hindu Temples: What happened to them. These informative volumes give a list of Hindu shrines and their history of destruction in the medieval period on the basis of Muslim evidence itself. This of course does not cover all the shrines razed. Muslims broke temples recklessly. Those held in special veneration by Hindus like the ones at Somnath, Ayodhya, Kashi and Mathura, were special targets of Muslims, and whenever the Hindus could manage to rebuild their shrines at these places, they were again destroyed by Muslim rulers. From the time of Mahmud of Ghazni who destroyed the temples at Somnath and Mathura to Babur who struck at Ayodhya to Aurangzeb who razed the temples at Kashi Mathura and Somnath, the story is repeated again and again.”

K. S. Lal book Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India

Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999)

Beauty, History, Suffering, Time

“But the Japanese paper was what I loved, and now, so many years later, when I see some exquisitely laid piece of calligraphy by a student of Ogata Korin in a museum, I think first not of the spiritualized handwork of Momoyama Japan, but of those long evenings in the family garage with Dad, smoothing and stretching the refined wing coverings of those planes.”

Robert Hughes (1938–2012) Australian critic, historian, writer

Things I Didn't Know (2006)

Love, Family, Thinking

“This ideal University of Life … would never take the importance of culture for granted. It would know that culture is kept alive by a constant respectful questioning—not by an excessive and snobbish attitude of respect. Therefore, rather than leaving it hanging why one was reading Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary, an ideal course covering nineteenth-century literature would ask plainly “What is it that adultery ruins in a marriage?” Students in the ideal University of Life would end up knowing much the same material as their colleagues in other institutions, they would simply have learned it under a very different set of headings.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

“Reclaiming the Intellectual Life for Posterity,” Liberal Education, vol. 95, no. 2 http://www.aacu.org/liberaleducation/le-sp09/le-sp09_MyView.cfm

Life, Marriage, Literature, Question

“Well, then, some of you will say, and rightly, "Well, what did you use the fund for, Senator? Why did you have to have it?" Let me tell you in just a word how a Senate office operates. First of all, a Senator gets $15,000 a year in salary. He gets enough money to pay for one trip a year, a round trip, that is, for himself, and his family between his home and Washington, DC. And then he gets an allowance to handle the people that work in his office to handle his mail. And the allowance for my State of California, is enough to hire 13 people. And let me say, incidentally, that that allowance is not paid to the Senator. It is paid directly to the individuals that the Senator puts on his payroll. But all of these people and all of these allowances are for strictly official business; business, for example, when a constituent writes in and wants you to go down to the Veteran's Administration and get some information about his GI policy — items of that type, for example. But there are other expenses that are not covered by the Government. And I think I can best discuss those expenses by asking you some questions.Do you think that when I or any other senator makes a political speech, has it printed, should charge the printing of that speech and the mailing of that speech to the taxpayers? Do you think, for example, when I or any other Senator makes a trip to his home State to make a purely political speech that the cost of that trip should be charged to the taxpayers? Do you think when a Senator makes political broadcasts or political television broadcasts, radio or television, that the expense of those broadcasts should be charged to the taxpayers? Well I know what your answer is. It's the same answer that audiences give me whenever I discuss this particular problem: The answer is no. The taxpayers shouldn't be required to finance items which are not official business but which are primarily political business.”

Richard Nixon (1913–1994) 37th President of the United States of America

1950s, Checkers speech (1952)

Money, People, Family, Home

“Those without a chip will not be allowed in high security places like military installations, prisons, government buildings of all sorts and of course airports, subways, trains and later cars and trucks. Eventually, after some major planned crisis of course, it will become mandatory and anyone who does not take this chip will not only not be allowed to do those things, they will become “enemies of the state” for “disrupting the economy” or “threatening public security” or whatever phrase they can dream up to excuse arresting, imprisoning and eventually executing those who don't cooperate. Wars and civil unrest have always been great “cover” for implementing grabs for power.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), pp. 140-141

War, Dreams, Cars, Training

“One of the difficulties in thinking about software is its huge variety. A function definition in a spreadsheet cell is software. A smartphone app is software. The flight management system for an Airbus A380 is software. A word processor is software. We shouldn't expect a single discipline of software engineering to cover all of these, any more than we expect a single discipline of manufacturing to cover everything from the Airbus A380 to the production of chocolate bars, or a single discipline of social organization to cover everything from the United Nations to a kindergarten. Improvement in software engineering must come bottom-up, from intense specialized attention to particular products.”

Michael A. Jackson (1936) British computer scientist

Michael A. Jackson in: K. De Grave (ed.) Formalism & Intuition in Software Development; A conversation with Michael A. Jackson conducted by Edgar G. Daylight and Bas van Vlijmen. 2015

Thinking

“I did find Calypso hotdog — but only once, far in the depths of the very wildest of Canadian dark woods, near those high, cold, moss-covered swamps. … I felt as if I were in the presence of superior beings who loved me and beckoned me to come. I sat down beside them and wept for joy.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

letter to Mrs. Ezra S. Carr (1866); published as "The Calypso Borealis, Botanical Enthusiasm" in Boston Recorder, 21 December 1866; republished in Bonnie Johanna Gisel, Kindred & Related Spirits: The Letters of John Muir and Jeanne C. Carr (2001), page 41 <br class="br">Muir's first published writing, concerning the orchid Calypso http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=CABU. <br class="br">1860s

Love, Joy

“Mrs. Burgoyne passed the last twenty years of her life in a large, solemn-looking house at Kensington; it is now a mad-house. How curiously do these changes in dwelling places, once cheerful and familiar, bring the mutability of our existence home! It would be an eventful chronicle, the history of even a few of the old-fashioned houses in the vicinity of London. You ascended a flight of steps, with a balustrade and two indescribable birds on either side, and a large hall, which, strange to say, was more cheerful in winter than in summer. In summer the narrow windows, the black wood with which it was panelled, seemed heavy and dull; but in winter the huge fire gave its own gladness, and had besides the association with old English hospitality which a blazing grate always brings. You passed next through two long drawing-rooms, whose white wainscoting was almost covered with family portraits. There cannot be much said for the taste of Queen Anne's time downwards — bagged, wigged, and hooped; there was not a picture of which the African's question might not have been asked, "Pray tell me, white woman, if this is all you?””

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Life, Family, Home, History

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Quotes about cover
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