Quotes about story
page 21

“India's story is a "really a bottom-up" one and not the other-way round. We are on long-term growth trajectory and this is just not growth in terms of GDP numbers, this is really for well being of each and every Indian and that's the aspiration.”

Mukesh Ambani (1957) Indian business magnate

Aspiration of countrymen to ensure growth: Mukesh Ambani

Way

“Nothing embitters my old age [like] the circulation of absurd stories that I retire as civilization advances, that I shun the white men and seek the Indians, and that now even when old, I seek to retire beyond the second Alleganies.”

Daniel Boone (1734–1820) American settler

As quoted in Daniel Boone: The Life and Legend of an American Pioneer (1993) by John Mack Faragher p. 302

Men, Age

“It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk titled "The World After September 11th", AFSC Conference at Tufts University, Massachusetts, December 8, 2001 https://web.archive.org/web/20011230091612/http://www.zmag.org/chomskyafter911.htm. Quotes 2000s, 2001

Children, World, Evil

“Even at the religious level the creationist view is a biased one. The only creation story they mention is the one in Genesis (in which there are actually two stories — the version in the first chapter being so different from that in the second chapter that biblical scholars believe they were written hundreds of years apart). Why do they not mention the belief of the Hindus that the world began with the creation of the cosmic egg? What about the Babylonians' belief that there was not a single creationist god but two cosmic parents?”

Garrett Hardin (1915–2003) American ecologist

Naked Emperors : Essays of a Taboo-Stalker (1982)

God, World, Parent

“Your back always
looked small and weak
but we could laugh together
at funny stories.
But if people keep making
the same mistakes over and over
can they really regret them?”

Ayumi Hamasaki (1978) Japanese recording artist, lyricist, model, and actress

Teddy Bear
Lyrics, Duty

People

“The business I’ve found myself in for my adult life, it requires a certain amount of stereotyping. It’s just the nature of the beast. You have a limited amount of time to tell a story; in particular on camera. So you want the visual information there to provide a certain amount of background. People that look a certain way are cast in certain roles.”

Bill Fagerbakke (1957) American actor

Life, People, Way, Business

“The film resonated deeply with 13-year-old boys. It seemed to give expression to all their insecurities and fears. It is about a teenage boy who’s lost his dad, his mom and his older brother, and I think the whole story is his coping with this great loss by fantasizing about death and this ominous figure who strides through your life quite unpredictably and more than decimates it. It dealt in a very entertaining way with a subject that haunts all of us at the back of our minds.”

Angus Scrimm (1926–2016) American actor

Happy birthday, Tall Man! ‘Phantasm’ turns 30 https://herocomplex.latimes.com/uncategorized/phantasm/ (October 16, 2009)

Life, Death, Fear, Way

“Anyhow, that’s our story. And I think, in my glimpses of the great encompassing mechanism that has shaped us all, I’ve seen a little of the numinous. That’s enough of God for me.”

Stephen Baxter book Evolution

Epilogue (p. 644)
Evolution (2002)

God, Thinking

“Every time I perform, I work really hard to give part of myself to the audience. Then I do an interview and I read some story that just isn't true, or someone draws a crazy conclusion about my life, and it's such a betrayal. It hasn't happened here, but in Croatia, I've had to stop reading about myself. I don't think actors mean to be secretive - they just don't want strangers looking through their kitchen window.”

Goran Višnjić (1972) Croatian actor

Goran Visnjic on why he doesn't give many interviews.

Life, Secret, Thinking, Betrayal

“To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”

Henry Gee (1962) British paleontologist, evolutionary biologist and editor

In Search of Deep Time—Beyond the Fossil Record to a New History of Life, by Henry Gee, pp. 116-117.

“Romance gathers round an old story like lichen on an old branch. And the story of Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard is so old now — some say a year old, some say even two. How can the children be expected to remember?”

Eleanor Farjeon book Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard

Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard (1922)

Children

“If somebody accuses you in a story of being a crook, you can demand that they prove it. But if a comic says it and you protest, people say, 'What's the matter, you can't take a joke?”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

Thomas J. Brazaitis (March 14, 1992) "Comics' Barbs Keep White House Hopefuls On The Run", The Plain Dealer, p. 4A.

People

“Now there's a little story to that. Chief Justice Taney, in the Dred Scott decision—which said that the Missouri Compromise restriction of slavery in 1820 and any other one, was unconstitutional—said that there was no power in the Congress to forbid slavery in the territories. And he added as a kind of obiter dictum that the only power of Congress over slavery in the territories was the power coupled with the duty of protecting the owner and his rights. Now the seven states of the Deep South interpreted that to mean that the police power of the federal government had to guarantee the integrity of the property of any slave owner going into any United States territory.”

Harry V. Jaffa (1918–2015) American historian and collegiate professor

2000s, The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate (2002), The Right of Secession Is Not the Right of Revolution

Justice, Decision

“Psychologically speaking, what such findings seem to mean is that an achievement is not only more frequently present in stories from more rapidly developing countries but when it is present, it is more apt to be “means” oriented rather than goal oriented. The achievement sequence more often dwells on obstacles to success and specific means of overcoming them, rather than on the goal itself, the desire for it, and the emotions surrounding attaining or failing to attain it. The adaptive quality of such a concern with means is obvious: a people who think in terms of ways of overcoming obstacles would seem more likely to find ways of overcoming them in fact.”

David C. McClelland (1917–1998) American psychological theorist

Source: The Archiving Society, 1961, p. 104-5

People, Way, Thinking, Success

“The information I got from one person often contradicted the version I heard from another, so I’d long ago gotten into the habit of trying to hear as many different stories as I could and averaging them all out. The truth was in there somewhere, I knew it; the problem was coaxing it into the open.”

George Alec Effinger book When Gravity Fails

Source: When Gravity Fails (1986), Chapter 7 (p. 90).

Truth, Problem, Personality

“But what gave him the most satisfaction was going back through the pages to read about his first story appearing in the Saturday Evening Post.
That afternoon he'd bought Bird the largest bag of lemon drops he could find.
"He gives her candy," she had said, remembering too.”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Epilogue, p. 164 (closing words); reference to quote from Chapter 11

Bird, Appearance, Reading

“The Irish, as a race, have the oral tradition in their blood. A direct question to them is an anathema, but in other cases, a mere syllable of a hero's name will elicit whole chapters of stories.”

P. L. Travers (1899–1996) Australian-British novelist, actress and journalist

As quoted in No Word for Time: The Way of the Algonquin People (2001) by Evan T. Pritchard

Question

“This patchwork of largely fictional works makes the Protocols an incoherent text that easily reveals its fabricated origins. It is hardly credible, if not in a roman feuilleton or in a grand opera, that the “bad guys” should express their evil plans in such a frank and unashamed manner, that they should declare, as the Elders of Zion do, that they have “boundless ambition, a ravenous greed, a merciless desire for revenge and an intended hatred.” If at first the Protocols was taken seriously, it is because it was presented as a shocking revelation, and by sources all in all trustworthy. But what seems incredible is how this fake arose from its own ashes each time someone proved that it was, beyond all doubt, a fake. This is when the “novel of the Protocols” truly starts to sound like fiction. Following the article that appeared in 1921 in the Times of London revealing that the Protocols was plagiarized, as well as every other time some authoritative source confirmed the spurious nature of the Protocols, there was someone else who published it again claiming its authenticity. And the story continues unabated on the Internet today. It is as if, after Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, one were to continue publishing textbooks claiming that the sun travels around the earth.
How can one explain resilience against all evidence, and the perverse appeal that this book continues to exercise? The answer can be found in the works of Nesta Webster, an antisemetic author who spent her life supporting this account of the Jewish plot. In her Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, she seems well informed and knows the whole story as Eisner narrates it here, but this is her conclusion:
The only opinion I have committed myself is that, whether genuine or not, the Protocols represent the programme of a world revolution, and that in view of their prophetic nature and of their extraordinary resemblance to the protocols of certain secret societies of the past, they were either the work of some such society or of someone profoundly versed in the lore of secret society who was able to reproduce their ideas and phraseology.
Her reasoning is flawless: “since the Protocols say what I said in my story, they confirm it,” or: “the Protocols confirm the story that I derived from them, and are therefore authentic.” Better still: “the Protocols could be fake, but they say exactly what the Jews think, and must therefore be considered authentic.””

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

In other words, it is not the Protocols that produce antisemetism, it is people’s profound need to single out an Enemy that leads them to believe in the Protocols.
I believe that-in spite of this courageous, not comic but tragic book by Will Eisner- the story is hardly over. Yet is is a story very much worth telling, for one must fight the Big Lie and the hatred it spawns.
Umberto Eco, Milan Italy December 2004 translated by Allesandra Bastagli, p. vi-vii
The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (10/2/2005)

Life, People, Lie, Secret

“He puts his bones back on,
Turning the clock back an hour.
She knows flesh, that skin balloon,
the unbound limbs, the boards,
the roof, the removable roof.
She is his selection, part time.
You know the story too! Look,
when it is over he places her,
like a phone, back on the hook.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

"You All Know the Story of the Other Woman"
Love Poems (1969)

Time, Parting

“If wishes were stories, beggars would read…”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

“Stories”, p. 141
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)

Reading

“Is this the end? Is it to be merely a chapter in a cruel and senseless story? Will a new generation in their turn be immolated to square the black accounts of the Teuton and Gaul? Will our children bleed and gasp again in devastated lands? Or will there spring from the very fires of conflict that reconciliation of the three giant combatants, which would unite their genius and secure to each in safety and freedom a share in rebuilding the glory of Europe.”

Winston S. Churchill book The World Crisis

The World Crisis, 1916-1918 Part II : Chapter XXIII (Victory), Churchill, Butterworth (1927), p. 544.
Early career years (1898–1929)

Children, Spring, Freedom

“I'm not a model. Whenever I do a photo shoot I like to create a story.”

Paz de la Huerta (1984) American actress

ES Magazine, 13 Jan 2012, pages 26-29

Photo

“I have a theory of my own about what this art of the novel is, and how it came into being. To begin with, it does not simply consist in the author's telling a story about the adventures of some other person. On the contrary, it happens because the storyteller's own experience of men and things, whether for good or ill—not only what he has passed through himself, but even events which he has only witnessed or been told of—has moved him to an emotion so passionate that he can no longer keep it shut up in his heart.”

Arthur Waley (1889–1966) British academic

Source: Translations, The Tale of Genji (1925–1933), Ch. 25: 'The Glow-Worm'

Men, Art, Passion, Heart

“My work is anti-nature
The four-story mountain
You will not think form, space, line, contour
Just a suggestion of nature gives weight
light and heavy
light like a feather
you get light enough and you levitate”

Agnes Martin (1912–2004) American artist

1970's, The Untroubled Mind', 1971

Mountain, Nature, Thinking, Light

“As soon as I get an idea, I write a short story, or I start a novel, or I do a poem. So I have no need for a notebook. I do keep files of ideas and stories that didn’t quite work a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago. I come back to them later and I look through the titles.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

The Paris Review interview (2010)

Idea

“Pirates are perhaps the greatest invention of Earth people," Elizabeth interrupted loftily, "and their pirate stories are wonderful entertainment for small children. We have to give Earth people credit for that, they invented pirates.”

R. A. Lafferty (1914–2002) American writer

The Reefs of Earth (1968)

Children, People

“If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

Source: The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Ch. 42.

Secret, Books, History

“During my first year at Berkeley I arrived late one day to one of Neyman's classes. On the blackboard were two problems which I assumed had been assigned for homework. I copied them down. A few days later I apologized to Neyman for taking so long to do the homework - the problems seemed to be a little harder to do than usual. I asked him if he still wanted the work. He told me to throw it on his desk. I did so reluctantly because his desk was covered with such a heap of papers that I feared my homework would be lost there forever.
About six weeks later, one Sunday morning about eight o'clock, Anne and I were awakened by someone banging on our front door. It was Neyman. He rushed in with papers in hand, all excited: "I've just written an introduction to one of your papers. Read it so I can send it out right away for publication." For a minute I had no idea what he was talking about. To make a long story short, the problems on the blackboard which I had solved thinking they were homework were in fact two famous unsolved problems in statistics. That was the first inkling I had that there was anything special about them.”

George Dantzig (1914–2005) American mathematician

Dantzig (1986) in: D.J. Albers and C. Reid "An interview with George B. Dantzig : the father of linear programming". In: The College Mathematics Journal Vol 17, nr 4, 1986, p. 293-314.

Fear, Idea, Problem, Thinking

“The presence of the kings of Islam is a great blessing from Allah… You should know that the country of Hindustan is a large land. In olden days, the kings of Islam had struggled hard and for long in order to conquer this foreign country. They could do it only in several turns…
Every (Muslim) king got mosques erected in his territory, and created madrasas. Muslims of Arabia and Ajam (non-Arab Muslim lands) migrated from their own lands and arrived in these territories. They became agents for the publicity and spread of Islam here. Uptil now their descendants are firm in the ways of Islam…Among the non-Muslim communities, one is that of the Marhatah (Maratha). They have a chief. For some time past, this community has been raising its head, and has become influential all over Hindustan…
…It is easy to defeat the Marhatah community, provided the ghãzîs of Islam gird up their loins and show courage…
In the countryside between Delhi and Agra, the Jat community used to till the land. In the reign of Shahjahan, this community had been ordered not to ride on horses, or keep muskets with them, or build fortresses for themselves. The kings that came later became careless, and this community has used the opportunity for building many forts, and collecting muskets…
In the reign of Muhammad Shah, the impudence of this community crossed all limits. And Surajmal, the cousin of Churaman, became its leader. He took to rebellion. Therefore, the city of Bayana which was an ancient seat of Islam, and where the Ulama and the Sufis had lived for seven hundred years, has been occupied by force and terror, and Muslims have been turned out of it with humiliation and hurt…
…Whatever influence and prestige is left with the kingship at present, is wielded by the Hindus. For no one except them is there in the ranks of managers and officials. Their houses are full of wealth of all varieties. Muslims live in a state of utter poverty and deprivation. The story is long and cannot be summarised. What I mean to say is that the country of Hindustan has passed under the power of non-Muslims. In this age, except your majesty, there is no other king who is powerful and great, who can defeat the enemies, and who is farsighted and experienced in war. It is your majesty’s bounden duty (farz-i-ain) to invade Hindustan, to destroy the power of the Marhatahs, and to free the down-and-out Muslims from the clutches of non-Muslims. Allah forbid, if the power of the infidels remains in its present position, Muslims will renounce Islam and not even a brief period will pass before Muslims become such a community as will no more know how to distinguish between Islam and non-Islam. This will be a great tragedy. Due to the grace of Allah, no one except your majesty has the capacity for preventing this tragedy from taking place.
We who are the servants of Allah and who recognise the Prophet as our saviour, appeal to you in the name of Allah that you should turn your holy attention to this direction and face the enemies, so that a great merit is added to the roll of your deeds in the house of Allah, and your name is included in the list of mujãhidîn fi Sabîlallah (warriors in the service of Allah). May you acquire plunder beyond measure, and may the Muslims be freed from the stranglehold of the infidels. I seek refuge in Allah when I say that you should not act like Nadir Shah who oppressed and suppressed the Muslims, and went away leaving the Marhatahs and the Jats whole and prosperous.
The enemies have become more powerful after Nadir Shah, the army of Islam has disintegrated, and the empire of Delhi has become childrens’ play. Allah forbid, if the infidels continue as at present, and Muslims get (further) weakened, the very name of Islam will get wiped out.
…When your fearsome army reaches a place where Muslims and non-Muslims live together, your administrators must take particular care. They must be instructed that those weak Muslims who live in the countryside should be taken to towns and cities. Next, some such administrators should be appointed in towns and cities as would see to it that the properties of Muslims are not plundered, and the honour of no Muslim is compromised.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Letter to Ahmad Shah Abdali, Ruler of Afghanistan. Translated from the Urdu version of K.A. Nizami, Shãh Walîullah Dehlvî ke Siyãsî Maktûbãt, Second Edition, Delhi, 1969, p.83 ff.
From his letters

War, Children, Age, Way

“I have people constantly come up to me telling me that I have written their life. When I wrote the story I thought it was a pretty good story but I had no idea that many people felt like that.”

Blackie Lawless (1956) musician, songwriter and actor

Music America Interview

Life, People, Idea

“All stories have a beginning, a middle and an ending, and if they're any good, the ending is a beginning.”

James Clavell (1921–1994) American novelist

Interview with Don Swaim (1986)
Interview with Don Swaim (1986)

“Until I was 25, 1 had one tooth missing. When George Ogilvie cast me, he asked me about it, and I told him the story and that I thought it was very false of me to go and get a tooth cap. He was very nice about it, listened to it all, and said, "All right, well, let me put it this way, Russell. You're playing the lead character in my film, right? The character of Johnny has two front teeth….'”

Russell Crowe (1964) New Zealand-born Australian actor, film producer and musician

GQ Interview (2005)

Way, Falseness

“I do have some early role models. I recall wanting to be a real-life version of the fictional "Sandor Arbitration Intelligence at the Zoo" (from Vernor Vinge's novel A Fire Upon the Deep) who in the story is known for consistently writing the clearest and most insightful posts on the Net. And then there was Hal Finney who probably came closest to an actual real-life version of Sandor at the Zoo, and Tim May who besides inspiring me with his vision of cryptoanarchy was also a role model for doing early retirement from the tech industry and working on his own interests/causes.”

Wei Dai Cryptocurrency pioneer and computer scientist

In response http://lesswrong.com/lw/jgz/aalwa_ask_any_lesswronger_anything/ap84 to the question "Do you have any role models?", March 2014

Life, Intelligence

“Hearts are worn in these dark ages;
You're not alone in this story's pages.
Night has fallen amongst the living and the dying,
And I try to hold it in, yeah I try to hold it in.”

Sarah McLachlan (1968) Canadian musician, singer, and songwriter

World on Fire, written by Sarah McLachlan and Pierre Marchand
Song lyrics, Afterglow (2003)

Age, Heart, Night

“Mel H. Buffalo, an advisor to the Samson [Cree] band in Hobbema, Alberta, reported that "every Indian person I've spoken to who attended these schools has a story of mental, physical or sexual abuse to relate."”

Ward Churchill (1947) Political activist

[Kill the Indian, Save the Man: The Genocidal Impact of American Indian Residential Schools, City Lights Books, San Francisco, CA, November 2004, 64, 0872864340]
Churchill's source: [Miller, J.R., Shingwauk's Vision: A History of the Indian Residential Schools, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, May 24, 1996, 333, 0802078583]

School, Personality

“We forget old stories, but those stories remain the same.”

Dejan Stojanovic (1959) poet, writer, and businessman

“The Same Story,” p. 63
The Sun Watches the Sun (1999), Sequence: “A Stone and a Word”

Forgetting

“If we measured success by longevity, then dinosaurs must rank as the number one success story in the history of land life. Not only did dinosaurs exercise an airtight monopoly as large land animals, they kept their commanding position for an extraordinary span of time - 130 million years. Our own human species is no more than a hundred thousand years old. And our own zoological class, the Mammalia, the clan of of warm-blooded furry creatures, has ruled the land ecosystem for only seventy million years. True, the dinosaurs are extinct, but we ought to be careful in judging them inferior to our own kind. Who can say that the human system will last another thousand years, let alone a hundred million? Who can predict that our Class Mammalia will rule for another hundred thousand millennia?”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 16
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Life, Exercises, History, Time

“In my view there can be no affirmative action without segregation-nor any end to the segregation if our names must be kept on separate lists. I'd like to propose instead a simple scenario: a fair job market where employment is commensurate with ability regardless of gender, racial or ethnic background. I make a pitch, they like my story, I get the job. Why not?”

Migdia Chinea Varela (1947) American actress, screenwriter, and TV personality

"My life as a 'Two-Fer' ", Newsweek, 26 December 1988, p. 25

“It is natural for government and business leaders to want to make the best of a bad situation. For example, articles on Watergate postulated that we are now better off because the crisis demonstrated the strength of a democracy. Some contend that the Exxon Valdez oil spill had a good side in that there were many "lessons learned". THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! I do not subscribe to the "I have to fail to learn and improve" theory. A set-back leading to "experience and growth" is one thing; total failure is another. Few corporations could sustain as much bad press as Exxon, not to mention the opportunity cost of billions of dollars that could have been applied more profitably elsewhere. An organization's most precious resources are its time, energy (individual and corporate) and capital. They should be directed toward increasing profit, providing better service and improving the organization's reputation. They should not be wasted on damage control. Yet we continue to hear stories of crisis situations that drain organizations of that valuable energy and focus.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Source: Crisis Management: A Model For Managers (1993), p. 4-5

Democracy, Failure, Business, Nature

“After all that Richard Nixon had written about how hard work wins the day in America, finally it was Nixon who arranged for me to bypass the old rules. Through the agency of affirmative action, akin to those pivotal narrative devices in Victorian fictions, I had, suddenly, a powerful father in America, like Old Man Kennedy. I had, in short, found a way to cheat. The saddest part of the story is that Nixon was willing to disown his own myth for political expediency. It would be the working-class white kid—the sort he had been—who would end up paying the price of affirmative action, not Kennedys. Affirmative action defined a “minority” in a numerical rather than a cultural sense. And since white males were already numerically “represented” in the boardroom, as at Harvard, the Appalachian white kid could not qualify as a minority. And since brown and black faces were “underrepresented,” those least disadvantaged brown and black Americans, like me, were able to claim the prize of admission and no one questioned our progress.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Brown : The Last Discovery of America (2003)

Way, Question, Sense, Parting

“I kind of had a disaster, I was doing a show, and I changed there, and I couldn’t wear underwear — I don’t think I can tell this story on TV … Let’s just say everyone went scrambling for a razor, so I went from being the most beautiful to the most humiliated in one day.”

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

In an interview in The Ellen DeGeneres Show. http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2013/04/gwyneth-paltrow-ellen/ (April 26, 2013)

Beauty, Thinking, Change

“That is the best story he could find in his life, never mind if it's the truest: an artist's duty is always to tell the best story.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"V. S. Pritchett: Midnight Oil," p. 227
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

Life

“Life need not be a story, but it does need to be an adventure.”

Douglas Coupland book Player One

Player One (2010)

Life

“A final word. Drowning by Numbers is a story of three women who murder their husbands -- one in a bath, one in the sea and one in a swimming pool. It is a black and ironic fairy-tale for adults, half invented by children who are innocently obsessed with sex and death -- especially death. It is a poetic, amoral tale told morally to support the belief that the good are seldom rewarded, the bad go largely unpunished and the innocent are always abused.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

Fear of Drowning By Numbers

Death, Women, Children, Sex

“Centralization of society's vital services in giant computer centers, reservoirs, nuclear power plants, air- traffic control centers, 100-story skyscrapers, and government compounds increases its vulnerability. … choosing his targets, today's saboteur could pollute a city's water supply, dynamite power transmission towers, cripple an airport control center, destroy a corporate or government computer center.”

Anatol Rapoport (1911–2007) Russian-born American mathematical psychologist

Anatol Rapoport, as quoted in: Gerald McKnight (1973) Computer crime, p. 203
1970s and later

Water

“The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising ("but of course that's why he was doing that, and that means that…") and it's magic and wonderful and strange.”

Neil Gaiman (1960) English fantasy writer

Neil Gaiman's Journal (15 October 2007)

Life, People, Feeling, Sense

“If you are tired of the real landscape, look at it in a mirror. By putting bread, gold, horse, apple, or the very roads into a myth, we do not retreat from reality: we rediscover it. As long as the story lingers in our mind, the real things are more themselves. This book applies the treatment not only to bread or apple but to good and evil, to our endless perils, our anguish, and our joys. By dipping them in myth we see them more clearly.”

Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings

Books, Reality, Evil, Horse

“Pray God for guidance, man. It's thirty-odd years since I sold the last copy of Orvar-Odds saga. The country stands on an entirely different cultural footing nowadays. I can recommend the story of King Solomon's Mines there, all about the hero of Umslopogaas, in his own way a great man, and in my opinion no whit inferior to Orvar-Oddur.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Sjálfstætt fólk (Independent People) (1935), Book One, Part II: Free of Debt

God, Way, Country

“She isn't very clever or very devout,… and she certainly empties the whole salt cellar into the stories she tells me. But I love her because she never lies.”

Georges Bernanos (1888–1948) French writer

Chantal speaking of the cook, Madame Fernande, p. 119
La joie (Joy) 1929

Love

“The mention made by Maulana Abdul Hai (Indian Express, February 5) of Hindu temples turned into mosques, is only the tip of an iceberg, The iceberg itself lies submerged in the writings of medieval Muslim historians, accounts of foreign travellers and the reports of the Archaeological Survey of India. A hue and cry has been raised in the name of secularism and national integration whenever the iceberg has chanced to surface, inspite of hectic efforts to keep it suppressed. Marxist politicians masquerading as historians have been the major contributors to this conspiracy of silence….. The vast cradle of Hindu culture is literally littered with ruins of temples and monasteries belonging to all sects of Sanatana Dharma - Buddhist, Jain, Saiva, Shakta, Vaishnava and the rest…. The story of how Islamic invaders sought to destroy the very foundations of Hindu society and culture is long and extremely painful. It would certainly be better for everybody to forget the past, but for the prescriptions of Islamic theology which remain intact and make it obligatory for believers to destroy idols and idol temples.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Hindu Temples – What Happened to Them, Volume I (1990)

Pain, Travel, Effort, Silence

“For when we are interested in the beauty of a thing, the oftener we can see it the better; but when we are interested only by the story of a thing, we get tired of hearing the same tale told over and over again, and stopping always at the same point — we want a new story presently, a newer and better one — and the picture of the day, and novel of the day, become as ephemeral as the coiffure or the bonnet of the day. Now this spirit is wholly adverse to the existence of any lovely art. If you mean to throw it aside to-morrow, you can never have it to-day.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic

On the Condition of Modern Art, lecture (1867).

Love, Beauty, Art

“About Douglas as a translator there may be two opinions; about his Aeneid (Prologues and all) as an English book there can be only one. Here a great story is greatly told and set off with original embellishments which are all good – all either delightful or interesting – in their diverse ways.”

Gavin Douglas (1474–1522) Scottish Churchman, Scholar, Poet

C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 90.
About

Books, Way

“He wrote stories about everything he saw, and he saw a lot. He walked through the streets of Brooklyn along the water, or leaned against the store windows on Livingston Street watching people hurrying along, making up stories about this one or that one.”

Patricia Reilly Giff (1935) American children's writer

Source: Water Street (2006), Prologue, p. 3

People, Water

“Eve,” I said, “please stop for a minute. I think I finally get it. As you read to me aloud, the words become alive for me, and I can see pictures in my head. But when I try to read, all those little letters just confuse me. Because it’s the white of the page between the words that truly grab me. Do I make any sense? Reading, I do believe, is a very unnatural thing. But to listen to a story, like sitting around a campfire, is very natural.”

Victor Villaseñor (1940) American writer

Crazy Loco Love: A Memoir (2008)

Nature, Thinking, Sense, Reading

“At the time, I was working for The Times. My story ran in full. Then an official of the Foreign Office lunched my editor and told him my report was "not helpful". Because, of course, we supported President Saddam at the time and wanted revolutionary Iran to suffer and destroy itself. President Saddam was the good guy then. I wasn't supposed to report his human rights abuses. And now I'm not supposed to report the slaughter of the innocent by American or RAF pilots because the British Government has changed sides.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

The ministry of mendacity strikes again http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles209.htm, April 4, 2003 2003

Guy, Support, Suffering, Change

“Perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on.”

Samuel Beckett book The Unnamable

The Unnamable (1954)

Silence

“life is
only
as good as the memories we makeSo long astoria
i found a map to buried treasure
and even if we come home empty handed
well still have our stories
of battle scars, pirate ships and wounded hearts,
broken bones, and all the best of friendshipsand when this hourglass
has filtered out
its final grain of sand
i raise my glass to the memories we had
this is my wish
this is my wish
im takin back
im takin them all back”

Kris Roe (1978) American composer and singer

Song lyrics, So Long, Astoria (2003)

Life, Home, Memory, Heart

“You were compelled to?' he repeated. 'You mean you weren't sufficiently powerful to resist?'
'In order to seize power,' replied the dictator, 'I had to take it from those that had it, and in order to keep it I had to employ it against those that sought to deprive me of it.'
The chef's hat gave a nod. 'An old, old story. It has been repeated a thousand times, but no one believes it. That's why it will be repeated a thousand times more.'
The dictator felt suddenly exhausted. He would gladly have sat down to rest, but the old man and the children walked on and he followed them.
'What about you?' he blurted out, when he had caught the old man up. 'What do you know of power? Do you seriously believe that anything great can be achieved on earth without it?'
'I?' said the old man. 'I cannot tell great from small.'
'I wanted power so that I could give the world justice,' bellowed the dictator, and blood began to trickle afresh from the wound in his forehead, 'but to get it I had to commit injustice, like anyone who seeks power. I wanted to end oppression, but to do so I had to imprison and execute those who opposed me - I became an oppressor despite myself. To abolish violence we must use it, to eliminate human misery we must inflict it, to render war impossible we must wage it, to save the world we must destroy it. Such is the true nature of power.'
Chest heaving, he had once more barred the old man's path with his pistol ready.'
'Yet you love it still,' the old man said softly.
'Power is the supreme virture!' The dictator's voice quavered and broke. 'But its sole shortcoming is sufficient to spoil the whole: it can never be absolute - that's what makes it so insatiable. The only true form of power is omnipotence, which can never be attained, hence my disenchantment with it. Power has cheated me.'
'And so,' said the old man, 'you have become the very person you set out to fight. It happens again and again. That is why you cannot die.'
The dictator slowly lowered his gun. 'Yes,' he said, 'you're right. What's to be done?'
'Do you know the legend of the Happy Monarch?' asked the old man.
…
'When the Happy Monarch came to build the huge, mysterious palace whose planning alone had occupied ten whole years of his life, and to which marvelling crowds made pilgrimage long before its completion, he did something strange. No one will ever know for sure what made him do it, whether wisdom or self-hatred, but the night after the foundation stone had been laid, when the site was dark and deserted, he went there in secret and buried a termites' nest in a pit beneath the foundation stone itself. Many decades later - almost a life time had elapsed, and the many vicissitudes of his turbulent reign had long since banished all thought of the termites from his mind - when the unique building was finished at last and he, its architect and author, first set foot on the battlements of the topmost tower, the termites, too, completed their unseen work. We have no record of any last words that might shed light on his motives, because he and all his courtiers were buried in the dust and rubble of the fallen palace, but long-enduring legend has it that, when his almost unmarked body was finally unearthed, his face wore a happy smile.”

Michael Ende (1929–1995) German author

"Mirror in the Mirror", page 193

Love, Life, Wisdom, War

“A likely story — and probably true.”

Groucho Marx (1890–1977) American comedian

The Al Jolson Show repartee following a trite, scripted Al Jolson joke. (1949)

“Every note leaves in each of us a memory, but it is the melody as a whole that tells a story, the story of someone wanting to get closer to another person and who keeps on trying, despite repeated rejections.”

Paulo Coelho book Aleph

Aleph (2011)

Memory, Personality

“[The account of a man who sells his shadow is] in actual fact the life story of a persecution complex, that is to say, the paranoid narration of a man who through one event or another is suddenly made aware of his infinite smallness and at the same time finds the means by which to deceive the world in general, concerning this discovery.”

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880–1938) German painter, sculptor, engraver and printmaker

in a letter to Gustav Schiefler, 27 June, 1919; as quoted by Paul Rabe, in Illustrated Books and Periodicals in German Expressionist Prints and Drawings; The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies, Vol. 1.: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1989, p. 119
for Kirchner the Schlemihl illustrations he made for Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte ('The wondrous story of Peter Schlemihl') were a release from his existential anxieties
1916 - 1919

Life, World, Time

“Miss Mary, having been a journalist, had splendid powers of invention. I had never heard her tell a story in the same way twice and always had the feeling she was remolding it for the later editions.”

Ernest Hemingway book True at First Light

Source: True at First Light (1999), Ch. 12

Way, Feeling

“The past was neither as good nor as bad as we suppose: it was just different. If we tell ourselves nostalgic stories, we shall never engage the problems that face us in the present—and the same is true if we fondly suppose that our own world is better in every way. The past really is another country: we cannot go back. However, there is something worse than idealizing the past—or presenting it to ourselves and our children as a chamber of horrors: forgetting it.”

Tony Judt (1948–2010) British historian

Ill Fares the Land (2010), Ch. 2 : The World We Have Lost

Children, World, Way, Problem

“No amount of money today could possibly give me the thrill that first $400 check gave me.
My first story was entitled, "Dejah Thoris, Princess of Mars." Metcalf changed it to "Under the Moons of Mars." It was later published in book form as A Princess of Mars.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) American writer

How I Wrote the Tarzan Books (1929)

Money, Books, Change, Princess

“Experience has shown that the mass-armies of “democratic” states fight with greater zeal when they are animated by hatred and supported by a hate-crazed populace that fancies it is fighting a holy war. Lies have therefore become military equipment, a kind of mental logistics; but it is the essence of such propaganda that its spuriousness is known only to the persons who manufacture it. The model of such operations is the famous lie-factory managed by Lord Bryce during the First World War, in which a corps of expert technicians forged photographs, while expert liars, including Arnold Toynbee, concocted stories, of “atrocities,” to inspire the emotionally overwrought British with a fanatical hatred of the incredibly bestial Germans and with a noble Christian ardor to kill them.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

"Revised Historiography", Liberty Bell magazine (April 1980)
1970s, 1980s

Hate, War, Lie, World

“Now I think I'm going down to the well tonight
And I'm going to drink till I get my fill.
And I hope when I get old I don't sit around thinking about it,
But I probably will.
Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture
A little of the glory of,
Well time slips away and leaves you with nothing mister but boring stories of glory days.”

Bruce Springsteen (1949) American singer and songwriter

"Glory Days"
Song lyrics, Born in the U.S.A. (1984)

Hope, Drink, Thinking, Time

“My beloved friend, keep your hand in that of the Master, walk daily by His side, so that you may lead others into the realms of true happiness, where a religion of hate, (which poisons both body and soul) will be unknown, having in its place the "Golden Rule" way, which is the "Jesus Way" of life, will reign supreme. Then, we can walk and talk with Jesus momentarily, because we will be attuned to His will and wishes, thus making the Creation story of the world non-debatable as to its reality. God, my beloved friend is infinite the highest embodiment of love. We are finite, surrounded and often filled with hate. We can only understand the infinite as we loose the finite and take on the infinite.”

George Washington Carver (1864–1943) botanist

George Washington Carver: In His Own Words http://books.google.es/books?id=JcncXGNSJQQC&hl=es&source=gbs_navlinks_s (1991), edited by Gary R. Kremer, University of Missouri Press, p. 135

Love, Life, God, Hate

“The swells were amazing! As big as three-story apartment buildings!”

Abby Sunderland (1993) Camera Assistant, Inspirational Speaker and Sailor

Source: Unsinkable: A Young Woman's Courageous Battle on the High Seas (2011), p.. 153

“The story of Islam is no different. Prophetic Islam is inimical to mystic ideas. In the beginning, some Sufis courted martyrdom, but eventually they bought peace and safety by surrendering to Prophetic Islam. There have been some outstanding Sufis, but by arid large the Sufi movement has been part of a larger aggressive apparatus, just like Christian Missions of Imperialism. Though Islam persecuted "infidels", destroyed their temples, enslaved and looted them, we find no Sufis protesting. In fact. they were often beneficiaries of this vandalism. "In many cases there is no doubt that the shrine of a ·Muslim saint marks the site of some local cult which was practised on the spot long before the introduction of Islam," says Thomas Arnold making it look quite normal and harmless. Mu'in aI-Din Chishtl's dargah at Ajmer is one such shrine built on the ruins of an old Hindu temple. The saint had also got the present of a Hindu princess, part of thebooty captured by a Muslim General, Malik Khitab, when he attacked the neighbouring pagan land. Sufi saints often took full part in Islamic jihad.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Hindu View of Christianity and Islam (1992)

Peace, Idea, Parting, Princess

“Imagine you are God. You’re all-powerful, nothing is beyond you. You’re all-loving. So it is really, really important to you that humans are left in no doubt about your existence and your loving nature, and exactly what they need to do in order to get to heaven and avoid eternity in the fires of hell. It’s really important to you to get that across. So what do you do? Well, if you’re Jehovah, apparently this is what you do. You talk in riddles. You tell stories which on the surface have a different message from the one you apparently want us to understand. You expect us to hear X, and instinctively understand that it needs to be interpreted in the light of Y, which you happen to have said in the course of a completely different story 500-1,000 years earlier. Instead of speaking directly into our heads - which God has presumed the capability of doing so - simply, clearly and straightforwardly in terms which the particular individual being addressed will immediately understand and respond to positively - you steep your messages in symbols, in metaphors. In fact, you choose to convey the most important message in the history of creation in code, as if you aspired to be Umberto Eco or Dan Brown. Anyone would think your top priority was to keep generation after generation after generation of theologians in meaningless employment, rather than communicate an urgent life-or-death message to the creatures you love more than any other.”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

FFRF 2012 National Convention, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJTQiChzTNI?t=43m19s

Love, Life, Death, God

“We’re sick and tired of these stories. The reason they keep using the word ‘cannibal’ about us is because they think we’re savages. It’s like calling Germans today Nazis because of their past, or Britain a land where witches are burned at the stake, of child slavery and public executions. It’s just lazy, racist journalism.”

Benny Wenda (1975) West Papuan activist

Survival and tribal people denounce ‘ludicrous’ cannibal claims http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/7807

Thinking, Past

“It doesn’t take much refection—and indeed only a little research—to discover that the kind of conservative readings of the Genesis story that are often put up in opposition to what it is thought Darwin said (often without bothering to read what Darwin himself had to say) bear almost no relation to what we find in the refection of the fathers on the account found in Genesis. Such Christians have imagined a tradition that has no right to call itself tradition.”

Andrew Louth (1944)

"Being Human," The Wheel, Spring/Summer 2018

Imagination, Reading

“There can be no question but that Christianity was originally a Jewish promotion, and it is noteworthy that the Christians who try to make their cult respectable in the Third Century claim that they repudiate the Jews. One of the earliest to do this was Tertullian, a Carthaginian shyster, whose Apologeticum, a defense of Christianity, was written at the very beginning of the Third Century. He asserts that Christianity is not a conspiracy of revolutionaries and degenerates, as was commonly believed, and claims that it is an association of loving brothers who have preserved the faith that the Jews forsook – which has been the common story ever since. Our holy men salvage Tertullian by claiming that he was "orthodox" in his early writings, but then, alas! became a Montanist heretic, poor fellow. Tertullian is the author of the famous dictum that he believes the impossible because it is absurd (credo quia absurdum), so he is naturally dear to the heart of the pious. How much Jerome and other saints have tampered with the facts to make Tertullian seem "orthodox" in his early works has been most fully shown by Timothy Barnes in his Tertullian (Oxford, 1971), but even he spends a hundred pages pawing over chronological difficulties that can be reconciled by what seems to me the simple and obvious solution: Tertullian, who was evidently a pettifogging lawyer before he got into the Gospel-business, had sense enough to eliminate from his brief for the Christians facts that would have displeased the pagans whom he was trying to convince that Christians represented no threat to civilized society; he accordingly concealed in his apologetic works the peculiar doctrines of the Christian sect to which he had been originally "converted," but he naturally expounded those doctrines in writings intended, not for the eyes of wicked pagans, but for other brands of Christians, whom he wished to convert to his own sect, which was that of Montanus, a very Holy Prophet (divinely inspired, of course) who was a Phrygian, not a Jew, and who had learned from chats with God that since the Jews had muffed their big opportunity at the time of the Crucifixion, Jesus, when he returned next year or the year after that, was going to set up his New Jerusalem in Phrygia after he had raised hell with the pagans and tormented and butchered them in all of the delightful ways so lovingly described in the Apocalypse, the Hymn of Hate that still soothes the souls of "fundamentalist" Christians today. If, in his Apologeticum and similar works, Tertullian had told the stupid pagans that they were going to be tortured and exterminated in a year or two, they might have doubted that Christians were the innocent little lambs that Tertullian claimed they were.”

Revilo P. Oliver (1908–1994) American philologist

The Jewish Strategy, Chapter 12 "Christianity"
1990s, The Jewish Strategy (2001)

Love, Men, God, Hate

“As he drove, he was conscious of the web around him. The web of streets, of people, of places, and of things. The other web, too, the new world. This parallel place, with email address private driveways, it sdotcom marketplaces. You could find out so much there, running reality through your hands likea god's. Everything on the web is information; but everything is on the web, these days; so the world has become information. Everything has become an utterance of this thing, of this bank of words and images: everything is something it is saying, or has said. It's about buying, and looking, about our habits and desires, about contact with others, about voyeurism and aspiration and addiction. It is us boiled down — our essence, for better or worse. It is no longer passive. It is telling the story of us, and sometimes that story needs work.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Source: The Lonely Dead (2004), Ch. 16

God, People, World, Reality

“In the marketplace he told of honor, and how it is a higher law than any law.
At the crossroads he talked of freedom, the freedom of the wind and clouds, and freedom that loves all things and is without guilt.
Beside the city gates he told stories of the forgotten cities that were and of the forgotten cities that might be, if only men would forget them.”

Gene Wolfe (1931–2019) American science fiction and fantasy writer

"The God and His Man", Asimov's Science Fiction, 1980, Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, Endangered Species (1989), Reprinted in Gene Wolfe, The Best of Gene Wolfe (2009)
Fiction

Love, Men, Law, Freedom

“Often the cockloft is empty in those whom Nature hath built many stories high.”

Thomas Fuller (1608–1661) English churchman and historian

Andronicus, or the Unfortunate Politician (1646), Sect. vi. Par. 18, 1. Compare: "My Lord St. Albans said that Nature did never put her precious jewels into a garret four stories high, and therefore that exceeding tall men had ever very empty heads", Francis Bacon, Apothegms, No. 17.

Nature

“Why, then, have we been bamboozled into accepting the usual tale without questioning? I suspect two primary reasons: we love a sensible and satisfying story, and we are disinclined to challenge apparent authority (like textbooks!). But do remember that most satisfying tales are false.”

Stephen Jay Gould book Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

"The Tallest Tale", p. 318
Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms (1998)

Love, Question, Falseness

“The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce the artistic job of writing.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

"Twelve Notes on the Mystery Story", published in The Notebooks of Raymond Chandler(1976)

Problem, Perfection

“The intense interest aroused in the public by what was known at the time as “The Styles Case” has now somewhat subsided. Nevertheless, in view of the world-wide notoriety which attended it, I have been asked, both by my friend Poirot and the family themselves, to write an account of the whole story. This, we trust, will effectually silence the sensational rumours which still persist.”

Agatha Christie book The Mysterious Affair at Styles

Captain Arthur Hastings, first paragraph
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)

World, Family, Silence, Time

“There is another story, that we tried to impose upon him [Arafat] cantons, Bantustans. Total lie. We talked about 80%+ of the West Bank and 100% of the Gaza Strip. How can it become non-contiguous? And if you have some reservation against this or that curl of the border, at some corner, come to the table, negotiate it, and demand that this will be removed. I can go with you more and more, and I cannot afford spending more time on it, but basically, all these were stories that were invented in order to explain to his own people, and maybe to try to convince honest people in the free world how come that such an opportunity had been missed. Of course, I had my own demands, to protect Israel, to ensure our security, to make sure that we know where do we head. I said loud and clear: we have to put an end to this asymmetric process where we are supposed to give tangible assets, and the Palestinians have just to give vague promises about the nature of future relationship. I said I'm ready to go very far, but I want to know, now, that there is a partner, which is ready and capable to make tough decisions, and painful decisions. I was a great supporter of the peace of the brave, but never a supporter of peace of ostriches, where you put your head in the sand, let whatever happen, happen, and then wake up and say, OK, that's what happened. We cannot afford this approach. That's the reality.”

Ehud Barak (1942) Israeli politician and prime minister

Speech at UC Berkeley http://www.jewishsf.com/content/2-0-/module/displaystory/story_id/19324/edition_id/391/format/html/displaystory.html, November 22, 2002

Pain, People, Lie, World

“A rich man’s body is like a premium cotton pillow, white and soft and blank. ‘’Ours’’ is different. My father’s spine was a knotted rope, the kind that women use in villages to pull water from wells; the clavicle curved around his neck in high relief, like a dog’s collar; cuts and nicks and scars, like little whip marks in his flesh, ran down his chest and waist, reaching down below his hip bones into his buttocks. The story of a poor man’s life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.”

Aravind Adiga book The White Tiger

The First Night.
The White Tiger (2008)

Life, Women, Dogs, Water

“Playboy is the second most-recognised symbol in the world after Coca-Cola, It’s a Hollywood walk of fame for female bodies. My dad is a different story – he threw me out of the house when I was 16 because I worked in the lingerie store and wore black lace panties. But he loved that I was on the Playboy cover; suddenly I was his daughter again. In fact, everything changed after the Playboy cover. Before, people were scared of me, but suddenly what I did was validated.”

Dita Von Teese (1972) American burlesque dancer, model and actress

Dita Von Teese on posing for Playboy http://personalispolitical.wordpress.com/2007/08/13/dita-von-sleeze-and-borelesque/ (13 August 2007).

Love, People, World, Change

“In [the story of Jesus] I found … a center for my being. Behind the supernatural framework of the first century, behind the language of myth, magic, and superstition, I discovered a life I wanted to know; a life that possessed a power I wanted to possess; a freedom, a wholeness for which I had yearned for years.”

John Shelby Spong (1931) American bishop

This Hebrew Lord (1974), p. 13

Life, Freedom

“George Lucas should have distributed the "source code" to Star Wars. Millions of fans would create their own movies and stories. Most of them would be terrible, but a few would be genius.”

Gabe Newell (1962) American computer programmer and businessman

It's A Mod, Mod Underworld, Victoria Murphy Barret, Forbes, 2005-12-12, 2008-02-21, http://web.archive.org/web/20080501213031/http://www.forbes.com/business/forbes/2005/1212/064_2.html, 2008-05-01 http://www.forbes.com/business/forbes/2005/1212/064_2.html,

War, Star

“I busied myself to think of a story, — a story to rival those which had excited us to this task. One which would speak to the mysterious fears of our nature, and awaken thrilling horror—one to make the reader dread to look round, to curdle the blood, and quicken the beatings of the heart. If I did not accomplish these things, my ghost story would be unworthy of its name.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797–1851) English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer

Introduction http://www.rc.umd.edu/editions/frankenstein/1831v1/intro.html to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein

Fear, Business, Nature, Thinking

“A genuine taradiddle of the gross and palpable kind never fails for want of vouchers. Hundreds know it to be true—hundreds more were all but eye-witnesses of the fact related—some actually were; all can attest it on their personal responsibility. Upon that point everybody has a reputation for veracity to stake—though the same stake had been forfeited fifty times; and everybody can contribute to the original story an unquestionable incident of his own coinage "to make assurance doubly sure." So it goes round, until the first projector hardly recognizes his own lie; and ends by believing ten times more absurdity than he had palmed upon others.”

Samuel Laman Blanchard (1804–1845) British author and journalist

"That what Everybody Says must be True".
Sketches from Life (1846)

Lie, Time, Personality

“Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival…was where love and marriage were brought together. It was an apple of a story. That's my favorite love story.”

Wolfram von Eschenbach (1170–1220) German knight and poet

Joseph Campbell (ed. Robert Walter and Phil Cousineau) The Hero’s Journey (Novato: New World Library, [1990] 2003) p. 104.
Criticism

Love, Marriage

“I bought a copy of the Nashville Tennessean out of a metal box, just to see what was happening in the world. The principal story indicated that the state legislature, in one of those moments of enlightenment with which the southern states often strive to distinguish themselves, was in the process of passing a law forbidding schools from teaching evolution. Instead they were to be required to instruct that that the earth was created by God, in seven days, sometime, oh, before the turn of the century. The article reminded us that this was not a new issue in Tennessee. The little town of Dayton—not far from where Katz and I now sat, as it happened—was the scene of the famous Scopes trial in 1925, when the state prosecuted a schoolteacher named John Thomas Scopes for rashly promulgating Darwinian hogwash. As nearly everyone knows, Clarence Darrow, for the defense, roundly humiliated William Jennings Bryan, for the prosecution, but what most people don’t realize is that Darrow lost the case. Scopes was convicted, and the law wasn’t overturned in Tennessee until 1967. And now the state was about to bring the law back, proving conclusively that the danger for Tennesseans isn’t so much that they may be descended from apes as overtaken by them.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 8 (pp. 107-108)

God, People, World, School

“Hemingway hated me. I outsell him and he was steamed. One day he wrote a story for Bluebook berating me. So I'm going on a big TV show in Chicago and I don't get it, that's sour grapes… I mean if you can't say something nice about someone why say anything at all?”

Mickey Spillane (1918–2006) American writer

Crime Time interview (2001)

Hate

“All Nature's wildness tells the same story: the shocks and outbursts of earthquakes, volcanoes, geysers, roaring, thundering waves and floods, the silent uprush of sap in plants, storms of every sort, each and all, are the orderly, beauty-making love-beats of Nature's heart.”

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

" Three Adventures in the Yosemite http://books.google.com/books?id=k8dZAAAAYAAJ&pg=P656", The Century Magazine volume LXXXIII, number 5 (March 1912) pages 656-661 (at page 661); modified slightly and reprinted in The Yosemite http://www.sierraclub.org/john_muir_exhibit/writings/the_yosemite/ (1912), chapter 4: Snow Banners 1910s

Love, Making love, Beauty, Nature

“You should never send an expert to a movie about his specialty. Boxers hate boxing movies. Space buffs said 'Apollo 13' showed the wrong side of the moon. The British believe Mel Gibson's scholarship was faulty in 'Braveheart' merely because some of the key characters hadn't been born at the time of the story. 'Hackers' is, I have no doubt, deeply dubious in the computer science department. While it is no doubt true that in real life no hacker could do what the characters in this movie do, it is no doubt equally true that what hackers can do would not make a very entertaining movie.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/hackers-1995 of Hackers (15 September 1995) Reviews, Three star reviews

Life, Hate, Science, Time

“And storied windows richly dight,
Casting a dim religious light.
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high, and anthems clear
As may, with sweetness, through mine ear
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all heaven before mine eyes.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 159

Light

“Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:
Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
The log groans and confesses
There is one story and one story only.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"To Juan at the Winter Solstice" from Poems 1938-1945 (1946).
Poems

Love, Fear, Heart, Flying

“Contrary to generations of western progressives, it was not Russian backwardness or mistakes in applying Marxian theory that produced the society that Lyons observed. Similar regimes came into being wherever the communist project was attempted. Lenin’s Russia, Mao’s China, Ceausescu’s Romania and many more were variants of a single dictatorial model. From being a movement aiming for universal freedom, communism turned into a system of universal despotism. That is the logic of utopia. If 1984 is such a powerful myth, one reason is that it captures this truth. Yet there is a flaw in Orwell’s story, which emerges in his picture of the all-powerful interrogator. The dystopia of perpetual power is a fantasy, and so is O’Brien. Soviet torturers were sweating functionaries living in constant fear. Like their victims, they knew that they were resources that would be used up in the service of power. There was no inner-party elite safe from the contingencies of history.”

John Gray (1948) British philosopher

An Old Chaos: Two Times Two Equals Five (p. 52)
The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths (2013)

Truth, Fear, History, Communication

“Well, I'd say, and this is probably a change from what I would have said when I was younger: Have a very healthy respect for the study of economic history, because that's the raw material out of which any of your conjectures or testings will come. And I think the recent period has illustrated that. The governor of the Bank of England seems to have forgotten or not known that there was no bank insurance in England, so when Northern Rock got a run, he was surprised. Well, he shouldn't have been.
But history doesn't tell its own story. You've got to bring to it all the statistical testings that are possible. And we have a lot more information now than we used to.”

Paul A. Samuelson (1915–2009) American economist

Conor Clarke, An Interview With Paul Samuelson http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2009/06/an-interview-with-paul-samuelson-part-two/19627/, Part Two (2009) New millennium

History, Thinking, Study, Change