Quotes about tell
page 68

“Death in your eyes, Earthman. Nothing in your mind but murder. Can that brain of yours comprehend nothing but battle? Is there no curiosity there? Have you no wonder of why I brought you here? Death awaits you, yes. But a not unpleasant death, and it awaits all, in one form or another. Listen, let me tell you—I have reason for desiring to break through that animal shell of self-defense that seals in your mind. Let me look deeper—if there are depths. Your death will be—useful, and in a way, pleasant. Otherwise—well, the black beasts hunger. And flesh must feed them, as a sweeter drink feeds me...Listen.”

C. L. Moore (1911–1987) American author

Black Thirst (1934); p. 63
Short fiction, Northwest of Earth (1954)

Death, Hunger, Way, Drink

“It’s incredibly misogynist to tell me I can only write a certain type of woman. Because that’s saying women must be a certain type of person. That puts us back to the Stone Age—like women are saints and therefore not human and if we stray beyond that model, we’ll be severely punished. It denies us any humanity. It doesn’t even bother me. It just bounces off me. It’s such a ridiculous notion that my novels are misogynist because I don’t write the kind of women you want.”

Gillian Flynn (1971) American author and critic

On her novels being called misogynistic in “Gillian Flynn Isn’t Going to Write the Kind of Women You Want” https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/06/gillian-flynn-isnt-going-to-write-the-kind-of-women-you-want in Vanity Fair (2018 Jun 28)

Women, Age, Personality

“When I decided to write a novel, I had two full time jobs and three children under the age of six, so I don’t want anyone telling me they don’t have time to write a book, but I learned to work in the middle of the night, and I still do that…”

Diana Gabaldon (1952) American author

On balancing novel writing with her personal life in “Diana Gabaldon on Her ‘Outlander’ Writing Process & Knowing Sam Heughan Was Jamie” https://collider.com/diana-gabaldon-outlander-interview/ in Collider (2018 Aug 2)

Children, Books, Age, Learning

“Facts don’t matter to people as much as people think they do. People don’t believe because of facts and evidence—they believe things because it’s a part of a story that they tell themselves. And so, I guess part of what I’m doing is understanding those stories, and understanding psychologically why are these stories being told.”

Natalie Wynn ContraPoints

ContraPoints, Miscellaneous, Contrapoints Is De-Radicalizing Young, Right-Wing Men https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Nrz4-FZx6k (Vice News, 2019)

People, Understanding, Thinking, Parting

“The Gita tells us that there are four kinds of people who take to God-life. Of them ,the afflicted (arta) are the very first ones. The rest in their order are the seekers of knowledge, the seekerse of truth as it is, and the seekers of wisdom.”

Ram Swarup (1920–1998) Indian historian

Source: Meditations. Yogas, Gods, Religions (2000), p.180

Life, Wisdom, God, People

“In America we are such rowdies in church and state and the very boys are so soon ripe, that I think no philosophical skepticism will make much sensation. Spinoza pronounced that there was but one substance; yea, verily, but that boy yonder told me yesterday he thought the pinelog was God, and that God was in the jakes. What can Spinoza tell the boy?”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his journal entry
A - F

God, Making love, Boy, Thinking

“We fought that last war to make the world safe for democracy, and we did — for a while. The thing they forget is that liberty and freedom and democracy are so very precious that you do not fight to win them once — and then stop. Liberty and freedom and democracy are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them, and then keep fighting eternally to hold them. By our victory in the last war, we won a lease on liberty, not a deed to it. Now, after 23 years, Adolf Hitler tells us that lease is expiring, and after the manner of all leases, we have the privilege of renewing it, or letting it go by default.”

Alvin C. York (1887–1964) United States Army Medal of Honor recipient

Address on Memorial Day ceremonies at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier (30 May 1941), as recorded in Congressional Record, 77th Congress, First Session, Appendix, Vol. 87, Pt. 12 https://books.google.com/books?id=cm64vikAjIMC&pg=SL1-PA2692

War, People, World, Making love

“They were always telling me their way is the only way to go!”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

“Oh, no, my dear. No, not at all. So long as it harms no one else, one’s own way is always preferable.”

Dismé and Arnole in Ch. 7 : dismé the maiden, p. 59
The Visitor (2002)

Way

“Military men! Damn it, they always thought in terms of hardware, black or white, our side or the other side. It was damned hard to get them to see gray at all, and getting them to tell dark gray from medium gray was impossible!”

Sheri S. Tepper (1929–2016) American fiction writer

Source: The Fresco (2000), Chapter 12, p. 125

Men

“To fascists, the pursuit of individual happiness must be subservient to the health and success of the race. So in a sense, traditionalism is a much more collectivistic philosophy than Communism, which only demands communal ownership of the means of production. At least in theory, Communism doesn’t tell you what gender to be, or who and how to fuck.”

Natalie Wynn ContraPoints

ContraPoints

Happiness, Health, Communication, Sense

“The thing about writing in America—and I just recently understood this—is that writers in America have an arc. You enter writing as a career, you expect to be successful, and really it’s the wrong thing. It’s not a profession. A professional writer is a joke. You write because you can’t do anything else, and then you have another job. I’m always telling my students go to law school or become a doctor, do something, and then write. First of all you should have something to write about, and you only have something to write about if you do something. If you just sit there, and you’re a writer, you’re bound to write crap. A lot of American writing is crap. And a lot of American writers are professionals. Writing is not a profession. It’s a calling. It’s almost holy…”

Jamaica Kincaid (1949) Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer

On her views of writing in “Jamaica Kincaid: Does Truth Have a Tone?” https://www.guernicamag.com/does-truth-have-a-tone/ in Guernica (2013 Jun 17)

School, Law, Success

“I try to tell the most authentic stories I can about womanhood and Dominican-ness and Afro-Dominican-ness/Afro-Latinidad that I can. Then I go back in and edit with the eye of who sets the table in this book, who gets left out, what am I saying, and what am I not saying right? I lean in or be more intentional about that. For me, it’s trying to be authentic and mindful of my own biases and questioning those while also just being incredibly truthful since truthfulness is inherently intersectional, right? I can’t not be woman and Black-descendant and culturally Latinx. Everything I write will have that in it.”

Elizabeth Acevedo American poet and author

On the tropes that she employs often in “AN Interview with Elizabeth Acevedo” https://www.washingtonsquarereview.com/new-page-21 in Washington Square Review

Truth, Books, Question

“There was so much joy in the making of this film, despite the fact that it’s about such a sad, traumatic experience…We all felt like we were part of something so real and so necessary. It was a joy to go on set every day and tell these real people’s story. Doing this movie, I discovered that joy is not the negation of pain, but rather acknowledging the presence of pain and feeling happiness in spite of it.”

Lupita Nyong'o (1983) Mexican-Kenyan actress and film director

On making the film 12 Years a Slave in “LUPITA NYONG’O” https://www.interviewmagazine.com/film/lupita-nyongo in Interview Magazine (2013 Nov 5)

Pain, Happiness, People, Sadness

“Journalists can help people by telling the truth, or by as much truth as they can find, and acting not as agents of governments, of power, but of people. That is real journalism. The rest is specious and false.”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

People, Truth, Help, Falseness

“As a Rioplatense person of European decent, I feel strongly about the urgency of retelling the stories of our nation’s histories, the Argentinian and Uruguayan national stories and cultural stories, in ways that fully recognize the presence of black people. Which is a huge part of the greater story of the Americas as well. You cannot tell the story of the Americas without the story of black people and the transatlantic slave trade — that mass atrocity. Alongside, of course, the genocide of indigenous people. And also the cultural richness and artistic production and stories of resilience and power that, too, come out of those harsh realities that are at the origin of the Americas.”

Carolina de Robertis (1975) American writer

On telling the histories of Uruguay and Argentina in “A Conversation with Carolina De Robertis on Immigration, Sexuality, and the True Origins of the Tango” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/conversation-carolina-de-robertis-immigration-sexuality-true-origins-tango/ in Los Angeles Review of Books (2016 Apr 20)

People, Way, Feeling, History

“Writing can be a way of honoring those who’ve suffered real traumas and often surmounted them. And when a story has not yet been fully reflected in formal histories, the telling has a purpose, or so we hope…”

Carolina de Robertis (1975) American writer

On writing and history in “Interviews: Carolina de Robertis” https://bookpage.com/interviews/24365-carolina-de-robertis-fiction#.Xebr8_lKjcs in BookPage (2019 Sep 3)

Hope, Way, History, Suffering

“History books are necessary in order for us to know and perceive the truth, and there’s always a question of perspective and who gets to tell the story…”

Sally Wen Mao Chinese-born American poet

On who gets to “gaze” or be “gazed upon” in “HIJACKING THE NARRATIVE: A CONVERSATION WITH SALLY WEN MAO” https://theadroitjournal.org/2019/03/21/hijacking-the-narrative-a-conversation-with-sally-wen-mao/ in Adroit Journal (2019 Mar 21)

Truth, Books, History, Question

“There are some people who are telling the Muslims not to vote for the BJP whereas the truth is that the BJP has never worked against any minority, including the Muslims.”

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924–2018) 10th Prime Minister of India

February 19, 2002, Jaihind . Quoted in Madhu Purnima Kishwar: Modi, Muslims and Media. Voices from Narendra Modi’s Gujarat, Manushi Publications, Delhi 2014.

People, Truth

“I think TV series, games, and general media have changed the way we tell stories. But books will remain. Technology has changed all the others arts: painting, theater, dancing, cinema, music. But literature is an absolutely intimate process between the writer’s voice and the reader’s mind, it is something so natural and strong that the only thing that technology could change is its support, its format, for example, if we read from a book or from an e-reader. But that doesn’t change the heart of literature.”

Samanta Schweblin (1978) Argentine writer

On the staying power of literature in “Samanta Schweblin on Revealing Darkness Through Fiction” https://lithub.com/samanta-schweblin-on-revealing-darkness-through-fiction/ in LitHub (2017 Jan 12)

Books, Art, Music, Way

“The past is not yet past. When things happen, the only way we can make sense of it is by telling the story about the past – realising where prejudices come from. And the point would be not only to spin a story about racial violence but to tell how our ancestors have bravely and creatively overcome these things.”

David Chariandy (1969) Canadian writer

On the past and prejudices in “David Chariandy: ‘To make sense of prejudice, tell the story of the past’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/14/david-chariandy-ive-been-meaning-to-tell-you-father-advice-to-daughter in The Guardian (2019 Apr 14)

Making love, Way, Sense, Past

“I am the sort of writer who needs another form to tell me who I am and what has happened to me…I think all my novels are self-portraits, but there’s no one character who resolves me, or catalyses me, or is me.”

Maylis de Kerangal (1967) French writer

On writing in “‘What is a heart? You have an organ in your body and you have a symbol of love’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/28/maylis-de-kerangal-interview-wellcome-prize-writing in The Guardian (2017 Apr 28)

Thinking, Self-confidence

“Old age is a wonderful time of life…At least, that’s what everyone tells you. But let me tell you: it is not true. What’s true is that your hips, knees and ankles gradually give up on you – everything is quite dreadful, really. And it was a terrible thing to have told us…because we believed it.”

Debbie Reynolds (1932–2016) American actress, singer, and dancer

On the lie of growing old gracefully in “Debbie Reynolds interview: movies, failed marriages, and why a woman should be 'like a treasure chest'” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/debbie-reynolds-interview-movies-failed-marriages-woman-should/ in The Telegraph (2016 Dec 29)

Life, Age, Time

“Many clever men like you have trusted to civilization. Many clever Babylonians, many clever Egyptians, many clever men at the end of Rome. Can you tell me, in a world that is flagrant with the failures of civilisation, what there is particularly immortal about yours?”

G. K. Chesterton book The Napoleon of Notting Hill

Book I, Chapter II: "The Man in Green"
The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904)

Men, World, Failure

“When I speak of Plato, Pascal, Spinoza and Goethe, I know that their blood flows in mine—I am proud, when I tell the truth about them—the family is good enough not to have to poeticize or to conceal; and thus I stand to everything that has been, I am proud of the humanity, and especially proud of unconditional truthfulness.”

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

Friedrich Nietzsche, quoted in Walter Kaufmann, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (1950)
M - R

Truth, Family

“When we appreciate how natural it is for man to strive to be a hero, how deeply it goes in his evolutionary and organismic constitution, how openly he shows it as a child, then it is all the more curious how ignorant most of us are, consciously, of what we really want and need. In our culture anyway, especially in modern times, the heroic seems too big for us, or we too small for it. Tell a young man that he is entitled to be a hero and he will blush. We disguise our struggle by piling up figures in a bank book to reflect privately our sense of heroic worth. Or by having only a little better home in the neighborhood, a bigger car, brighter children. But underneath throbs the ache of cosmic specialness, no matter how we mask it in concerns of smaller scope. Occasionally someone admits that he takes his heroism seriously, which gives most of us a chill, as did U.S. Congressman Mendel Rivers, who fed appropriations to the military machine and said he was the most powerful man since Julius Caesar. We may shudder at the crassness of earthly heroism, of both Caesar and his imitators, but the fault is not theirs, it is in the way society sets up its hero system and in the people it allows to fill its roles. The urge to heroism is natural, and to admit it honest. For everyone to admit it would probably release such pent-up force as to be devastating to societies as they now are.”

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

The Recasting of Some Basic Psychoanalytic Ideas
The Denial of Death (1973)

Children, People, Books, Cars

“There are so many stories to tell — we’re just as varied in experiences as white men, and it doesn’t look like people are sick of those stories yet. And I’m lucky enough to be in a position to tell these stories and share them.”

Maurene Goo

On being able to tell different stories about the Korean American experience in “’So Many Stories to Tell’: A Conversation with Maurene Goo” https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/so-many-stories-to-tell-a-conversation-with-maurene-goo/ in Los Angeles Review of Books (2018 Aug 22)

Men, People

“I think the most important thing is to instantly give them a sense of who you are and how you feel in that moment. If a speaker is nervous and tells the audience that, people immediately contextualize it and respond accordingly. If a performer is in a good mood or feeling wild and crazy and says so, I’ve found, the crowd will be good at matching that energy. So for me, the rapport is built by a genuineness conveyed as quickly as possible.”

Trevor Noah (1984) South African comedian

On connecting with your audience in “Life’s Work: An Interview with Trevor Noah” https://hbr.org/2018/09/lifes-work-an-interview-with-trevor-noah in Harvard Business Review (September-October, 2018) Personal life

People, Feeling, Mood, Thinking

“Coming to the theater humanizes people…Culture informs perspective, and the world is a complicated place. Telling the story on stage increases understanding…”

Karen Zacarias (1969) Mexican-American playwright

On how she views theater in “BWW Interview: A Date with DESTINY: Talking with Playwright Karen Zacarías” https://www.broadwayworld.com/washington-dc/article/BWW-Interview-A-Date-with-DESTINY-Talking-with-Playwright-Karen-Zacaras-20150914 in Broadway World (2015 Sep 14)

People, World, Understanding

“If you tell stories about a really cool kid that you can relate to, and then you hear about kids being mean to that kid, then you feel what it is like to walk in his shoes. And you think, that is not right. I think the best way to write is to want to build empathy for your characters. You want the readers to feel the things they are feeling.”

R. J. Palacio (1963) American author

On thinking about kids who are different in “Author R.J. Palacio talks to LI kids” https://www.newsday.com/lifestyle/family/kidsday/rj-palacio-wonder-author-interview-1.20364470 in Newsday (2018 Aug 8)

Shoe, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“The relationship between reader and writer in fiction is steeped in vulnerabilities. It really does require trust and faith because some books have the power to transform people. You feel like you can never go back, look at the world in the same way again. And that grand ambition is what I hope to do with my books because at the heart of my writing is a passion for telling stories of the oppressed, the marginalized, and the misunderstood.”

Randa Abdel-Fattah (1979) contemporary Australian writer of novels for young adults

On being a writer in “Both Freedom and Constraint: An Interview with Randa Abdel-Fattah” https://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article/both-freedom-and-constraint-an-interview-with in Words Without Borders (May 2015)

People, Books, World, Faith

“At this point in my life, I don’t worry about telling a literary story or the right story; I tell the story I want to tell, the story that makes me feel alive, the questions I want to answer.”

Amulya Malladi (1974) Indian writer

On not caring about what other people think about her writing in “An Interview with Amulya Malladi” http://jaggerylit.com/an-interview-with-amulya-malladi/ in Jaggery

Life, Making love, Feeling, Question

“As writers, of course we’re interested in human beings, human stories, human trauma, and all that is very compelling for readers. But when we write these powerful stories about individual people, we have the illusion that we’ve made a difference. And of course we have—people read the books, they’re touched emotionally by these kinds of stories, and that’s great. But to the extent that the stories that we’re telling are about people who are weaker, in some way—they come from a small country, or a forcibly removed population, they’re underrepresented collectively—individual stories don’t change the conditions that produce those refugees in the first place…”

Viet Thanh Nguyen (1971) American author of fiction

On writers overestimating the difference that their writings make in “An interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen” https://www.asymptotejournal.com/interview/an-interview-with-viet-thanh-nguyen/ in Asymptote Magazine

People, Books, Way, Change

“Humor is absolutely necessary to keep going…So many of the people in my family and my community were wonderful storytellers. They would tell stories about just awful things that happened to them. But their humor made what happened into their own kind of triumph.”

Stephanie Powell Watts

On the importance of humor in “INTERVIEWS: Stephanie Powell Watts” https://bookpage.com/interviews/21148-stephanie-powell-watts-fiction#.Xe_qN_lKjcs in BookPage (April 2017)

People, Family, Communication

“A play is like a free-flowing poem in some ways. The play, as you write, will tell you what the structure will be. But, sometimes you forget to ask those questions as you write and you end up spending a lot of time trying to find the essence of the play…”

Mando Alvarado actor

On how playwriting differs from television writing in “SIN MUROS: INTERVIEW WITH “LIVING SCULPTURE” PLAYWRIGHT MANDO ALVARADO” https://thetheatretimes.com/sin-muros-interview-living-sculpture-playwright-mando-alvarado/ in The Theatre Times

Way, Question, Time, Forgetting

“I have to be a risk-taker and just tell the truth the way it is. Everything that bothers me. Everything that must be told. Fearlessly. My loyalty is to the inner vision. There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done.”

Vivek Agnihotri (1973) director

Urban Naxals (2018)

Truth, Way, Loyalty

“These creatures you have seen are animals carven and wrought into new shapes. To that, to the study of the plasticity of living forms, my life has been devoted. I have studied for years, gaining in knowledge as I go. I see you look horrified, and yet I am telling you nothing new. It all lay in the surface of practical anatomy years ago, but no one had the temerity to touch it.”

H. G. Wells book The Island of Doctor Moreau

Source: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Ch. 14: Doctor Moreau Explains

Life, Knowledge, Study, Animals

“No one has officially told me that I have lost the Tory whip. The fault’s probably mine. I’m notorious for only using my mobile phone for outgoing calls: nobody knows my London number and I certainly don’t do anything online. So there may somewhere be an email or text message or something telling me, but I gather from the media that there’s no doubt that I’ve lost the whip. My status otherwise is completely unclear.”

Ken Clarke (1940) British Conservative politician

Said after Clarke voted against the government on the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill 2017-19. Boris Johnson had promised to remove the Conservative whip from those who rebelled. Quoted by the Guardian. Ken Clarke: ‘I’m not sure yet, but I may protest and vote Lib Dem’ https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/07/ken-clarke-interview-andrew-rawnsley-lost-tory-whip (7 September 2019) 2019

Alvin C. York (1887–1964) United States Army Medal of Honor recipient

War, People, World, Making love

“I wonder at the strange fidelity of your officers that they neglect to tell you of the true state of things, but cover a blazing fire with straw ! May the sun of your royalty continue to shine above the horizon of greatness !”

Shivaji (1627–1680) founder of Maratha Empire

Letter to Aurangzeb

Sun

“There is a prescription that works well, MOND, but the reason it works so well is not known. You may say that MOND tells us how the real theory of gravity should look.”

Jacob Bekenstein (1947–2015) Mexican-Israeli physicist

as quoted in: [Milgrom, Mordehai, MOND from a brane-world picture, arXiv preprint arXiv:1804.05840, 2018, https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.05840] (p. 2)

“There are no souls, Melba thought with a touch of pity. We are bags of meat with a little electricity running through them. No ghosts, no spirits, no souls. The only thing that survives is the story people tell about you. The only thing that matters is your name.”

Daniel Abraham (1969) speculative fiction writer from the United States

Source: Abaddon's Gate (2013), Chapter 11 (p. 121)

People, Soul

“Because we cannot save ourselves without contesting oligarchic control, the fight for democracy and justice and the fight against environmental breakdown are one and the same. Do not allow those who have caused this crisis to define the limits of political action. Do not allow those whose magical thinking got us into this mess to tell us what can and cannot be done.”

George Monbiot (1963) English writer and political activist

The Earth is in a death spiral. It will take radical action to save us, 2018

Justice, Democracy, Thinking, Fight

“I was lectured on my political morality, on my preferring British jobs to black lives, on my lack of concern for human rights. One after the other, their accusations became more vitriolic and personal until I could stand it no longer. To their palpable alarm I began to tell my African critics a few home truths. I noted that they were busily trading with South Africa at the same time as they were attacking me for refusing to apply sanctions. I wondered when they intended to show similar concern about abuses in the Soviet Union, with which of course they often had not just trade but close political links. I wondered when I was going to hear them attack terrorism. I reminded them of their own less than impressive record on human rights. And when the representative from Uganda took me to task for racial discrimination, I turned on him and reminded him of the Asians which Uganda had thrown out on racial grounds, many of whom had come to settle in my constituency in North London, where they were model citizens and doing very well.”

Margaret Thatcher book The Downing Street Years

On the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting at Nassau in October 1985, where Thatcher opposed sanctions on South Africa
Source: The Downing Street Years (1993), p. 517

Truth, Home, Time, Personality

“I have made at worst some neat, precise and joyous little tales which prevaricate tenderly about the universe and veil the pettiness of human nature with screens of verbal jewelwork. It is not the actual world they tell about, but a vastly superior place where the Dream is realized and everything which in youth we knew was possible comes true. It is a world we have all glimpsed, just once, and have not ever entered, and have not ever forgotten. So people like my little tales.... Do they induce delusions? Oh, well, you must give people what they want, and literature is a vast bazaar where customers come to purchase everything except mirrors.”

James Branch Cabell (1879–1958) American author

"Auctorial Induction"
The Certain Hour (1916)

People, Youth, World, Dreams

“Sylvia went furthest in the sense that her secret was most dangerous to her. She desperately needed to reveal it. You can’t overestimate her compulsion to write like that. She had to write those things — even against her most vital interests. She died before she knew what The Bell Jar and the Ariel poems were going to do to her life, but she had to get them out. She had to tell everybody... like those Native American groups who periodically told everything that was wrong and painful in their lives in the presence of the whole tribe. It was no good doing it in secret; it had to be done in front of everybody else. Maybe that’s why poets go to such lengths to get their poems published. It’s no good whispering them to a priest or a confessional. And it’s not for fame, because they go on doing it after they’ve learned what fame amounts to. No, until the revelation’s actually published, the poet feels no release. In all that, Sylvia was an extreme case, I think.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

The Paris Review interview

Life, Pain, Secret, Feeling

“Of course if we make good things, it is not only to the credit of science; it is also to the credit of the moral choice which led us to good work. Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad — but it does not carry instructions on how to use it. Such power has evident value — even though the power may be negated by what one does with it.I learned a way of expressing this common human problem on a trip to Honolulu. In a Buddhist temple there, the man in charge explained a little bit about the Buddhist religion for tourists, and then ended his talk by telling them he had something to say to them that they would never forget — and I have never forgotten it. It was a proverb of the Buddhist religion:To every man is given the key to the gates of heaven; the same key opens the gates of hell.What then, is the value of the key to heaven? It is true that if we lack clear instructions that enable us to determine which is the gate to heaven and which the gate to hell, the key may be a dangerous object to use.But the key obviously has value: how can we enter heaven without it?”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

The Value of Science (1955)

Bad luck, Making love, Religion, Way

“I was encouraged to look around me and to paint what I saw. I painted my story, and it had a lot of angles to it. I was trying to explain how I saw life as a black person living in America, and I put things together that were not acceptable. A lot of people did not want these kind of paintings representing America in any sense, but I wanted to tell my story and what I saw…”

Faith Ringgold (1930) American artist

On the Civil Rights Movement puncturing the image of the American Dream in https://www.theartnewspaper.com/interview/faith-ringgold-discusses-civil-rights-and-children-s-books-ahead-of-solo-serpentine-gallery-show in The Art Newspaper (2019 Jun 5)

Life, People, Sense, Painting

“Working Americans would tell you that the dignity of work is being stripped … they are working harder than their parents and falling further behind … while their salaries may moderately have gone up, what has gone up more is the cost of prescription drugs … child care … college …”

Cory Booker (1969) 35th Class 2 senator for New Jersey in U.S. Congress

2019
Source: [Marshall, Karen, Deady, Brendan, Cory Booker Tests Message Of Collaboration And Economic Equality In First Visit To New Hampshire, https://www.wgbh.org/news/national-news/2019/02/19/senator-cory-booker-tests-message-of-collaboration-and-economic-equality-in-first-visit-to-new-hampshire, WGBH News, 2019-03-15]

Parent

“Long before Doniger’s book was pulped, an event which the secularists have eagerly highlighted, her book was replied to in detail by Vishal Agarwal… He showed that she was either wrong or unmistakably biased in hundreds of passages. For a lifelong tenant of a very prestigious Indology chair, it is shameful that she could deliver such substandard work. But the fact that her work was anything but scholarly, has been carefully hidden by the secularists, including in the present article. Yet the fact that such a bad book was universally applauded and even earmarked for an Indian award, tells you a lot about the power equation, with the anti-Hindu forces jubilantly on top.”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

Koenraad Elst, On Modi Time : Merits And Flaws of Hindu Activism In Its Day Of Incumbency – 2015 Ch 17
The Hindus' (2009), About her book 'The Hindus

Bad luck, Books, Universe

“I WANT NOTHING I WANT NOTHING I WANT NO QUID PRO QUO. TELL ZELLINSKY TO DO THE RIGHT THING. THIS IS THE FINAL WORD FROM THE PRES. OF THE U. S.”

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

Remarks on a notepad, White House lawn, November 20 https://www.vox.com/2019/11/20/20974383/trump-big-sharpie-notes-on-impeachment-testimony, after Ambassador Gordon Sondland's testimony. 2010s, 2019, November

“Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger. In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving. We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining, but never doing anything about it. The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action. Do not allow anyone to tell you that it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America. We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again. We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the Earth from the miseries of disease, and to harness the energies, industries, and technologies of tomorrow. A new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights, and heal our divisions.”

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

2010s, 2017, January, Inaugural address, (January 20, 2017)

Disease, Dreams, Soul, Birth

“Oral tradition is really how Chicano literature came to be. I was not exposed to the written word, but I had the greatest teacher. I always tell people that my mother was my inspiration because she was the best chismosa, and she had the best stories. And if anyone taught me about drama, it was my mother because she knew how to tell a story. And my grandfather also told stories. One of the reasons why I waned to be a writer was because I was fascinated by stories of La Llorona, supernatural stories and things like that and I love hearing chisme (gossip)…”

Josefina Lopez (1969) American playwright

On her earliest influences in “JOSEFINA LÓPEZ – IN HER OWN WORDS” http://latinopia.com/latino-theater/josefina-lopez/ in Latinopia (2010 Mar 6)

Love, People, Making love, Literature

“Let Mr. Madison tell me when did liberty ever exist when the sword and the purse were given up from the people? Unless a miracle shall interpose, no nation ever did, nor ever can retain its liberty after the loss of the sword and the purse.”

Patrick Henry (1736–1799) attorney, planter, politician and Founding Father of the United States

As quoted in The Debates in the Several States Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution also known as Elliot's Debates, Jonathan Elliot, edit. (1941) J. B. Lippincott Co., pp. 168-169, originally published in 1836
1780s

People, Loss

“We haven’t gotten a chance to tell those stories for Latina women. If you look at what’s in the landscape right now, it’s very stuck in its lane, and I love that we have no lanes. There’s no road. There’s nothing. We start off somewhere and it just detours, regarding the characters…”

Tanya Saracho Mexican-American actress, playwright and showrunner

On her television series Vida which stars a Latino cast in “‘Vida’ Creator Tanya Saracho on Exploring Underrepresented Perspectives with Her Starz Drama” https://collider.com/vida-interview-tanya-saracho/#starz in Collider Magazine (2018 May 5)

Love, Women, Making love, Chance

“It’s one of those places you can never quite see enough of it, it’s vast. For the Chinese it’s very odd for people to travel alone so I often get picked up by families and couples. You learn a lot from what people don’t tell you.”

Madeleine Thien (1974) Canadian writer

On her travels in China in “Madeleine Thien: ‘In China, you learn a lot from what people don’t tell you’” https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/08/madeleine-thien-interview-do-not-say-we-have-nothing in The Guardian (2016 Oct 8)

People, Family, Travel, Learning

“He surely failed as prime minister to prevent the tragedy at Ayodhya. But his rivals in the Congress did their own party such disservice by spreading the canard that his (and their) government was responsible for that crime. This, more than anything else, lost them the Muslim vote in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar… any dispassionate reading of recent political history will tell you that this is a self-inflicted injury. The Congress has itself built a mythology whereby the Muslims have come to hold their party as responsible for Babri as the BJP … If you take Justice Liberhan’s indictment of so many in the BJP seriously, you cannot at the same time dismiss his exoneration of Rao, and the government, and the Congress Party under him. You surely cannot put the clock back on so much injustice done to him, like not even allowing his body to be taken inside the AICC building. But the least you can do now is to give him a memorial spot too along the Yamuna as one of our more significant (and secular) prime ministers who led us creditably through five difficult years, crafted our post-Cold War diplomacy, launched economic reform and, most significantly, discovered the political talent and promise of a quiet economist called Manmohan Singh.”

P. V. Narasimha Rao (1921–2004) Indian politician

Shekhar Gupta in Tearing down Narasimha Rao http://archive.indianexpress.com/news/tearingdownnarasimharao/547260/1, The Indian Express, 7 September 2011.

War, Justice, History, Memory

“I want to write to the Guinness Book of World Records that Manmohan Singh is the only Prime Minister of India among the eleven Prime Ministers that the country had who has not won even a municipal election. What is he going to tell me? Manmohan Singh is a nominated Prime Minister. He is not a representative of the people of India.”

Manmohan Singh (1932) 13th Prime Minister of India

Natwar Singh, former External Affairs Minister, "Manmohan hasn't even won an election: Natwar" http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Manmohan-hasnt-even-won-an-election-Natwar/articleshow/1878602.cms, The Times of India (9 August 2009)

People, Books, World, Country

“A lot of people want to tell me their stories, and it’s not just the people who were alive back then. Though the play deals with AIDS, it’s about more than just the epidemic. It deals with things that plague gay men now. It’s very much about addiction, too. And the audience’s experiences run the gamut. And these audiences feel emboldened in the best way possible to not keep secrets. And they feel like they trust us enough to tell us their stories. It’s a beautiful thing.”

Matthew Lopez (playwright) (1978) American playwright

On the impact of The Inheritance in “PLAYWRIGHT MATTHEW LOPEZ WANTS TO HEAR YOUR STORIES” https://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/matthew-lopez-the-inheritance-broadway-play-aids-gay-storytelling in Interview Magazine (2019 Nov 14)

Men, People, Secret, Beauty

“I have to totally credit that to my mother. There were two children. I was the only girl. And she just always talked to me. She would tell me things that happened to her … her dreams, her past … it’s like the monologues in my plays, it really is. Because her stories were loaded with imagery and tragedy, darkness and sarcasm and humor…”

Adrienne Kennedy (1931) African-American playwright

On how her mother’s influence appears in her works in “Adrienne Kennedy by Suzan-Lori Parks” https://bombmagazine.org/articles/adrienne-kennedy/ in BOMB Magazine (1996 Jan 1)

Children, Dreams, Girl, Past

“I didn’t start writing to tell happy, little stories. I started writing to make some impact on the world in which I live. If you don’t want to say anything about sexual assault, that’s your business, but I want to say something about it. I think it is absolutely and unequivocally wrong. We have no right because we are in the military to rape fellow soldiers who just happen to be females. A lot of victims are male as well. In the Army I was in, the life of the person next to you was as valuable as your own. You would never do anything to hurt your comrade. Your life depended on him, and in the case of Iraq, those gentlemen’s lives depended on the women they were raping. It’s horrifying.”

Charles Fuller (1939–2022) American playwright

On writing about a female sexual assault victim serving in the military in his play One Night in “Charles Fuller Discusses ‘One Night’” https://catf.org/charles-fuller-discusses-one-night/ in Contemporary American Theater Festival (2014 Jun 1)

Life, Women, Happiness, World

“Art in an abstract setting is one thing, but art where you’re actually telling people to do things becomes dangerous…”

Amiri Baraka (1934–2014) African-American writer

On how art might turn “dangerous” if it becomes too political in “In Memoriam: An Interview with the Late Amiri Baraka” https://www.sampsoniaway.org/interviews/2014/01/10/in-memoriam-an-interview-with-the-late-amiri-baraka/ in Sampsonia Way (2014 Jan 10)

People, Art

“To me there is only one way to judge a person, whatever his background, whatever his colour, whatever his religion, and that is what that person is, and not by his race or creed. That is what I believe in, that is what I will tell everyone and that is what I try to achieve everything.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Speech to the Young Conservative Conference in Eastbourne (13 February 1977), quoted in The Times (14 February 1977), p. 3
Leader of the Opposition

Religion, Way, Personality

“Let me tell all the scum and all the leftists: you’re going to lose all of your jobs soon. The whole mainstream media is dying. We’re going to be in a huge Depression. You’re going to be living in your mothers’ basements. And I hope your little fake liberal culture you’ve got that’s totally fascist and Satanic — I hope it keeps you warm at night because that’s all you’re going to have, and it’s all you’re ever going to have. Okay? I just hope you understand that.”

Alex Jones (1974) American radio host, author, conspiracy theorist and filmmaker

As quoted in "Alex Jones Melts Globalists over Terror: Mind-Controlled Media Sacrificing the West for Islam" https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/09/21/alex-jones-melts-globalists-terror-mind-controlled-media-sacrificing-west-islam/ by Rebecca Mansour, Breitbart.com (21 September 2016) ( video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJIB9UAZY-c) 2016

Hope, Understanding, Night

“Almost everything in the pop culture lexicon of vampirism is basically fiction—and fiction is the art of telling entertaining lies for money.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Rhesus Chart (2014), Chapter 9, “Committee Processes” (p. 159)

Money, Art

“Things have gone downhill since Mom decided a modal average dose of old-time religion was an essential part of her upbringing, to the point that absolutely the best thing in the world Tante Annette could send her is some scam programmed by Daddy to take her away. If it doesn’t work, Mom will take her to Church tonight, and she’s certain she’ll end up making a scene again. Amber’s tolerance of willful idiocy is diminishing rapidly, and while building up her memetic immunity might be the real reason Mom’s forcing this shit on her—it’s always hard to tell with Mom—things have been tense ever since she got expelled from Sunday school for mounting a spirited defense of the theory of evolution.”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 4 (“Halo”), p. 130

World, Making love, School, Religion

“Some of these things seem as if it’s a lot of hard work, and it is. But it’s to an end—toward a richer, deeper understanding of a phenomenon that I was seeking to bring to life…The term narrative comes from Greek for the word knowing. And I think that that’s a powerful message because it means you cannot tell a story until you know the story.”

Isabel Wilkerson (1961) American journalist

On how she hopes The Warmth of Other Suns led to a deeper understanding in “Isabel Wilkerson” https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2016/fall/feature/isabel-wilkerson in Humanities (Fall 2016)

Life, Understanding, Thinking

“I love that Camilla is trying to figure it out. We tell kids there are no stupid questions. But when you throw race in the mix, there are a lot of questions — some are painful to ask, some are painful to answer and we all say stupid things sometimes. I hope readers feel after reading Cammi’s story that it’s not about one moment or interaction, it’s about staying heart strong and moving forward. Like Maya Angelou used to say, when you know better, you do better.”

Veronica Chambers (1970) writer

On the character arc of Camilla in “Author Interview: Veronica Chambers questions Mexican immigrant stereotypes in ‘The Go-Between’” https://www.hypable.com/author-interview-veronica-chambers-the-go-between/ in Hypable (2017 May 9)

Love, Pain, Stupidity, Making love

“The skills I had learned for prose didn’t work in film. Those telling details, they’re completely different. Or the fact of these inner monologues in which you can write a whole book. Whereas prose is teasing out, film is stripping down, concentrating and compacting. I found I could not learn the one while doing the other. So it was a big struggle, actually. It took me years.”

Tsitsi Dangarembga (1959) Zimbabwean author and filmmaker

On adjusting to film writing in “An Interview with Tsitsi Dangarembga: An excerpt” https://brickmag.com/an-interview-with-tsitsi-dangarembga/ in Brick Magazine (December 2012)

Books, Learning

“The Flames and Canucks, this one was the toughest series of all folks. No prisoners were taken in this one. Whoa! Are they hittin’? And they’re hittin’ to hurt, I’ll tell ya. Watch these beauty hits. You better keep your head up in this series I’ll tell ya!”

Don Cherry (1934) ice hockey coach, television commentator

In the "Flames-Canucks" segment (profiling the 1994 Western Conference Quarterfinal Series between the Calgary Flames and the Vancouver Canucks) of the Rock'Em Sock'Em Six hockey highlights video.

Beauty, Hurt

“To marry a man without loving him, which was what I had just done, not really perceiving it, was a wicked action, I saw. Stiff with remorse and terror, I lay under the thin blanket through a good part of the night; as far as I could tell from what seemed a measureless distance, my untroubled mate was sleeping.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

Source: How I Grew (1987), Ch. 9, last lines of book

Love, Making love, Sleep, Parting

“Yet it was part of being an American that, once you got started, you felt impelled to tell all the people all the truth all the time.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

"To Be a Pilgrim"
Birds of America (1971)

People, Truth, Time, Parting

“She could not bear to hurt her husband. She impressed this on the Young Man, on her confidantes, and finally on her husband himself. The thought of Telling Him actually made her heart turn over in a sudden and sickening way, she said. This was true, and yet she knew that being a potential divorcee was deeply pleasurable in somewhat the same way that being an engaged girl had been.”

Mary McCarthy (1912–1989) American writer

First published in The Southern Review (Spring 1939)
Source: The Company She Keeps (1942), Ch. 1 "Cruel and Barbarous Treatment", p. 5, first lines of novel.

Pleasure, Way, Girl, Heart

“I also believe in the value of excellence and bringing your best self. My father used to tell me if you’re going to do something, be the best at it.”

Nina Vaca businessperson

My Roots: Nina Vaca https://www.dmagazine.com/publications/d-ceo/2017/september/my-roots-nina-vaca/, D Magazine (September 2017)

Self-confidence

“We know more about human heredity to-day than we did loo years ago. Human nature is not an unstained page. We come into the world with more than blank minds and helpless bodies. We come bringing with us machines, natures, which must be radically changed if we ever become more than mere fractions of men and women. Nearly all the woes of the world arise either from ignorance of the ways we should go or from hereditary waywardnesses which we bring into the world with us. It is as truly the function of the school to correct these inherent defects in our acting machinery and to put sign-boards in the mind telling which ways to go and which ways to avoid as it is to tutor the understanding or guide the growing body.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Ethics and Education (1912), Preface

Women, Men, World, School

“The Jews as a group may be powerless, but the sum of the achievements of their individual members is everywhere considerable and telling, even though those achievements were made in the face of obstacles.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

affirmed on page 213 of The Ultimate Quotable Einstein
1930s, Why Do They Hate the Jews (1938)

“What people do with their leisure tells us a great deal about the nature of a society, what its values really are, for example, as opposed to what its members say its values are.”

Jack McDevitt book Infinity Beach

Source: Infinity Beach (2000), Chapter 32 (p. 476)

People, Nature

“When we were sitting in this courtroom, during the jury selection proves, i listened to Judge Thompson tell you about the amerikan system of justice. He talked about the presumption of innocence; he talked about equality and justice. His words were like a beautiful dream in a beautiful world. But i have been awaiting trial for two and one half years. And justice, in my eyesight has not been the amerikan dream. It has been the amerikan nightmare. There was a time when I wanted to believe that there was justice in this country. But reality crashed through and shattered all my day dreams. While awaiting trial i have earned a Ph. D. in justice, or rather, the lack of it.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Source: Assata: In Her Own Words, p. 166

World, Justice, Beauty, Dreams

“I can tell you this at least. The most convincing disguise for legitimacy is legitimacy itself.”

Jack Vance Demon Princes

Source: Demon Princes (1964-1981), The Face (1979), Chapter 1 (p. 12)

“Huey P. Newton is the baddest motherfucker ever to set foot inside of history. Huey has a very special meaning to black people, because for four hundred years black people have been wanting to do exactly what Huey Newton did, that is, to stand up in front of the most deadly tentacle of the white racist power structure, and to defy that deadly tentacle, and to tell that tentacle that he will not accept the aggression and the brutality, and that if he is moved against, he will retaliate in kind. Huey Newton is a classical revolutionary figure.”

Eldridge Cleaver (1935–1998) American activist

Post-Prison Writings (1969)
1960s

People, History

“There is no way to tell whether the patterns extracted by the right hemisphere are real or imagined without subjecting them to left-hemisphere scrutiny. On the other hand, mere critical thinking, without creative and intuitive insights, without the search for new patterns, is sterile and doomed. To solve complex problems in changing circumstances requires the activity of both cerebral hemispheres: the path to the future lies through the corpus callosum.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Source: The Dragons of Eden (1977), Chapter 7, “Lovers and Madmen” (pp. 190-191)

Way, Imagination, Search, Problem

“You and your boys have done wonderfully to foster the game of hockey in our country I hope that you will return to India with good impressions and with the same feeling of friendship to the German hockey players as we feel towards you…Tell them how much we all admired the sill and performance of the prefect hockey they have shown us.”

Dhyan Chand (1905–1979) Indian field hockey player

George Evers, President of the Deutsch Hockey Board and the International Hockey Federation after India won the Olympics at Berlin in a message to Dhyan Chand quoted in "India and the Olympics" in page=64

Friendship, Hope, Feeling, Game

“Art possesses the formidable tool of pietas. Take, for instance, theatre. Theatre, by convention, agrees to be fake; thanks to this convention, which is innocuous, it can tell the truth. Art can tell the truth, because it is a transfigured language which doesn’t claim to possess divine truth; with its ability to transform relationships, it can address even the most terrible issues, exploring them without being destroyed by them. But artists have to be conscious of their role.”

Moni Ovadia (1946) Italian actor, musician, singer and theatrical author

"Uncomfortable culture – Interview with Moni Ovadia – part two" https://www.inkroci.com/culture_movie/interviews/uncomfortable-culture-interview-with-moni-ovadia-part-two.html, Inkroci (2014).

Truth, Art

“I tell the Prime Minister that this is an ill-thought-out enterprise and will not achieve the purposes to which it is put.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1982/apr/07/falkland-islands#column_993 in the House of Commons (7 April 1982) on the Falklands War 1980s

“Poetry is the art that is closest to music, standing between music and narrative orality (which can be speechmaking, sermon or theater). Poetry is the voice of what can’t be spoken, the mode of truth-telling when meaning needs to rise above or skim below everyday language in shapes not discernible by the ordinary mind. It trumps the rhetoric of politicians. Poetry is prophetic by nature and not bound by time. Because of these qualities poetry carries grief, heartache, ecstasy, celebration, despair, or searing truth more directly than any other literary art form. It is ceremonial in nature. Poetry is a tool for disruption and creation and is necessary for generations of humans to know who they are and who they are becoming in the wave map of history. Without poetry, we lose our way.”

Joy Harjo (1951) American writer

On the art of poetry in “An Interview with Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate” https://poets.org/text/interview-joy-harjo-us-poet-laureate?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIiJP5naHW5QIV0Rx9Ch0tGgkkEAAYASAAEgIJD_D_BwE in Poets.org (2019 Mar 31)

Truth, Art, Music, Way

“So in addition to what I’ve quoted to you just now, in Prizren, I say particularly in this place and in this town, I want to tell you something that I consider to be the most important in this town, because in it, there are Serbs, Albanians, Muslims, Turks, Roma, and others. Every one of the ethnic groups, to a large proportion. That is why I believe that this town and this region should be an example of carrying out the policy of national equality of rights, a policy that would make it possible for all people to give — to live on a footing of equality and under humane conditions, that there should be a high degree of mutual understanding and that a joint life of all citizens should be built successfully.”

Slobodan Milošević (1941–2006) Yugoslavian and Serbian politician

Slobodan Milošević (2002) International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia https://www.icty.org/x/cases/slobodan_milosevic/trans/en/020516IT.htm

Life, People, Making love, Quotes

“I respect your right to put them to me. You will no doubt respect my right to tell you that I do not think all the points in sum amount to a basis for a rational penal policy.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Source: Speech to the Police Federation conference in Eastbourne (18 May 1976) regarding the Federation's campaign on law and order, quoted in The Times (19 May 1976), p. 5

Thinking

“If we are to get through the immense problems of the next few years we need to heal and not to deepen the wounds of the nation. That can, I believe, be done upon the basis of party government. … But it cannot be done upon the basis of ignoring middle opinion and telling everyone who does not agree with you to go to hell.”

Roy Jenkins (1920–2003) British politician, historian and writer

Speech to the Pembrokeshire Constituency Labour Party in Haverfordwest (26 July 1974), quoted in The Times (27 July 1974), p. 3
1970s

Hell, Problem

“Along with plot, I am always thinking about structure. Sometimes the story guides you to the best structure for its telling. Using letters seemed like the best way to tell this story. When writing these letters, the characters are selecting what they want to tell. In this case, the woman is writing in a way that would not endanger her or her family if her letters were found by the military authorities who took over the country, and the man is writing with the urgency of someone who could die at any minute while at sea.”

Edwidge Danticat (1969) Novelist, short story writer, memoirist

On using an epistolary form for her short story “Children of the Sea” in “An Interview | Edwidge Danticat” http://www.bkreview.org/fall-2018/an-interview-with-edwidge-danticat/ in The Brooklyn Review (Fall 2018) Interviews

Family, Way, Thinking, Sea

“No, I never plan my stories. A detailed outline is enough for me to lose interest in the whole thing. Even a brief oral summary makes the desire to write what I have in mind vanish. I am one of those who begin to write knowing only a few essential features of the story they intend to tell. The rest they discover line by line.”

Elena Ferrante (1943) Italian writer

On not planning her stories in advance in “In a rare interview, Elena Ferrante describes the writing process behind the Neapolitan novels” https://www.latimes.com/books/la-ca-jc-elena-ferrante-interview-20180517-htmlstory.html in Los Angeles Times (2018 May 17)

Making love

“You teacher is a leftist? Tell her to read the book The Suffocated Truth.”

Jair Bolsonaro (1955) Brazilian president elect

Just read it. There are facts, not the blah blah blah of the left. Telling students to read a book by Colonel Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, dictatorship-era torturer, in Brasília, on 30 September 2019. Bolsonaro tells students to read book by dictatorship-era torturer https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/30/bolsonaro-tells-students-to-read-book-by-dictatorship-era-torturer. The Guardian (30 September 2019).

Truth, Books, Teachers, Reading

“I’m not here to tell you my troubles with the administration or — I’m happy to be on the program, because I’ve already read 96 percent of the book, and we’re investigating, but for me to start telling you what might be available and what the problems are and what the challenges are going to be, I think, is very unprofessional in an investigation of this seriousness… It’s under investigation and consideration right now. But the importance of this discussion today is critical not only to the committees — there are four committees, and how they relate to each other will come forward very shortly — but there is also the question of the media, the Fourth Estate, the press. This is now public information that, it seems to me, shouldn’t be great breaking news over a progressive news program, but this has to be investigated by the rest of the media, unless they consider this to be irrelevant or too late, or whatever reasons are, that they’re coerced or afraid themselves, too timid… I consider the relationship of the committees on the subject matter, the responsibility of the media, and the American people being brought into this discussion as the citizens, that in a representative democracy, that’s what all of us are supposed to be working on.”

John Conyers (1929–2019) American politician from Michigan

After Ron Suskind Reveals Bush Admin Ordered Iraq-9/11 Fakery, House Judiciary Chair John Conyers Opens Congressional Probe https://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/14/after_ron_suskind_reveals_bush_admin, DemocracyNow! (14 August 2008)

Happiness, People, Books, Democracy

“When I was a young student, I thought modern psychology could tell me the answers, but I soon found out that the best psychologists didn’t know a damn thing about the real core of the matter. Oh, I am not disparaging the work that has been done; it was badly needed and had been very useful in its way. None of ’em know what life is, what thought is, whether free will is a reality or an illusion, or whether that last question means anything. The best of ’em admit their ignorance; the worst of them make dogmatic assertions that are obvious absurdities.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Lost Legacy

Lost Legacy (p. 284)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

Life, Making love, Way, Question

“It is true that most religions which have been offered me teach immortality, but note the fashion in which they teach it. The surest way to lie convincingly is to tell the truth unconvincingly. They did not wish me to believe.”

Robert A. Heinlein book They

They (p. 60)
Short fiction, Off the Main Sequence (2005)

Truth, Lie, Religion, Way

“He is one of Britain’s most successful travel writers, whose highly entertaining books elegantly combine scholarship and story-telling, trans-cultural investigations and romance.”

William Dalrymple (1965) author and historian

Jules Smith, in William Dalrymple: Critical Perspective http://literature.britishcouncil.org/william-dalrymple, 2007, British Council. About William Dalrymple

Books, Travel, Success

“Let me say that there is no one in our government, at any level, who has the right to tell any American who they should be allowed to love or who they should be allowed to marry. My record in Congress for over six years shows my commitment to fighting for LGBTQ equality. I serve on the equality caucus and recently voted for passage of the Equality Act… Maybe many people in this county can relate to the fact that I grew up in a socially conservative home, held views when I was very young that I no longer hold today. I served with LGBT service members both in training and deployed downrange. I know that they would give their life me, and I would give my life for them.”

Tulsi Gabbard (1981) U.S. Representative from Hawaii's 2nd congressional district

In a lineup rich with liars and scandals, Tulsi Gabbard was the only 2020 candidate made to answer for her past, Washington Examiner, Becket Adams https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/in-a-lineup-rich-with-liars-and-scandals-tulsi-gabbard-was-the-only-2020-candidate-made-to-answer-for-her-past, (27 June 2019) 2019

Love, Life, People, Making love

“We are black, it is true, but tell us, gentle men, you who are so judicious, what is the law that says that the black man must belong to and be the property of the white man?”

Toussaint Louverture (1743–1803) Leader of the Haitian Revolution

Letter to the General Assembly (1792)

Men, Law

“I grew up being aware that I was Southern, and that being a very important thing for me. And being drawn to short story writers, like Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty—the surroundings in their stories were so familiar to me, the whole Southern Gothic thing. That world only existed in that part of the country. It’s going to inform the personality of the songs. In a lot of my songwriting, I mention towns and places. It’s a culturally traditional thing in the South to tell stories.”

Lucinda Williams (1953) American rock, folk, blues, and country music singer, songwriter and musician

On how her Southern heritage informed her songwriting in “Lucinda Williams On the Hard and Sedulous Road to Major Label Success” https://sheshredsmag.com/interview-lucinda-williams/ in She Shreds (2017 Mar 6)

World, Parting, Personality, Country

“We used to think that you could spend your way out of a recession and increase employment by cutting taxes and boosting government spending. I tell you in all candour that that option no longer exists, and in so far as it ever did exist, it only worked on each occasion since the war by injecting a bigger dose of inflation into the economy, followed by a higher level of unemployment as the next step. Higher inflation followed by higher unemployment. We have just escaped from the highest rate of inflation this country has known; we have not yet escaped from the consequences: high unemployment. That is the history of the last twenty years.”

James Callaghan (1912–2005) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom; 1976-1979

Speech to the Labour Party Conference in Blackpool (28 September 1976), quoted in Labour Party Annual Conference Report 1976, p. 188 and James Callaghan, Time and Chance (Collins, 1987), p. 426. This part of his speech was written by his son-in-law, future BBC Economics correspondent Peter Jay
Prime Minister

War, Way, History, Thinking

“Did you not tell me once that patronage of the artist was the only valuable vocation to which a prince might aspire?”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Book 2 “Esbern Snare: The Northern Werewolf,” Chapter 1 “Consequences of Ill-Considered Dealings With the Supernatural” (p. 218)
The Elric Cycle, The Revenge of the Rose (1991)

“Despairingly, sometimes, I seek the comfort of a benign god, Shaarilla. My mind goes out, lying awake at night, searching through black barrenness for something—anything—which will take me to it, warm me, protect me, tell me that there is order in the chaotic tumble of the universe; that it is consistent, this precision of the planets, not simply a brief, bright spark of sanity in an eternity of malevolent anarchy.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

Elric sighed and his quiet tones were tinged with hopelessness. “Without some confirmation of the order of things, my only comfort is to accept the anarchy. This way, I can revel in chaos and know, without fear, that we are doomed from the start—that our brief existence is both meaningless and damned. I can accept, then, that we are more than forsaken, because there was never anything there to forsake us. I have weighed the proof, Shaarilla, and must believe that anarchy prevails, in spite of all the laws which seemingly govern our actions, our sorcery, our logic. I see only chaos in the world. If the book we seek tells me otherwise, then I shall gladly believe it. Until then, I will put my trust only in my sword and myself.”
Source: The Elric Cycle, The Weird of the White Wolf (1977), Chapter 1, “A Woman Who Would Risk Grief to Her Soul” (p. 451)

God, Search, Lying, Universe

Quotes about tell page 68

Quotes about tell
page 68