Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
In many of the things that people do, they themselves are the centre of attention, but they inscribe some other name on their banner.
People can take, take, take from you. There are people whose profession is to do that. It's entertainment at the cost of human lives.
It is in the nature of the New Yorker to be as topical as possible, on a level that is often small in scale and playful in intention.
Maybe this is the point: to embrace the core sadness of life without toppling headlong into it, or assuming it will define your days.
I'm a chronicler of Negroland, a participant-observer, an elegist, dissenter, and admirer; sometime expatriate, ongoing interlocutor.
My individual way of taking on the burdens of history has changed. I don't think of them only as burdens; I think they are honorable.
I'm always aware of various audiences, as a part of my training as a journalist and as part of my training as a citizen of Negroland.
I think that there was a lot of fantasy projected onto me, and that resulted in a reappropriation and re-characterization of who I am.
It must be borne in mind that the tragedy of life doesn't lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goals to reach.
Since the business of politics is the conciliation of differing interests, justice must not merely be done, but to be seen to be done.
The most fatal illusion is the narrow point of view. Since life is growth and motion, a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one.
Classical and romantic: private language of a family quarrel, a dead dispute over the distribution of emphasis between man and nature.
The bachelors admired freedom is often a yoke, for the freer a man is to himself the greater slave he often is to the whims of others.
The Sessions becomes a dance of joy in the midst of severe challenge, and a movie with a light spirit that lifts a tale of heavy fate.
Throughout history the exemplary teacher has never been just an instructor in a subject; he is nearly always its living advertisement.
I love my country more than anything. I spent 12 years in the United States Marine Corps. I know what it means to defend this country.
To regard all things and principles of things as inconstant modes or fashions has more and more become the tendency of modern thought.
The Dodo never had a chance. He seems to have been invented for the sole purpose of becoming extinct and that was all he was good for.
I will try to cram these paragraphs full of facts and give them a weight and shape no greater than that of a cloud of blue butterflies.
The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion, a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one.
All that is necessary to raise imbecility into what the mob regards as profundity is to lift it off the floor and put it on a platform.
The closer and more confidential our relationship with someone, the less we are entitled to ask about what we are not voluntarily told.
That's the wonderful thing about writing, you can take things you haven't done properly in your own life and make it better in fiction.
Adventurous reading allows one to escape a little from the provincialities of one's home culture and the blinders of one's narrow self.
I've always liked an easygoing, colloquial style. I like the kind of reviewer who is essentially a fellow reader, an enthusiast, a fan.
Even if Trump means well, his schemes tend to be blunt, selfish, and short-sighted rather than nuanced, empathetic, and thought through.
Politics is a way of ruling in divided societies without undue violence...politics is not just a necessary evil; it is a realistic good.
So much of what blacks and women contend with is centered in how we view, and how the world views, our bodies. Gestures, voices, affect.
Like sugar and, oh - let's say the most tabloidy and gossipy reality television programs - credit is, for millions, genuinely addictive.
In an abstract but real sense, Marxism arose through the breakdown first of religion and then of 'reason' as single sources of authority.
And if no Lethe flows beneath your casement, And when ten years have not brought full effacement, Philosophy was wrong, and you may meet.
Drama criticism ... is a self-knowing account of the way in which one's consciousness has been modified during an evening at the theatre.
It is a pro-U.N. movie. It's a pro-American movie. It's a pro-American movie. It's a movie people should be watching and not denigrating.
For the critic, the word 'best' is like a grenade without a pin: Toss it around too freely, and you're likely to get your hand blown off.
When you meet me and hang out with me, I might come across as a very upbeat, driven person. I don't come across as someone who is wounded.
No one over thirty-five is worth meeting who has not something to teach us, something more than we could learn for ourselves, from a book.
A lazy person, whatever the talents with which he set out, will have condemned himself to second-hand thoughts and to second-rate friends.
In my own case, my folks didn't actually object to comics, as many parents did, but they pretty much felt the things were a waste of time.
We cannot depend on change, but we can depend on surprise. However, we cannot always depend on surprise either. This keeps us on our toes.
There’s no such thing as sexism against men. That's because sexism is prejudice + power. Men are the dominant gender with power in society.
There should be a dash of the amateur in criticism. For the amateur is a man of enthusiasm who has not settled down and is not habit bound.
Everyone in daily life carries such a heavy mixed burden on his own conscience that he is reluctant to penalize those who have been caught.
The friendships which last are those wherein each friend respects the other's dignity to the point of not really wanting anything from him.
The secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to be always calm to let each wave of life wash us a little farther up the shore.
Do not enforce the tired wolf Dragging his infected wound homeward To sit tonight with the warm children Naming the pretty kings of France.
The setting of 'Billy Elliot' is the British miners' strike of 1984-85, about which the average American playgoer knows absolutely nothing.
Tom Stoppard, the English-speaking world's brainiest playwright, thinks that British audiences have grown too dumb to understand his plays.
Everyone longs for expressiveness. That's why love carries so much weight. Because so many lives are without other means of expressiveness.
Ultimately it is the yearning to believe that anyone can be brought up to college level that has brought colleges down to everyone's level.
I don't want to get married for the sake of getting married. My hope is that I have a partner with whom I can continue to take on the world.