Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.
—Robert Wilson, 1991
Archive
Quotes
There are chance meetings with strangers that interest us from the first moment, before a word is spoken.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1866I’ve got some shit I’m conservative about and some shit I’m liberal about. Crime—I’m conservative. Prostitution—I’m liberal.
—Chris Rock, 2008Fame is no sanctuary from the passing of youth. Suicide is much easier and more acceptable in Hollywood than growing old gracefully.
—Julie Burchill, 1986Does anybody really want to attend to cities other than to flee, fleece, privatize, butcher, or decimate them?
—Jane Holtz Kay, 1992Not a change for the better in our human housekeeping has ever taken place that wise and good men have not opposed it—have not prophesied that the world would wake up to find its throat cut in consequence.
—James Russell Lowell, 1884If you must take care that your opinions do not differ in the least from those of the person with whom you are talking, you might just as well be alone.
—Yoshida Kenko, c. 1330The bathing was so delightful this morning, and Molly so pressing with me to enjoy myself, that I believe I stayed in rather too long, as since the middle of the day I have felt unreasonably tired. I shall be more careful another time, and shall not bathe tomorrow as I had before intended.
—Jane Austen, 1804History is a people’s memory, and without a memory man is demoted to the level of the lower animals.
—Malcolm X, 1964Let my epitaph be, “Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook.”
—Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, 1790The work of art, just like any fragment of human life considered in its deepest meaning, seems to me devoid of value if it does not offer the hardness, the rigidity, the regularity, the luster on every interior and exterior facet, of the crystal.
—André Breton, 1937Time will reveal everything. It is a babbler and speaks even when not asked.
—Euripides, c. 425 BCAll the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy.
—Al Smith, 1933