On The Whole, Dialogue Is The Most Difficult Thing, Without Any Doubt. It's Very Difficult, Unfortunately. You Have To Detach Yourself From The Notion Of A Lifelike Quality. You See, Actually Lifelike, Tape-recorded Dialogue Like This Has Very Little To Do With Good Novel Dialogue. It's A Matter Of Getting That Awful Tyranny Of Mimesis Out Of Your Mind, Which Is Difficult.

-John Fowles

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On The Whole, Dialogue

John Fowles

Topic

Writing

Doubt

Mind

More From John Fowles

The Best Wines Take The Longest To Mature.

Wine

Mature

Best Wine

It's Like The Day You Realize Dolls Are Dolls. I Pick Up My Old Self And I See It's Silly. A Toy I've Played With Too Often. It's A Little Sad, Like An Old Golliwog At The Bottom Of The Cupboard. Innocent And Used-up And Proud And Silly.

Silly

Self

Dolls

The Privileges Of Knowledge Have To Be Bought At The Cost Of The Consolations Of Ignorance.

Ignorance

Cost

Privilege

Only One Same Reason Is Shared By All Of Us: We Wish To Create Worlds As Real As, But Other Than The World That Is. Or Was. This Is Why We Cannot Plan. We Know A World Is An Organism, Not A Machine. We Also Know That A Genuinely Created World Must Be Independent Of Its Creator; A Planned World (a World That Fully Reveals Its Planning) Is A Dead World. It Is Only When Our Characters And Events Begin To Disobey Us That They Begin To Live.

Real

Character

Independent

We All Write Poems; It Is Simply That Poets Are The Ones Who Write In Words.

Writing

Reading Poetry

Poetry

It's No Good. I've Been Trying To Sleep For The Last Half-hour, And I Can't. Writing Here Is A Sort Of Drug. It's The Only Thing I Look Forward To. This Afternoon I Read What I Wrote... And It Seemed Vivid. I Know It Seems Vivid Because My Imagination Fills In All The Bits Another Person Wouldn't Understand. I Mean, It's Vanity. But It Seems A Sort Of Magic... And I Just Can't Live In This Present. I Would Go Mad If I Did

Writing

Mean

Sleep

The Price Of Tapping Water Into Every House Is That No One Values Water Any More.

Water

House

Tapping

Each Age, Each Guilty Age, Builds High Walls Around Its Versailles; And Personally I Hate Those Walls Most When They Are Made By Literature And Art.

Art

Wall

Hate

We All Want Things We Can't Have. Being A Decent Human Being Is Accepting That.

Want

Accepting

Decent

There Are Two Kinds Of Hangover: In One You Feel Ill And Incapable, In The Other You Feel Ill And Lucid.

Hangover

Two

Kind

People Knew Less Of Each Other, Perhaps, But They Felt More Free Of Each Other, And So Were More Individual. The Entire World Was Not For Them Only A Push Or A Switch Away. Strangers Were Strange, And Sometimes With An Exciting, Beautiful Strangeness. It May Be Better For Humanity That We Should Communicate More And More.

Beautiful

Thinking

Space

The Absurdly Neurotic Role You And The Rest Of Your Kind Have Always Attributed To Me Erato, The Goddess Muse Of Erotic Poetry Bears No Relation At All To Reality. As A Matter Of Fact, I Was Trained As A Clinical Psychologist. Who Simply Happens To Have Specialized In The Mental Illness That You, In Your Ignorance, Call Literature.

Writing

Ignorance

Reality

Like All Mystics (and Many Novelists, Not Least The Present One) He Is Baffled, A Child, Before The Real Now; Far Happier Out Of It, In A Narrative Past Or A Prophetic Future, Locked Inside That Weird Tence Grammar Does Not Allow, The Imaginary Present.

Children

Real

Writing

It Came To Me…that I Didn’t Want To Be Anywhere Else In The World At That Moment, That What I Was Feeling At That Moment Justified All I Had Been Through, Because All I Had Been Through Was My Being There. I Was Experiencing…a New Self-acceptance, A Sense That I Had To Be This Mind And This Body, Its Vices And Its Virtues, And That I Had No Other Chance Or Choice.

Acceptance

Self

Choices

One Degrades Oneself Sometimes In The Effort Not To Be Lonely.

Lonely

Effort

Sometimes

Hazard Has Conditioned Us To Live In Hazard. All Our Pleasures Are Dependent On It. Even Though I Arrange For A Pleasure, And Look Forward To It, My Eventual Enjoyment Of It Is Still A Matter Of Hazard. Wherever Time Passes, There Is Hazard.

Hazards

Looks

May

Our Accepting What We Are Must Always Inhibit Our Being What We Ought To Be.

Limits

Accepting

Ought

Man Is About To Be Deprived Of A Great Pole - Work Routine. The Nightmare Of Capitalist Society Is Unemployment; The Nightmare Of Cybernetic Society Will Be Employment.

Men

Routine

Nightmare

One Of The Great Fallacies Of Our Time Is That The Nazis Rose To Power Because They Imposed Order On Chaos. Precisely The Opposite Is True

Order

Opposites

Rose

Piers Is Always Going On About How He Hated Stowe. As If That Solves Everything, As If To Hate Something Means It Can't Have Affected You.

Hate

Mean

Piers

The Power Of Women! I've Never Felt So Full Of Mysterious Power. Men Are A Joke. We're So Weak Physically, So Helpless With Things. Still, Even Today. But We're Stronger Than They Are. We Can Stand Their Cruelty. They Can't Stand Ours.

Men

Stronger

Today

The Craving To Risk Death Is Our Last Great Perversion. We Come From Night, We Go Into Night. Why Live In Night?

Night

Risk

Lasts

To Write Poetry And To Commit Suicide, Apparently So Contradictory, Had Really Been The Same, Attempts At Escape.

Suicide

Writing

Contradictory

The Diary Will Really Try And Tell People Who You Are And What You Were. The Alternative Is Writing Nothing, Or Creating A Totally Lifeless, As It Is Leafless, Garden.

Writing

Garden

Creating

Forgetting’s Not Something You Do, It Happens To You. Only It Didn’t Happen To Me.

Forget

Happens

The American Myth Is Of Free Will In Its Simple, Primary Sense. One Can Choose Oneself And Will Oneself; And This Absurdly Optimistic Assumption So Dominates The Republic That It Has Bred All Its Gross Social Injustices.

Optimistic

Simple

Republic

Between Skin And Skin, There Is Only Light.

Light

Skins

I Knew Words Were Like Chains, They Held Me Back . . . The Act Of Description Taints The Description.

Description

Chains

The Supposed Great Misery Of Our Century Is The Lack Of Time; Our Sense Of That, Not A Disinterested Love Of Science, And Certainly Not Wisdom, Is Why We Devote Such A Huge Proportion Of The Ingenuity And Income Of Our Societies To Finding Faster Ways Of Doing Things - As If The Final Aim Of Mankind Was To Grow Closer Not To A Perfect Humanity, But To A Perfect Lightning-flash.

Time

Perfect

Humanity

The Noblest Relationship Is Marriage, That Is, Love. Its Nobility Resides In Its Altruism, The Desire To Serve Another Beyond All The Pleasures Of The Relationship; And In Its Refusal Ever To Regard The Other As A Thing, An Object, A Utilizability. Sex Is An Exchange Of Pleasures, Of Needs; Love Is A Giving Without Return. It Is This Giving Without Return, This Helping Without Reward, This Surplus Of Pure Good, That Identifies The Uniqueness Of Man As Well As The True Nature Of The True Marriage. This Is The Quintessence The Great Alchemy Of Sex Is For.

Love

Sex

Men

The World Began In Hazard And Will End In It.

Hazards

World

Ends

He's Not Human; He's An Empty Space Disguised As A Human.

Space

Hatred

Empty

The Word Is The Most Imprecise Of Signs. Only A Science-obsessed Age Could Fail To Comprehend That This Is Its Great Virtue, Not Its Defect.

Age

Failing

Virtue

If A Person Is Intelligent, Then Of Course He Is Either An Agnostic Or An Atheist. Just As He Is A Physical Coward. They Are Automatic Definitions Of High Intelligence.

Atheist

Intelligent

Coward

The Dead Live." "how Do They Live?" "by Love.

Live By

Stained Glass, Engraved Glass, Frosted Glass; Give Me Plain Glass.

Glasses

Giving

Stained Glass

Do You Know That Every Great Thing In The History Of Art And Every Beautiful Thing In Life Is Actually What You Call Nasty Or Has Been Caused By Feelings That You Would Call Nasty? By Passion, By Love, By Hatred, By Truth. Do You Know That?

Beautiful

Art

Passion

Just Those Three Words, Said And Meant. I Love You. They Were Quite Hopeless. He Said It As He Might Have Said, I Have Cancer. His Fairy Story.

Cancer

Love You

Fairy Stories

I Will Tell You What War Is. War Is A Psychosis Caused By An Inability To See Relationships. Our Relationship With Our Fellowmen. Our Relationship With Our Economic And Historical Situation. And Above All Our Relationship To Nothingness, To Death.

War

Psychosis

Historical

Another Reason I Think The Novel Will Survive Is That The Reader Has To Work In A Novel. In A Film, You Are Presented With Someone Else's Imagination Exactly Bodied Out. The Marvelous Thing About A Novel Is That Every Reader Will Imagine Even The Very Simplest Sentence Slightly Differently.

Thinking

Imagination

Empathy

Thomas Beecham Was A Pompous Little Band-master Who Stood Against Everything Creative In The Art Of His Time.

Music

Art

Creative

The Profoundest Distances Are Never Geographical.

Distance

Duty Largely Consists Of Pretending That The Trivial Is Critical.

Corny

Pretending

Duty

Men Love War Because It Allows Them To Look Serious. Because It Is The One Thing That Stops Women Laughing At Them.

Love

War

Men

Most Marriages Recognize This Paradox: Passion Destroys Passion; We Want What Puts An End To Wanting What We Want.

Passion

Want

Paradox

The Moon Hung Over The Planet Earth, A Dead Thing Over A Dying Thing.

Moon

Dying

Earth

Duty Is But A Pot. It Holds Whatever Is Put In It, From The Greatest Evil To The Greatest Good.

Evil

Pot

Duty

Content Is A Word Unknown To Life; It Is Also A Word Unknown To Man.

Life

Men

Contentment

All Novelists Should Live In Two Different Worlds: A Real One And An Unreal One.

Real

Two

Novelists

...all Cynicism Masks A Failure To Cope.

Cynicism

Mask

One Of The Great Fallacies Of Our Time Is That The Nazis Rose To Power Because They Imposed Order On Chaos. Precisely The Opposite Is True - They Were Successful Because They Imposed Chaos On Order. They Tore Up The Commandments, They Denied The Super-ego, What You Will. They Said, "you May Persecute The Minority, You May Kill, You May Torture, You May Couple And Breed Without Love." They Offered Humanity All Its Great Temptations. Nothing Is True, Everything Is Permitted.

Love

Time

Couple

We Lay On The Ground And Kissed. Perhaps You Smile. That We Only Lay On The Ground And Kissed. You Young People Can Lend Your Bodies Now, Play With Them, Give Them As We Could Not. But Remember That You Have Paid A Price: That Of A World Rich In Mystery And Delicate Emotion. It Is Not Only Species Of Animal That Die Out. But Whole Species Of Feeling. And If You Are Wise You Will Never Pity The Past For What It Did Not Know. But Pity Yourself For What It Did.

Wise

Animal

Past

The Human Race Is Unimportant. It Is The Self That Must Not Be Betrayed.' 'i Suppose One Could Say That Hitler Didn't Betray His Self.' He Turned. 'you Are Right. He Did Not. But Millions Of Germans Did Betray Their Selves. That Was The Tragedy.'

Men

Race

Self

Our Present Educational Systems Are All Paramilitary. Their Aim Is To Produce Servants Or Soldiers Who Obey Without Question And Who Accepts Their Training As The Best Possible Training. Those Who Are Most Successful In The State Are Those Who Have The Most Interest In Prolonging The State As It Is; They Are Also Those Who Have The Most Say In The Educational System, And In Particular By Ensuring That The Educational Product They Want Is The Most Highly Rewarded.

Educational

Successful

Soldier

We Chase The Reward, We Get The Reward And Then We Discover That The True Reward Is Always The Next Reward. Buying Pleasure Is A False End.

Rewards

Buying

And I Just Can't Live In This Present. I Would Go Mad If I Did.

Depression

Mad

Mental Illness

You Come To The United States Not Knowing What To Expect. Then All Your Worst Prejudices Are Confirmed.

Knowing

United States

Prejudice

Alive. Alive In The Way That Death Is Alive.

Alive

Way

I Just Think Of Things As Beautiful Or Not. Can't You Understand? I Don't Think Of Good Or Bad. Just Of Beautiful Or Ugly. I Think A Lot Of Nice Things Are Ugly And A Lot Of Nasty Things Are Beautiful.

Beautiful

Nice

Thinking

Death Is The Room That Is Always Empty.

Rooms

Empty

That Is The Great Distinction Between The Sexes. Men See Objects, Women See The Relationships Between Objects.

Sex

Men

Distinction

In Some Mysterious Way Woods Have Never Seemed To Me To Be Static Things. In Physical Terms, I Move Through Them; Yet In Metaphysical Ones, They Seem To Move Through Me.

Nature

Moving

Tree

When You Draw Something It Lives And When You Photograph It It Dies

Photograph

Draws

Dies

Follow The Accident, Fear The Fixed Plan--that Is The Rule.

Fixed

Plans

Accidents

Our Knowledge Of What The Richer Than Ourselves Possess, And The Poor Do Not, Has Never Been More Widespread. Therefore, Envy, Which Is Wanting What Others Have, And Jealousy, Which Is Not Wanting Others To Have What One Has, Have Never Been More Widespread.

Envy

Poor

I Mean I Never Feel I Feel What I Ought To Feel.

Mean

Feels

Ought

I Knew I Would Always Want To Go On Living With Myself, However Hollow I Became, However Diseased.

Goes On

Want

Diseased

It Is Only When Our Characters And Events Begin To Disobey Us That They Begin To Live.

Character

Events

But However Good You Get At Translating Personality Into Line Or Paint It's No Go If Your Personality Isn't Worth Translating.

Personality

Lines

Paint

Only Fools Think Our Attitude To Our Fellow Men Is A Thing Distinct From Our Attitude To 'lesser' Life On This Planet.

Life

Attitude

Equality

Evolution Did Not Intend Trees To Grow Singly. Far More Than Ourselves They Are Social Creatures, And No More Natural As Isolated Specimens Than Man Is As A Marooned Sailor Or Hermit.

Men

Tree

Sailor

It Is Not Only Species Of Animal That Die Out, But Whole Species Of Feeling. And If You Are Wise You Will Never Pity The Past For What It Did Not Know, But Pity Yourself For What It Did.

Wise

Past

Animal

Whole Sight; Or All The Rest Is Desolation.

Sight

Desolation

Whole

Which Are You Drinking? The Water Or The Wave?

Drinking

Water

Excellence

He Is Solid; Immovable, Iron-willed. He Showed Me One Day His Killing Bottle. I'm Imprisoned In It. Fluttering Against The Glass. Because I Can See Through It I Still Think I Can Escape. I Have Hope. But It's All An Illusion. A Thick Round Wall Of Glass.

Wall

Thinking

Glasses

There Comes A Time In Each Life Like A Point Of Fulcrum. At That Time You Must Accept Yourself. It Is Not Any More What You Will Become. It Is What You Are And Always Will Be.

Life

Philosophy

Acceptance

If You Forget Everything Else About Me, Please Remember This. I Walked Down That Street And I Never Looked Back And I Love You. I Love You. I Love You So Much That I Shall Hate You For Ever For Today.

Hate

Love You

Forget Everything

They're Beautiful. But Sad.' Everything's Sad If You Make It So, I Said.

Beautiful

Said

Ifs

The Supposed Great Misery Of Our Century Is The Lack Of Time.

Misery

Century

Lack Of Time

He Felt Himself In Suspension Between The Two Worlds, The Warm, Neat Civilization Behind His Back, The Cool, Dark Mystery Outside. We All Write Poems; It Is Simply That Poets Are The Ones Who Write In Words.

Writing

Dark

Civilization

There Cannot Be Any True Leisure Until All The World Possesses It Equally.

World

Leisure

Think. In A Minute From Now You Could Be Saying, I Risked Death. I Threw For Life, And I Won Life. It Is A Very Wonderful Feeling. To Have Survived.

Thinking

Feelings

Wonderful

Ask Me To Marry You." "will You Marry Me?" "no.

Will You Marry Me

Marry Me

Ask Me

That Is The Great Distinction Between The Sexes. Men See Objects, Women Seetherelationship Between Objects? It Is An Extra Dimension Of Feeling Which We Men Are Without And One That Makes War Abhorrent To All Real Women?and Absurd.

Sex

Real

War

You Wish To Be Liked. I Wish Simply To Be. One Day You Will Know What That Means, Perhaps. And You Will Smile. Not Against Me. But With Me.

Mean

Wish

One Day

I Have A Strange Illusion Quite Often. I Think I've Become Deaf. I Have To Make A Little Noise To Prove I'm Not. I Clear My Throat To Show Myself That Everything Is Normal. It's Like The Little Japanese Girl They Found In The Ruins Of Hiroshima. Everything Dead; And She Was Singing To Her Doll.

Girl

Thinking

Singing

Because A Star Explodes And A Thousand Worlds Like Ours Die, We Know This World Is. That Is The Smile: That What Might Not Be, Is.

Nature

Stars

World

Medieval Theologians Used To Dispute How The Angels In The Heaven Spent Their Time, When Not Balancing On Needle Points And Singing Anthems To The Lord. I Know. They Slump Glued To Their Clouds, Glasses At The Ready, As The Archangel Micheal (that Well-known Slasher) And Stonewalling St Peter Open Against The Devils Xi. It Could Not Be Heaven, Otherwise.

Angel

Clouds

Glasses

In Essence The Renaissance Was Simply The Green End Of One Of Civilization's Hardest Winters.

Winter

Essence

Civilization

Baseball And Cricket Are Beautiful And Highly Stylized Medieval War Substitutes, Chess Made Flesh, A Mixture Of Proud Chivalry And Base-in Both Senses-greed.

Beautiful

Baseball

War

They Looked Down On Her; And She Looked Up Through Them.

Even More Ominous ... Is The Fact That Since The Second World War A New Kind Of Intellectual Has Emerged In Large Numbers. ... He Is Only Minimally Interested In The Proper Intellectual Significance Of Images And Objects. Such People Are Not Really Intellectuals, But Visuals ... A Visual Is More Interested In Style Than In Content ... A Visual Does Not Feel A Rioting Crowd Being Machine-gunned By The Police, He Simply Sees A Brilliant News Photograph.

War

Numbers

People

We Can Sometimes Recognize The Looks Of A Century Ago On A Modern Face; But Never Those Of A Century To Come.

Looks

Faces

Sometimes

I Think We Are Just Insects, We Live A Bit And Then Die And That’s The Lot. There’s No Mercy In Things. There’s Not Even A Great Beyond. There’s Nothing.

Thinking

Mercy

Insects

Liking Other People Is An Illusion We Have To Cherish In Ourselves If We Are To Live In Society.

People

Cherish

Illusion

Edith Sitwell's Interest In Art Was Largely Confined To Portraits Of Herself.

Art

Portraits

Interest

The Great Majority Of Modern Third-person Narration Is "i" Narration Very Thinly Disguised.

Majority

Crafts

Modern

If Anything Might Hurt Her, Silence Would; And I Wanted To Hurt Her.

Hurt

Silence

Might

The Newspapers Are Full Of What We Would Like To Happen To Us And What We Hope Will Never Happen To Us.

Hope

Newspapers

Happens

There Are Only Two Races On This Planet - The Intelligent And The Stupid.

Stupid

Silly

Intelligent

I Am Going To Explain To You Why We Went To War. Why Mankind Always Goes To War. It Is Not Social Or Political. It Is Not Countries That Go To War, But Men. It Is Like Salt. Once One Has Been To War, One Has Salt For The Rest Of One's Life. Do You Understand?

Life

Country

Laughter

But I Think The Most Harmful Change Brought About By Victorian Science In Our Attitude To Nature Lies In The Demand That Our Relation With It Must Be Purposive, Industrious, Always Seeking Greater Knowledge.

Nature

Attitude

Lying

I Suppose I'd Had, By The Standards Of That Pre-permissive Time, A Good Deal Of Sex For My Age. Girls, Or A Certain Kind Of Girl, Liked Me; I Had A Car-not So Common Among Undergraduates In Those Days-and I Had Some Money. I Wasn't Ugly; And Even More Important, I Had My Loneliness, Which, As Every Cad Knows, Is A Deadly Weapon With Women. My 'technique' Was To Make A Show Of Unpredictability, Cynicism, And Indifference. Then, Like A Conjurer With His White Rabbit, I Produced The Solitary Heart.

Girl

Sex

Loneliness

Being An Atheist Is A Matter Not Of Moral Choice, But Of Human Obligation.

Atheist

Choices

Atheism

The Practise Of An Art Is Essential To The Whole Man, Not Because Of What Art Is But Because Of What Art Does To The Artist.

Art

Men

Essentials

These Last Few Days I've Felt Godless. I've Felt Cleaner, Less Muddled, Less Blind. I Still Believe In A God. But He's So Remote, So Cold, So Mathematical. I See That We Have To Live As If There Is No God. Prayer And Worship And Singing Hymns-all Silly And Useless.

God

Religious

Prayer

That Was The Tragedy. Not That One Man Had The Courage To Be Evil. But That Millions Had Not The Courage To Be Good.

Men

Evil

Tragedy

An Aphorism Is A Generalization, Therefore Not Modern.

Modern

Aphorism

Generalization

That's The Trouble With Provincial Life. Everyone Knows Everyone And There Is No Mystery. No Romance.

Romance

Mystery

Trouble

Whatever Sympathy I Feel Towards Religions, Whatever Admiration For Some Of Their Adherents, Whatever Historical Or Biological Necessity I See In Them, Whatever Metaphorical Truth, I Cannot Accept Them As Credible Explanations Of Reality; And They Are Incredible To Me In Proportion To The Degree That They Require My Belief In Positive Human Attributes And Intervenient Powers In Their Divinities.

Sympathy

Reality

Historical

There Are Some Men Who Are Consoled By The Idea That There Are Women Less Attractive Than Their Wives; And Others Who Are Haunted By The Knowledge That There Are More Attractive.

Men

Ideas

Wife

How Can One Build A Better Self Unless On The Ruins Of The Old?

Self

Ruins

Adulthood Is Not An Age, But A Stage Of Knowledge Of Self.

Self

Age

Adulthood

We Talked For Hours. He Talked And I Listened. It Was Like Wind And Sunlight. It Blew All The Cobwebs Away.

Wind

Cobwebs

Hours

No Amount Of Reading And Intelligent Deduction Could Supplant The Direct Experience.

Reading

Intelligent

Experience

I Don't Think The English Like Me. I Sold A Colossal Best Seller In America, And They Never Really Forgave Me.

Thinking

America

Like Me

I Love Making, I Love Doing. I Love Being To The Full, I Love Everything Which Is Not Sitting And Watching And Copying And Dead At Heart.

Life

Heart

Copying

I Read And I Read; And I Was Like A Medieval King, I Had Fallen In Love With The Picture Long Before I Saw The Reality.

Kings

Reality

Long

You Put Up With Your Voice And Speak With It Because You Haven't Any Choice. But It's What You Say That Counts.

Voice

Choices

Speak

There Are Many Reasons Why Novelists Write, But They All Have One Thing In Common - A Need To Create An Alternative World.

Writing

Novelists

Needs

There Is Only One Good Definition Of God: The Freedom That Allows Other Freedoms To Exist.

God

Definitions

My Hatred Of Crowds, The Obviousness Of Crowds, Of Anything En Masse. Is This Why I Like Little-known Books? A General Desire To Escape The Main World.

Book

Hatred

Desire

You Must Make, Always. You Must Act, If You Believe Something. Talking About Acting Is Like Boasting About Pictures You're Going To Paint. The Most Terrible Bad Form.

Believe

Talking

Acting

All Pasts Are Like Poems; One Can Derive A Thousand Things, But Not Live In Them.

Past

Poetry

Thousand

The Bowed Head, The Buried Face. She Is Silent, She Will Never Speak, Never Forgive, Never Reach A Hand, Never Leave This Frozen Present Tense. All Waits, Suspended. Suspended The Autumn Trees, The Autumn Sky, Anonymous People. A Blackbird, Poor Fool, Sings Out Of Season From The Willows By The Lake. A Flight Of Pigeons Over The Houses; Fragments Of Freedom, Hazard, An Anagram Made Flesh. And Somewhere The Stinging Smell Of Burning Leaves.

Autumn

Smell

Lakes

It's Despair At The Lack Of Feeling, Of Love, Of Reason In The World. It's Despair That Anyone Can Even Contemplate The Idea Of Dropping A Bomb Or Ordering That It Should Be Dropped. It's Despair That So Few Of Us Care. It's Despair That There's So Much Brutality And Callousness In The World. It's Despair That Perfectly Normal Young Men Can Be Made Vicious And Evil Because They've Won A Lot Of Money. And Then Do What You've Done To Me.

Life

Men

Perfectly Normal

He Was One Of The Most Supremely Stupid Men I Have Ever Met. He Taught Me A Great Deal.

Stupid

Men

Ironic

Science Disembodies; Art Embodies.

Art

His Statement To Himself Should Have Been, 'i Possess This Now, Therefore I Am Happy', Instead Of What It So Victorianly Was: "i Cannot Possess This For Ever, And Therefore Am Sad."

Should Have

Forever

Has Beens

I Do Not Plan My Fiction Any More Than I Normally Plan Woodland Walks; I Follow The Path That Seems Most Promising At Any Given Point, Not Some Itinerary Decided Before Entry.

Fiction

Path

Given

I Must Fight With My Weapons. Not His. Not Selfishness And Brutality And Shame And Resentment.

Fighting

Selfishness

Brutality

I Am Infinitely Strange To Myself.

Strange

People Who Teach You Cram Old Ideas, Old Views, Old Ways, Into You. Like Covering Plants With Layer After Layer Of Old Earth; It's No Wonder The Poor Things So Rarely Come Up Fresh And Green.

Views

Ideas

People

I Am Talking About The General Psychological Health Of The Species, Man. He Needs The Existence Of Mysteries. Not Their Solution.

Men

Psychological Health

Talking

Love Is The Mystery Between Two People, Not The Identity.

Love Is

Two

People

She's Always Looking For Poetry And Passion And Sensitivity, The Whole Romantic Kitchen. I Live On A Rather Simpler Diet.' 'prose And Pudding?''i Don't Expect Attractive Men Necessarily To Have Attractive Souls.

Passion

Men

Soul

Greece Is Like A Mirror. It Makes You Suffer. Then You Learn.' To Live Alone?' To Live. With What You Are.

Mirrors

Suffering

Greece

The Most Important Questions In Life Can Never Be Answered By Anyone Except Oneself.

Life

Philosophy

Important

The Ordinary Man Is The Curse Of Civilization.

Men

Civilization

Ordinary

He Knew The World And Its Absurdities As Only An Intelligent Irishman Can; Which Is To Say That Where His Knowledge Or Memory Failed Him, His Imagination Was Always Ready To Fill The Gap.

Memories

Intelligent

Imagination

I Am One In A Row Of Specimens. It's When I Try To Flutter Out Of Line That He Hates Me. I'm Meant To Be Dead, Pinned, Always The Same, Always Beautiful. He Knows That Part Of My Beauty Is Being Alive. But It's The Dead Me He Wants. He Wants Me Living-but-dead.

Beautiful

Hate

Trying

There Is No Plan. All Is Hazard. And The Only Thing That Will Preserve Us Is Ourselves.

Hazards

Plans

Preserves

Art's Cruel. You Can Get Away With Murder With Words. But A Picture Is Like A Window Straight Through To Your Inmost Heart.

Art

Murder

Window

If You Want To Be True To Life, Start Lying About It

Lying

True Life

Want

Wolves Don't Hunt Singly, But Always In Pairs. The Lone Wolf Was A Myth.

Pairs

Lone Wolf

Myth

I Was Too Green To Know That All Cynicism Masks A Failure To Cope - An Impotence, In Short; And That To Despise All Effort Is The Greatest Effort Of All.

Effort

Green

Cynicism

I Think It Is Interesting That We Have Come Back To Star- And Space Ships. Jet Will Do For A Transport Shorthand; Yet When Man Really Reaches, Across The Vast Seas Of Space, He Still Reaches In Ships.

Stars

Men

Thinking

Time Is Not A Road - It Is A Room.

Time

Rooms

Art Is A Statement Of One In The Face Of All; Not A Statement By One For The Use Of All.

Art

Use

Faces

Though I Like The Various Forms Of Football In The World, I Don't Think They Begin To Compare With These Two Great Anglo-saxon Ball Games For Sophisticated Elegance And Symbolism. Baseball And Cricket Are Beautiful And Highly Stylized Medieval War Substitutes, Chess Made Flesh, A Mixture Of Proud Chivalry And Base - In Both Senses - Greed. With Football We Are Back To The Monotonous Clashing Armor Of The Brontosaurus.

Beautiful

Football

Baseball

To Despise All Effort Is The Greatest Effort Of All.

Effort

Despise

The Pronoun Is One Of The Most Terrifying Masks Man Has Invented.

Men

Mask

Pronouns

The Battle Was Over. Our Casualties Were Some Thirteen Thousand Killed--thirteen Thousand Minds, Memories, Loves, Sensations, Worlds, Universes--because The Human Mind Is More A Universe Than The Universe Itself--and All For A Few Hundred Yards Of Useless Mud.

Love

Memories

War

It Was Too Exactly As Imagined To Be True. But I Felt As Gladly And Expectantly Disorientated, As Happily And Alertly Alone, As Alice In Wonderland.

Wonderland

Being True

Felt

The More Abhorrent A News Item The More Comforting It Was To Be The Recipient, Since The Fact That It Had Happened Elsewhere Proved That It Had Not Happened Here, Was Not Happening Here, And Would Therefore Never Happen Here.

Comforting

Abhorrent

News

You're Not Me. You Can't Feel Like I Feel." "i Can Feel." "no You Can't. You Just Choose Not To Feel Or Something And Everything's Fine." "it's Not Fine. It's Just Not So Bad.

I Hate The Uneducated And The Ignorant. I Hate The Pompous And The Phoney. I Hate The Jealous And The Resentful. I Hate The Crabbed And Mean And The Petty. I Hate All Ordinary Dull Little People Who Aren't Ashamed Of Being Dull And Little.

Hate

Jealous

Mean

Wealth Is A Monster. It Takes A Month To Learn To Control It Financially. And Many Years To Learn To Control It Psychologically.

Years

Monsters

Months

An Easterly Is The Most Disagreeable Wind In Lyme Bay — Lyme Bay Being That Largest Bite From The Underside Of England's Outstretched Southwestern Leg — And A Person Of Curiosity Could At Once Have Deduced Several Strong Probabilities About The Pair Who Began To Walk Down The Quay At Lyme Regis, The Small But Ancient Eponym Of The Inbite, One Incisively Sharp And Blustery Morning In The Late March Of 1867.

Strong

Morning

Wind

Always We Try To Put The Wild In A Cage.

Trying

Cages

Environment

Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.

2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.

2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.

2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.

3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.

3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.

3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.

4. Proper Usage of Quotes

4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.

4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.

4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).

5. Common Mistakes to Avoid

5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.

5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.

5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.

6. Quotes in Different Contexts

6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.

6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.

6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.

7. Punctuation and Formatting

Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:

Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.

Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.

Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.

8. Ethical Considerations

Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes

Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.

Conclusion

Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.

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