#l

Almost all novels are improved by cutting from the top. On their first pages, authors parade those favourite effects which disgust the impartial reader. ↗

— James Buchan

#authors #cutting #disgust #effects #favourite

At the heart of banking is a suicidal strategy. Banks take money from the public or each other on call, skim it for their own reward and then lock the rest up in volatile, insecure and illiquid loans that at times they cannot redeem without public aid. ↗

— James Buchan

#banking #banks #call #cannot #each

The death clock is ticking slowly in our breast, and each drop of blood measures its time, and our life is a lingering fever. ↗

— Georg Buchner

#clock #death #drop #each #fever

The world is chaos. Nothingness is the yet-to-be-born god of the world. ↗

— Georg Buchner

#god #nothingness #world

Cause and effect, the riddle of all history, is a particular devil in financial history; and never more so than today, where entire classes of security are collapsing not on public exchanges and stock-tickers but because there are no markets to establish prices this side of nothing. ↗

— James Buchan

#cause #classes #collapsing #devil #effect

When good people in any country cease their vigilance and struggle, then evil men prevail. ↗

— Pearl S. Buck

#cease #country #evil #good #good people

Europe and North America, we are told, are less dependent on energy-intensive heavy industry than in the 1960s and 1970s. It seems we squeeze more GDP out of a barrel of oil than in those benighted days. ↗

— James Buchan

#barrel #benighted #days #dependent #europe

It's pure Black Label. It's about violence and booze. That's all it is. There is no plan. ↗

— Zakk Wylde

#black #booze #label #plan #pure

Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance, like a signpost or a warning notice. ↗

— James Buchan

#contain #does #importance #information #like

Last chances in the Middle East have been two a dirham since the 1950s. Each year the enmities are more profound, the despots more bloodthirsty and clownish, the violence more extreme, and the conditions of ordinary existence more ghastly. ↗

— James Buchan

#chances #conditions #despots #each #east