#marvelous

Supernatural fiction contains its own generic borderland: a neutral territory, which Tzvetan Todorov calls 'the fantastic,' between 'the marvelous' and 'the uncanny.' According to Todorov, 'The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event.' Once the event is satisfactorily explained (and sometimes it is never explained), we have left the fantastic for an adjacent genre - either 'the uncanny,' where the apparently supernatural is revealed as illusory, or 'the marvelous,' where the laws of ordinary reality must be revised to incorporate the supernatural. As long as uncertainty reigns, however, we are in the ambiguous realm of the fantastic. ↗

— Howard Kerr

#fantasy #marvelous #supernatural #todorov #uncanny

It is impossible for any number which is a power greater than the second to be written as a sum of two like powers. I have a truly marvelous demonstration of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain. ↗

— Pierre de Fermat

#contain #demonstration #greater #i #impossible

A couple years ago, the novelist Russell Banks told me he was reading the ancient Greek historian Herodotus. I asked why. He said, 'Because I've always wanted to and am tired of having my reading assigned.' I thought it was a marvelous declaration of independence. ↗

— Richard Russo

#always #am #ancient #asked #assigned

Fortunately, John Houseman is a marvelous writer and he sat in on so many story conferences. He worked with Welles, you know, and he's a marvelous man. ↗

— Vincente Minnelli

#fortunately #john #know #man #many

The marvelous thing about a joke with a double meaning is that it can only mean one thing. ↗

— Ronnie Barker

#double #double meaning #joke #marvelous #marvelous thing

There was a pause. Then she smiled and the corners of her mouth drooped and an almost imperceptible sway brought her closer to him, looking up into his eyes. A lump rose in Dexter's throat, and he waited breathless for the experiment, facing the unpredictable compound that would form mysteriously from the elements of their lips. Then he saw--she communicated her excitement to him, lavishly, deeply, with kisses that were not a promise but a fulfillment. They aroused in him not hunger demanding renewal but surfeit that would demand more surfeit . . . kisses that were like charity, creating want by holding back nothing at all. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#marvelous #communication

I think he's informing himself, reaching out and getting ideas and information and advice. I haven't the slightest doubt that internally taking shape in that marvelous brain of his is a philosophy of foreign affairs. But it would be premature to say that one is fully formed. ↗

— Theodore C. Sorensen

#affairs #brain #doubt #foreign #foreign affairs

The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it. ↗

— Charles Baudelaire

#city #life #marvelous #notice #our

The worst thing about the life of a jazz musician on the road is getting to the gig. Once you're there and playing, it's marvelous. ↗

— Dave Brubeck

#getting #gig #jazz #jazz musician #life

I think it was just an opera. Now, you go to opera, you expect to see and hear what the opera is. So, it was Catfish Row. It was singers. Marvelous voices. It didn't make no difference what color they were. ↗

— Cab Calloway

#color #difference #expect #go #hear