#polis

Behind every door in London there are stories, behind every one ghosts. The greatest writers in the history of the written word have given them substance, given them life. And so we readers walk, and dream, and imagine, in the city where imagination found its great home. ↗

— Anna Quindlen

#fictional-london #imagination #life #literary-london #literature

It is difficult to speak adequately or justly of London. It is not a pleasant place; it is not agreeable, or cheerful, or easy, or exempt from reproach. It is only magnificent. You can draw up a tremendous list of reasons why it should be insupportable. The fogs, the smoke, the dirt, the darkness, the wet, the distances, the ugliness, the brutal size of the place, the horrible numerosity of society, the manner in which this senseless bigness is fatal to amenity, to convenience, to conversation, to good manners – all this and much more you may expatiate upon. You may call it dreary, heavy, stupid, dull, inhuman, vulgar at heart and tiresome in form. [...] But these are occasional moods; and for one who takes it as I take it, London is on the whole the most possible form of life. [...] It is the biggest aggregation of human life – the most complete compendium of the world. ↗

— Henry James

#city-life #life #london #metropolis #life

I know a lot of things about you, Garth...And I'm rooting for you anyways. ↗

— Doug TenNapel

#god #god-s-love #unconditional-love #love

why something and not nothing? why music and not noise? ↗

— Don DeLillo

#don-delillo #music

...nazwa liniowiec tak się miała do naszego okrętu, jak kichnięcie do wystrzału z armaty - używano jej jedynie dlatego, że w oficjalnych dokumentach Royal Navy nie figurował termin "krypa". Ani "pieprzony, pływający zamtuz". Dla większości załogi, którą desperacko próbowałem szkolić, nazwa i tak niewiele znaczyła, byli to bowiem marynarze tworzący rozpuszczoną, zdemoralizowaną bandę ludzi ze statków handlowych, więzień, tawern i przymusowego poboru. Mieliśmy na pokładzie farmerów i hodowców bydła, drobnych złodziejaszków, którzy zamienili odsiadkę na służbę w marynarce, byli też pijacy, ślepcy, ludzie nieznający ani słowa po angielsku, urodzeni panikarze, sodomici, paru klasycznych piromanów i jeden człowiek, który co niedziela próbował popełnić samobójstwo. Prawdziwych marynarzy było na okręcie jak na lekarstwo, a nawet wśród nich syfilis walczył o lepsze z rzeżączką; w tych warunkach dyscyplina stała się pojęciem równie urojonym, jak czysta odzież. ↗

— Marcin Mortka

#niche

Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time. ↗

— John Berger

#chosen #emigration #experience #forced #frontiers

Our goal was to win, to win a Super Bowl, but also to win in the right way, to be role models to our community, to represent Indianapolis, the state of Indiana and the National Football League. ↗

— Tony Dungy

#bowl #community #football #goal #indiana

Take a commonplace, clean it and polish it, light it so that it produces the same effect of youth and freshness and originality and spontaneity as it did originally, and you have done a poet's job. The rest is literature. ↗

— Jean Cocteau

#commonplace #did #done #effect #freshness

After a Polish Pope, whose country was first to be invaded by the Germans in World War Two, we now have someone from the generation drafted at the close of the war. ↗

— Horst Koehler

#close #country #drafted #first #generation

The soul is placed in the body like a rough diamond, and must be polished, or the luster of it will never appear. ↗

— Daniel Defoe

#body #diamond #like #luster #must