#vie

I have begun in old age to understand just how oddly we all are put together. We are so proud of our autonomy that we seldom if ever realize how generous we are to ourselves, and just how stingy with others. One of the booby traps of freedom--which is bordered on all sides by isolation--is that we think so well of ourselves. I now see that I have helped myself to the best cuts at life's banquet. ↗

— Saul Bellow

#age

Zachary smiles, and I wonder if he's felling different. Because standing out here waist deep in Gossimer Lake, next to my best friend, I'm feeling different-light and good and maybe even holy. ↗

— Kimberly Willis Holt

#deathr #friendship #spirituality #vietnam-wa #age

As she stared at them, Waringa noted that their skins were indeed red, like that of pigs or like the skin of a black person who has been scalded with boiling water or who has burned himself with acid creams. Even the hair in their arms and necks stood out stiff and straight like the bristle of an aging hog. ↗

— Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

#point-of-view #age

Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers. I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship. But it is not this day. A day of wolves, of shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down, but it is not this day. This day we fight! For all you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West! ↗

— j r r tolkein

#film #inspirational #lord-of-the-rings #lotr #movie

There is this thing called the university, and everybody goes there now. And there are these things called teachers who make students read this book with good ideas or that book with good ideas until that's where we get our ideas. We don't think them; we read them in books. I like Utopian talk, speculation about what our planet should be, anger about what our planet is. I think writers are the most important members of society, not just potentially but actually. Good writers must have and stand by their own ideas. ↗

— Kurt Vonnegut

#anger

Nothing like that warm and fuzzy Soviet architecture ... Pretty much as close to the Klingon home world as you're gonna get. ↗

— Josh Gates

#soviet-architecture #architecture

Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them. ↗

— Pauline Kael

#art #cannot #great #great art #interested

Regin slapped her knees. “Oh, my gods, look at him running like his life depended on catching us.” She slid open the door. “Is this straight outta Platoon, or what? Willem!” she cried, holding out one hand. “Run, Willem!” Then she choked on her laughter. ↗

— Kresley Cole

#life

I believe the visionaries and true reflections of society will be rewarded after their lives. Those being rewarded now are giving the public what it needs now, usually applauding its current state and clearing consciences. ↗

— Hollace M. Metzger

#hollace-m-metzger #interview #literary-quotes #poetry #science

The point of art is not to give you what you already feel comfortable with; that’s reporting, not art, that TV, not art, that’s magaziney art, not art. Art gives you so personal an interpretation that it compels you to say, “This here is more real than what I know is really out there. ↗

— André Aciman

#interview #quarterly-conversation #art