I’d given him bits and pieces of my peculiar life, but colored softer and funnier than they had been. I’d painted my dad as Don Quixote in a semi, on a quest for philosophical truths and the best cup of coffee in the nation.
I think a fictional invention grows according to its own development, not the author's. Characters in fiction are not simply as alive as you and me, they are more alive. Becky Sharp, Elizabeth Bennett, and Don Quixote may not outlive the burning out ...
Capt. Oskar Steiger: [explaining Patton's attitude toward war] Sir, do you not see? General Alfred Jodl: What? Capt. Oskar Steiger: Don Quixote battles six merchants from Toledo and saves Dulcinea's virtue! General Alfred Jodl: Who the devil is Dulci...
They must take me for a fool, or even worse, a lunatic. And no wonder ,for I am so intensely conscious of my misfortune and my misery is so overwhelming that I am powerless to resist it and am being turned into stone, devoid of all knowledge or feeli...
There is no way to tell if we are the pioneers of a visionary new age, whisking humanity into the high vibrations of an interdimensional love party, or post-modern Don Quixotes attacking techno-industrial windmills with our flimsy, rolled-up yoga mat...
If you read novels of the 19th century, they're pretty experimental. They take lots of chances; they seem to break a lot of rules. You've got omniscient narrators lecturing at times to the reader in first person. If you go back to the earliest novels...
A novel does not assert anything, a novel poses questions... The stupidity of people comes from having an answer for everything. When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the fir...
In any case, Cide Hamete Benengeli was a very careful historian, and very accurate in all things, as can be clearly seen in the details he relates to us, for although they are trivial and inconsequential, he does not attempt to pass over them in sile...
We have inhabited both the actual and the imaginary realms for a long time. But we don't live in either place the way our parents or ancestors did. Enchantment alters with age, and with the age. We know a dozen Arthurs now, all of them true. The Shir...
[at midnight, Don Corleone walks into his office and finds Tom Hagen taking a drink] Don Corleone: Give me a drop. [Hagen hands the Don his glass of anisette] Don Corleone: My wife is crying upstairs. I hear cars coming to the house. Consigliore of m...
Kathy Selden: Now look, Miss Lamont, Don and I... Lina Lamont: Don? Don't you *dare* call him Don! I was calling him Don before you were born! I mean... You-you were kissing him! Don Lockwood: *I* was kissing *her*! I happen to be in love with her. L...
And those characters [in a fairy tale] dwell in a moral world, whose laws are as clear as the law of gravity. That too is a great advantage of the folk tale. It is not a failure of imagination to see the sky blue. It is a failure rather to be weary o...
She was an open book. She had nothing to hide. She had an air about her. An air of conviction. She had lived and had no regrets. She was compulsively unapologetic about the choices that she had made.
In a sense, Joyce was Beckett's Don Quixote, and Beckett was his Sancho Panza. Joyce aspired to the One; Beckett encapsulated the fragmented many. But as each author accomplished his task, it was in the service of the other. Ultimately, Beckett's lan...
Don Corleone: Call Bonasera. We need him now. [Tom Hagen calls Amerigo Bonasera] Tom Hagen: [on the phone] This is Tom Hagen, calling for Vito Corleone at his request. Now, you owe your Don a service. He has no doubt that you will repay him. In one h...
Michael: [to the Don, quietly] Just lie here, Pop. I'll take care of you now. I'm with you now. I'm with you. [he takes the Don's hand and kisses it, the Don begins to cry]
Don Corleone: I like to drink wine more than I used to... [pause] Don Corleone: Anyway, I'm drinking more. Michael: It's good for you, Pop. Don Corleone: Ah, I don't know...
Oh, Hazel is awesome," Don Said. "She's so nice! All the other campers are like 'Go away Don.' But she's like 'Please go away, Don.' I love her!
Don Rickles and I are best friends. I know that might seem strange to those who know Don only by reputation, but somebody has to be his friend. Just to make sure I don't forget, Don gave me a doormat that sits just outside the front door of my house....
It may have been quixotic, but it was magnificent.
Seek and see all the marvels around you. You will get tired of looking at yourself alone, and that fatigue will make you deaf and blind to everything else. - Don Juan
