When returned from Italy he called on Mr. and invited him to dinner: in the course of his rapturous address to him he declared that a statue of gold ought to be erected to him in every city in the universe, assuring him that he always slept with his ...
This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be their task to translate the elements of the poem or play or novel or story into something else. Sometimes...
Fischer: I'm insured against kidnapping for up to 10 million. This should be very simple. Cobb: Shut up! It won't be. Arthur: In your father's office, below the bookshelves is his personal safe. We need the combination. Fischer: I don't know any safe...
There are books that speak to us of our own lives with a clarity we cannot match. They prevent the morose suspicion that we do not fully belong to the species, that we lie beyond comprehension. Our embarrassments, our sulks, our envy, our feelings of...
What good does it do me, after all, if an ever-watchful authority keeps an eye out to ensure that my pleasures will be tranquil and races ahead of me to ward off all danger, sparing me the need even to think about such things, if that authority, even...
Thomas Jefferson, that owner of many slaves, chose to begin the Declaration of Independence by directly contradicting the moral basis of slavery, writing "we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and that they are endo...
I shook my head. "I'm good, Nicky helped." Nicky looked at Edward. "She's having one of those what-if-killing-feels-really-good, doesn't-that-make-me-a-bad-person moments." Edward nodded as if that made perfect sense. "Then it feels good. We can't re...
The more we understand what is happening in the world, the more frustrated we often become, for our knowledge leads to feelings of powerlessness. We feel that we are living in a world in which the citizen has become a mere spectator or a forced actor...
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other...
Many years ago I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jo...
The notion that evil is non-rational is a more significant claim for Eagleton than at first appears, because he is (in this book [ ] as in others of his recent 'late period' prolific burst) anxious to rewrite theology: God (whom he elsewhere tells us...
All is a-swarm with commentaries: of authors there is a dearth.
I don't believe it pays to be a great author.
of the authors’ imagination and used fictitiously. Emerald Green Desiree Holt
One of the great currents in the contemporary experience of art is that it seems to come out of the experience of the author.
With a film, I do my best to understand the author's intentions and try to bring the characters to life.
But above all, an author must write passionately and edit passionately.
There are only three indispensable things: the audience, the actor and the author. The rest is dross.
If I ever stop acting, I'd like to be the author of that decision.
Authors do not choose a story to write, the story chooses us.
No statement should be believed because it is made by an authority.
