Illustrators

"A popular speaker, however unpopular and insignificant, has only to wind up his speech with half-a-dozen lines of Shakespeare (and to make it clearly understood that they are Shakespeare's) and he will sit down amid thunders of applause."

"So I fell in love with a rich attorney's Elderly, ugly daughter."

"She may very well pass for forty three In the dusk with the light behind her."

"But I submit, my lord, with all submission, To marry two at once is Burglaree!"

"Oh! my name is John Wellington Wells, I'm a dealer in magic and spells, In blessings and curses And ever-filled purses, In prophecies, witches, and knells. If you want a proud foe to "make tracks"— If you'd melt a rich uncle in wax— You've but to look in On our resident Djinn, Number seventy, Simmery Axe!"

"Or you or I must yield up his life to Ahrimanes. I would rather it were you."

"From such a face and form as mine, the noblest sentiments sound like the black utterances of a depraved imagination! It's human nature! I'm resigned."

"What, never? / No, never! / What, never? / Well, hardly ever!"

"Things are seldom what they seem; Skim milk masquerades as cream."

"Now landsmen all, whoever you may be, If you want to rise to the top of the tree, If your soul isn't fettered to an office stool, Be careful to be guided by this golden rule— Stick close to your desks and never go to sea, And you all may be Rulers of the Queen's Navee."

"I am the monarch of the sea, The Ruler of the Queen's Navee, Whose praise Great Britain loudly chants And we are his sisters, and his cousins, and his aunts!"

"When I was a lad I served a term As office boy to an attorney's firm. I cleaned the wndows and I swept the floor, And I polished up the handle of the big front door. I polished up that handle so carefullee That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!"

"In spite of all temptations To belong to other nations, He remains an Englishman!"

"The last three ships we took proved to be manned entirely by orphans, and so we had to let them go. One would think that Great Britain’s mercantile navy was recruited solely from her orphan asylums – which we know is not the case."

"When your process of extermination begins, let our deaths be as swift and painless as you can conveniently make them."

"No, Frederic, it cannot be. I don’t think much of our profession, but, contrasted with respectability, it is comparatively honest."

"Against our wills, papa—against our wills!"

"Exactly – you said "often" ('frequently') only once."

"Oh, dry the glistening tear That dews that martial cheek; Thy loving children hear, In them thy comfort seek. With sympathetic care Their arms around thee creep, For oh, they cannot bear To see their father weep!"

"Yes, but you don't go!"

"If you want a receipt for that popular mystery, Known to the world as a Heavy Dragoon - Take all the remarkable people in history, Rattle them off to a popular tune!"

"Art stopped short at the cultivated court of the Empress Josephine."

"Then a sentimental passion of a vegetable fashion must excite your languid spleen, An attachment à la Plato for a bashful young potato, or a not-too-French French bean! Though the Philistines may jostle, you will rank as an apostle in the high aesthetic band, If you walk down Piccadilly with a poppy or a lily in your medieval hand."

"Yes, I am the Apostle of Simplicity. I am called Archibald the All-Right, for I am infallible."

"Archibald: To understand this, it is not necessary to think of anything at all. Saphir: Let us think of nothing at all!"

"I know what love is. There was a happy time when I didn't, but bitter experience has taught me."

"A pallid and thin young man, A haggard and lank young man, A greenery-yallery, Grosvenor Gallery, Foot-in-the-grave young man!"

"The Law is the true embodiment Of everything that’s excellent. It has no kind of fault or flaw, And I, my Lords, embody the Law."

"The House of Peers, thoughout the war Did nothing in particular And did it very well."

"Never, never, never, Faint heart never won fair lady! Nothing venture, nothing win – Blood is thick, but water’s thin – In for a penny, in for a pound – It's Love that makes the world go round!"

"I can tell a woman's age in half a minute — and I do!"

"...Darwinian Man, though well-behav’d, At best is only a monkey shav’d!"

"Man is nature's sole mistake."

"Ah pray, make no mistake, we are not shy; We're very wide awake, The moon and I!"

"I am, in point of fact, a particularly haughty and exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something inconceivable. I can’t help it. I was born sneering."

"No money, no grovel! (Actually an ad-lib introduced by Rutland Barrington when playing the rôle of Pooh-Bah, to the annoyance of Gilbert.)"

"…in the first place, self decapitation is an extremely difficult, not to say dangerous, thing to attempt; and, in the second, it’s suicide, and suicide is a capital offence."

"Pooh Bah: This professional conscientiousness is highly creditable to you, but it places us in a very awkward position. Koko: My good sir, the awkwardness of your position is grace itself compared with that of a man engaged in the act of cutting off his own head."

"To sit in solemn silence in a dull, dark dock, In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock, Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock, From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!"

"[Koko is negotiating the terms by which he can behead Nanki-Poo in his place, and they involve letting the latter be married to his fiance until he is executed] Koko: But my position during the next month will be most unpleasant, most unpleasant! Nanki-Poo: Not nearly so unpleasant as mine at the end of it."

"I have a left shoulder-blade that is a miracle of loveliness. People come miles to see it. My right elbow has a fascination that few can resist."

"Ko-Ko: Well, a nice mess you've got us into, with your nodding head and the deference due to a man of pedigree! Pooh-Ba: Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative."

"...but it's an unjust world, and virtue is triumphant only in theatrical performances."

"The idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone, All centuries but this and every country but his own."

"As someday it may happen that a victim must be found I've got a little list, I've got a little list Of society offenders who might well be underground, And who never would be missed—who never would be missed!"

"My object all sublime I shall achieve in time— To let the punishment fit the crime, The punishment fit the crime."

"I know a youth who loves a little maid— (Hey, but his face is a sight for to see!) Silent is he, for he's modest and afraid (Hey, but he's timid as a youth can be!)"

"Some word that teems with hidden meaning, like "Basingstoke". It might recall me to my saner self. For, after all, I am only Mad Margaret! Daft Meg! Poor Meg! He! he! he!"

"My eyes are fully open to my awful situation, I shall go at once to Roderic and make him an oration, I shall tell him I've recovered my forgotten moral senses, and I don't care tuppence ha'penny for any consequences. Now I do not want to perish by the sword or by the dagger, but a martyr may indulge a little pardonable swagger And a word or two of compliment my vanity would flatter, but I've got to die to-morrow, so it really doesn't matter!"

"When maiden loves, she sits and sighs, She wanders to and fro - Unbidden tear-drops fill her eyes, And to all questions she replies With a sad "heigh ho!""

"Heigh-dy! Heigh-dy! Misery me, lack-a-day-dee! He sipped no sup, and he craved no crumb, As he sighed for the love of a ladye!"

"I've jibe and joke, And quip and crank, For lowly folk And men of rank."

"Is life a boon? If so it must befall That death when e're he call Must call too soon."

"I should have preferred to ride through the streets of Venice; but owing, I presume, to an unusually wet season, the streets are in such a condition that equestrian exercise is impractical."

"In enterprise of martial kind, When there was any fighting, He led his regiment from behind— He found it less exciting."

"One of you may be Baptisto's son, for anything I know to the contrary; but the other is no less a personage than the only son of the late King of Barataria. ... And I trust — I trust it was that one who slapped me on the shoulder and called me his man!"

"Of that there is no manner of doubt— No probable, possible shadow of doubt— No possible doubt whatever."

"Oh, philosophers may sing Of the troubles of a King, But of pleasures there are many and of worries there are none; And the culminating pleasure That we treasure beyond measure Is the gratifying feeling that our duty has been done."

"The end is easily foretold, When every blessed thing you hold Is made of silver, or of gold, You long for simple pewter. When you have nothing else to wear But cloth of gold and satins rare, For cloth of gold you cease to care— Up goes the price of shoddy. In short, whoever you may be, To this conclusion you'll agree, When everyone is somebodee, Then no one's anybody!"

"There's a little group of isles beyond the wave, So tiny you might almost wonder where it is— That nation is the bravest of the brave, And cowards are the rarest of all rarities. The proudest nations kneel at her command, She terrifies all foreign-born rap-scallions; And holds the peace of Europe in her hand With half a score invincible battalions."

"By doing so, we shall, in course of time, Regenerate completely our entire land— Great Britain is that monarchy sublime, To which some add (but others do not) Ireland."

"You have a daughter, Captain Reese, Ten female cousins and a niece, A ma, if what I'm told is true, Six sisters and an aunt or two. Now, somehow, Sir, it seems to me, More friendly-like we all should be If you united of them to Unmarried members of the crew."

"Oh, I am a cook and a captain bold And the mate of the Nancy brig, And a bo'sun tight and a midshipmite And the crew of the captain's gig."

"Roll on, thou ball, roll on Through pathless realms of space, Roll on!"

"It's true I've got no shirts to wear, It's true my butcher's bill is due, It's true my prospects all look blue, But don't let that unsettle you! Never you mind! Roll on! (It rolls on.)"

"He is an Englishman! For he himself has said it, And it's greatly to his credit, That he is an Englishman!. For he might have been a Rooshian A French or Turk or Proosian, Or perhaps Itali-an. But in spite of all temptations To belong to other nations, He remains an Englishman."

"I love my fellow-creatures, I do all the good I can, Yet everybody says I'm such a disagreeable man And I can't think why!"

"Ah, take one consideration with another A policeman's lot is not a happy one!"

"Bad language or abuse I never, never use, Whatever the emergency; Though "Bother it" I may Occasionally say, I never use a big, big D-"

"On a tree by a river a little tomtit Sang "Willow, titwillow, titwillow" And I said to him, "Dicky-bird, why do you sit Singing ‘Willow, titwillow, titwillow?'. "Is it weakness of intellect, birdie?" I cried, "Or a rather tough worm in your little inside?" With a shake of his poor little head he replied, "Oh, Willow, titwillow, titwillow!""

"Life's a pudding full of plums; Care's a canker that benumbs, Wherefore waste our elocution On impossible solution? Life's a pleasant institution, Let us take it as it comes!"

"As innocent as a new-laid egg."

"Reason, or the ratio of all we have already known, is not the same that it shall be when we know more."

"The true method of knowledge is experiment."

"There can be no Good Will. Will is always Evil; it is persecution to others or selfishness."

"If a thing loves, it is infinite."

"Does the Eagle know what is in the pit? Or wilt thou go ask the Mole? Can Wisdom be put in a silver rod? Or Love in a golden bowl?"

"How sweet I roamed from field to field, And tasted all the summer's pride, Till I the prince of love beheld, Who in the sunny beams did glide!"

"He loves to sit and hear me sing, Then, laughing, sports and plays with me; Then stretches out my golden wing, And mocks my loss of liberty."

"My silks and fine array, My smiles and languished air, By love are driv'n away; And mournful lean Despair Brings me yew to deck my grave: Such end true lovers have."

"Like a fiend in a cloud, With howling woe, After night I do crowd, And with night will go; I turn my back to the east, From whence comforts have increased; For light doth seize my brain With frantic pain."

"How have you left the ancient love That bards of old enjoyed in you! The languid strings do scarcely move! The sound is forced, the notes are few!"

"Damn sneerers!"

"True superstition is ignorant honesty & this is beloved of god and man."

"Forgiveness of enemies can only come upon their repentance."

"Active Evil is better than Passive Good."

"They suppose that Woman's Love is Sin; in consequence all the Loves & Graces with them are Sin."

"Piping down the valleys wild, Piping songs of pleasant glee, On a cloud I saw a child, And he laughing said to me: "Pipe a song about a Lamb." So I piped with merry cheer; "Piper, pipe that song again." So I piped; he wept to hear."

"And I made a rural pen, And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every child may joy to hear."

"Sing louder around To the bells' cheerful sound, While our sports shall be seen On the ecchoing green."

"Little Lamb, who made thee? Dost thou know who made thee? Gave thee life and bid thee feed By the stream and o'er the mead; Gave thee clothing of delight, Softest clothing, woolly bright."

"My mother bore me in the southern wild, And I am black, but O! my soul is white; White as an angel is the English child, But I am black as if bereaved of light."

"And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love, And these black bodies and this sunburnt face Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove."

"I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear To lean in joy upon our Father's knee; And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair, And be like him and he will then love me."

"When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry 'weep! 'weep! 'weep!'weep! So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep."

"To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love All pray in their distress; And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness.For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is God, our father dear, And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is Man, his child and care.For Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face, And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress."

"Then every man, of every clime, That prays in his distress, Prays to the human form divine, Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace. And all must love the human form, In heathen, Turk, or Jew; Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell There God is dwelling too."

"The moon like a flower In heaven's high bower, With silent delight, Sits and smiles on the night."

"And there the lion's ruddy eyes Shall flow with tears of gold, And pitying the tender cries, And walking round the fold, Saying: "Wrath by his meekness, And by his health, sickness, Is driven away From our immortal day.""

"For washed in life's river, My bright mane forever Shall shine like the gold As Iguard o'er the fold."

"When the voices of children are heard on the green And laughing is heard on the hill, My heart is at rest within my breast And everything else is still."

"Can I see another's woe, And not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, And not seek for kind relief?"

"Nothing can be more contemptible than to suppose Public RECORDS to be True."

"That the Jews assumed a right Exclusively to the benefits of God. will be a lasting witness against them. & the same will it be against Christians"

"In my Brain are studies & Chambers fill'd with books & pictures of old, which I wrote & painted in ages of Eternity before my mortal life;"

"I am not ashamed, afraid, or averse to tell you what Ought to be Told: That I am under the direction of Messengers from Heaven, Daily & Nightly;"

"And now let me finish with assuring you that, Tho I have been very unhappy, I am so no longer. I am again. Emerged into the light of day; I still & shall to Eternity Embrace Christianity and Adore him who is the Express image of God; but I have travel'd thro' Perils & Darkness not unlike a Champion. I have Conquer'd, and shall still Go on Conquering. Nothing can withstand the fury of my Course among the Stars of God & in the Abysses of the Accuser. My Enthusiasm is still what it was, only Enlarged and conform'd."

"I have labour'd hard indeed, & have been borne on angel's wings. Till we meet I beg of God our Saviour to be with you & me, & yours & mine. Pray give my & my wife's love to Mrs Butts & Family, & believe me to remain."

"Degrade first the arts if you'd mankind degrade, Hire idiots to paint with cold light and hot shade."

"To Generalize is to be an Idiot. To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit — General Knowledges are those Knowledges that Idiots possess."

"The Foundation of Empire is Art & Science Remove them or Degrade them & the Empire is No More — Empire follows Art & Not Vice Versa as Englishmen suppose."

"Rintrah roars and shakes his fires in the burden'd air; Hungry clouds swag on the deep."

"Without contraries there is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate are necessary to human existence."

"The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true poet and of the Devils' party without knowing it."

"Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained; and the restrainer or reason usurps its place & governs the unwilling."

"If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite."

"The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind."

"Opposition is true Friendship."

"The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom."

"He who desires but acts not breeds pestilence."

"A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees. He whose face gives no light shall never become a star."

"Eternity is in love with the productions of time."

"The busy bee has no time for sorrow."

"The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom no clock can measure."

"All wholesome food is caught without a net or a trap."

"No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings."

"If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise."

"Prisons are built with stones of law; brothels with bricks of religion."

"The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God."

"The cistern contains: the fountain overflows."

"One thought fills immensity."

"Always be ready to speak your mind, and a base man will avoid you."

"The eagle never lost so much time as when he submitted to learn of the crow."

"Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night."

"The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction."

"You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough."

"The weak in courage is strong in cunning."

"When thou seest an Eagle, thou seest a portion of Genius; lift up thy head!"

"Exuberance is Beauty."

"Improvement makes straight roads; but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of genius."

"Sooner murder an infant in its cradle than nurse unacted desires."

"Truth can never be told so as to be understood, and not be believed."

"Enough! or too much."

"The ancient poets animated all objects with Gods or Geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged & numerous senses could perceive. And particularly they studied the genius of each city & country, placing it under its mental deity; Till a system was formed, which some took advantage of, & enslav'd the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects: thus began priesthood; Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales. And at length they pronounc'd that the Gods had order'd such things. Thus men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast."

"Never seek to tell thy love Love that never told can be; For the gentle wind does move Silently, invisibly. I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart; Trembling, cold, in ghastly fears— Ah, she doth depart. Soon as she was gone from me A traveler came by Silently, invisibly— Oh, was no deny."

"I asked a thief to steal me a peach: He turned up his eyes. I asked a lithe lady to lie her down: Holy and meek, she cries. As soon as I went An angel came. He winked at the thief And smiled at the dame— And without one word said Had a peach from the tree, And still as a maid Enjoyed the lady."

"Sleep, sleep, beauty bright, Dreaming o'er the joys of night. Sleep, sleep: in thy sleep Little sorrows sit and weep."

"Why art thou silent and invisible, Father of Jealousy?"

"Love to faults is always blind, Always is to joys inclined, Lawless, winged, and unconfined, And breaks all chains from every mind."

"The sword sung on the barren heath, The sickle in the fruitful field; The sword he sung a song of death, But could not make the sickle yield."

"Abstinence sows sand all over The ruddy limbs and flaming hair, But desire gratified Plants fruits of life and beauty there."

"If you trap the moment before it's ripe, The tears of repentance you'll certainly wipe; But if once you let the ripe moment go You can never wipe off the tears of woe."

"Then old Nobodaddy aloft Farted and belched and coughed, And said, "I love hanging and drawing and quartering Every bit as well as war and slaughtering.""

"He who binds to himself a joy Does the wingèd life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity's sunrise."

"The look of love alarms Because 'tis filled with fire; But the look of soft deceit Shall win the lover's hire."

"What is it men in women do require? The lineaments of gratified desire. What is it women do in men require? The lineaments of gratified desire."

"You'll quite remove the ancient curse."

"Hear the voice of the Bard, Who present, past, and future, sees; Whose ears have heard The Holy Word That walked among the ancient trees."

"Turn away no more; Why wilt thou turn away? The starry floor, The watery shore Is given thee till the break of day."

"Love seeketh not itself to please, Nor for itself hath any care, But for another gives its ease, And builds a heaven in hell's despair."

"Love seeketh only Self to please, To bind another to its delight, Joys in another's loss of ease, And builds a hell in heaven's despite."

"O Rose thou art sick. The invisible worm, That flies in the night In the howling storm:Has found out thy bed Of crimson joy: And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy."

"Little Fly, Thy summer's play My thoughtless hand Has brushed away. Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me? For I dance, And drink, and sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing."

"The modest Rose puts forth a thorn, The humble sheep a threat'ning horn: While the Lily white shall in love delight, Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright."

"In every cry of every Man, In every Infant's cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forg'd manacles I hear."

"But most, thro' midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlot's curse Blasts the new born Infant's tear, And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse."

"Pity would be no more If we did not make somebody Poor; And Mercy no more could be If all were as happy as we."

"My mother groan'd! my father wept. Into the dangerous world I leapt: Helpless, naked, piping loud: Like a fiend hid in a cloud."

"I was angry with my friend: I told my wrath, my wrath did end. I was angry with my foe: I told it not, my wrath did grow."

"In the morning glad I see My foe outstretch'd beneath the tree."

"Children of the future Age Reading this indignant page, Know that in a former time Love! sweet Love! was thought a crime."

"Cruelty has a human heart, And Jealousy a human face; Terror the human form divine, And Secrecy the human dress."

"Tyger! Tyger! burning bright in the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry?"

"In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire?"

"When the stars threw down their spears, And water'd heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the Lamb make thee?"

"What is Grand is necessarily obscure to Weak men. That which can be made Explicit to the idiot is not worth my care."

"But Want of Money & the Distress of A Thief can never be alleged as the Cause of his Thieving, for many honest people endure greater hard ships with Fortitude. We must therefore seek the Cause else where than in want of Money for that is the Misers passion, not the Thiefs."

"Fun I love, but too much Fun is of all things the most loathsom. Mirth is better than Fun & Happiness is better than Mirth."

"To the Eyes of a Miser a Guinea is more beautiful than the Sun & and a bag worn with the use of Money has more beautiful proportions than a Vine filled with Grapes. The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the Eyes of others only a Green thing that stands in the way. Some see Nature all Ridicule and Deformity, and by these I shall not regulate my proportions; and some scarce see Nature at all. But to the Eyes of the Man of Imagination, Nature is Imagination itself. As a man is, So he Sees. As the Eye is formed, such are its Powers.."

"When a Man has Married a Wife He finds out whether Her Knees & elbows are only glued together."

"When nations grow old, the Arts grow cold, And Commerce settles on every tree: And the poor and the old Can live upon gold, For all are born poor. Aged sixty-three."

"Fiery the Angels rose, and as they rose deep thunder roll'd Around their shores: indignant burning with the fires of Orc."

"Acts themselves alone are history, and these are neither the exclusive property of Hume, Gibbon nor Voltaire, Echard, Rapin, Plutarch, nor Herodotus. Tell me the Acts, O historian, and leave me to reason upon them as I please; away with your reasoning and your rubbish. All that is not action is not worth reading."

"Art can never exist without Naked Beauty displayed."

"Art is the tree of life. SCIENCE is the Tree of DEATH ART is the Tree of LIFEGOD is JESUS"

"Jesus & his apostles & disciples were all artists"

"To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour."

"A robin redbreast in a cage Puts all Heaven in a rage."

"A dog starved at his master's gate Predicts the ruin of the state."

"He who shall hurt the little wren Shall never be beloved by men."

"A truth that's told with bad intent Beats all the lies you can invent."

"Man was made for joy and woe, And when this we rightly know Through the world we safely go. Joy and woe are woven fine, A clothing for the soul divine."

"Every tear from every eye Becomes a babe in eternity."

"He who shall teach the child to doubt The rotting grave shall ne'er get out."

"The strongest poison ever known Came from Caesar's laurel crown."

"He who doubts from what he sees Will ne'er believe, do what you please. If the sun and moon should doubt They'd immediately go out."

"The harlot's cry from street to street Shall weave old England's winding sheet."

"Every night, and every morn, Some to misery are born. Every morn, and every night, Some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to sweet delight. Some are born to endless night."

"God appears and god is light To those poor souls who dwell in night But does a human form display To those who dwell in realms of day"

"My specter around me night and day Like a wild beast guards my way, My emanation far within Weeps incessantly for my sin."

"And throughout all eternity I forgive you, you forgive me."

"Mock on, mock on, Voltaire, Rousseau. Mock on, mock on — 'tis all in vain! You throw the sand against the wind, And the wind blows it back again."

"Terror in the house does roar, But Pity stands before the door."

"There is a smile of love, And there is a smile of deceit, And there is a smile of smiles In which these two smiles meet."

"This cabinet is formed of gold And pearl and crystal shining bright, And within it opens into a world And a little lovely moony night."

"For a tear is an intellectual thing, And a sigh is the sword of an Angel King, And the bitter groan of the martyr's woe Is an arrow from the Almighty's bow."

"The Stolen and Perverted Writings of Homer & Ovid, of Plato & Cicero, which all men ought to contemn, are set up by artifice against the Sublime of the Bible"

"Rouze up, O Young Men of the New Age! set your foreheads against the ignorant Hirelings! For we have Hirelings in the Camp, the Court & the University, who would, if they could, for ever depress Mental & prolong Corporeal War."

"And did those feet in ancient time, Walk upon England's mountains green? And was the holy Lamb of God On England's pleasant pastures seen? And did the Countenance Divine Shine forth upon our clouded hills? And was Jerusalem builded here Among these dark Satanic mills? Bring me my Bow of burning gold, Bring me my Arrows of desire, Bring me my Spear — O clouds, unfold! Bring me my Chariot of fire! I will not cease from mental fight, Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand, Till we have built Jerusalem In England's green & pleasant land."

"Time is the mercy of Eternity; without Time's swiftness Which is the swiftest of all things, all were eternal torment."

"Great things are done when men and mountains meet; This is not done by jostling in the street."

"If you have formed a circle to go into, Go into it yourself and see how you would do."

"The Angel that presided o'er my birth Said, "Little creature, formed of joy and mirth, Go love without the help of any thing on earth.""

"Grown old in love from seven till seven times seven, I oft have wished for Hell for ease from Heaven."

"Half Friendship is the bitterest Enmity..."

"Every Thing has its Vermin O Spectre of the Sleeping Dead!"

"Poetry Fetter'd. Fetters the Human Race. Nations are Destroy'd, or Flourish, in proportion as Their Poetry, Painting, and Music are Destroy'd or Flourish!"

"I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend; Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me: Lo! we are One; forgiving all Evil; Not seeking recompense!"

"Trembling I sit day and night, my friends are astonish'd at me. Yet they forgive my wanderings, I rest not from my great task! To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity Ever expanding in the Bosom of God. the Human Imagination"

"O Saviour pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness & love: Annihilate the Selfhood in me, be thou all my life! Guide thou my hand which trembles exceedingly upon the rock of ages"

"They have divided themselves by Wrath. they must be united by Pity<...>"

"Pity must join together those whom wrath has torn in sunder"

"I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's; I will not Reason and Compare: my business is to Create."

"Ever Weeping Paddington..."

"For every thing exists & not one sigh nor smile nor tear, One hair nor particle of dust, not one can pass away."

"I see the Four-fold Man. The Humanity in deadly sleep, And its fallen Emanation. The Spectre & its cruel Shadow. I see the Past, Present & Future, existing all at once Before me; O Divine Spirit sustain me on thy wings!"

"SUCH VISIONS HAVE APPEARD TO ME AS I MY ORDERD RACE HAVE RUN JERUSALEM IS NAMED LIBERTY AMONG THE SONS OF ALBION"

"The fields from Islington to Marybone, To Primrose Hill and Saint John's Wood: Were builded over with pillars of gold, And there Jerusalems pillars stood."

"Pancrass & Kentish-town repose Among her golden pillars high: Among her golden arches which Shine upon the starry sky."

"He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars; General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer: For art and science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars."

"What is a Wife & what is a Harlot? What is a Church & What Is a Theatre? are they Two & not One? can they Exist Separate? Are not Religion & Politics the Same Thing? Brotherhood is Religion O Demonstrations of Reason Dividing Families in Cruelty & Pride!"

"England! awake! awake! awake! Jerusalem thy sister calls! Why wilt thou sleep the sleep of death And close her from thy ancient walls?"

"It is easier to forgive an Enemy than to forgive a Friend."

"Commerce is so far from being beneficial to Arts or to Empire, that it is destructive of both, as all their History shows, for the above Reason of Individual Merit being its Great Hatred. Empires flourish till they become Commercial & then they are scattered abroad to the four winds"

"When I tell any Truth it is not for the sake of Convincing those who do not know it but for the sake of defending those who Do"

"Every Harlot was a Virgin once"

"It is not because Angels are Holier than Men or Devils that makes them Angels but because they do not Expect Holiness from one another but from God only"

"Thinking as I do that the Creator of this World is a very Cruel Being & being a Worshipper of Christ, I cannot help saying: "the Son, O how unlike the Father!" First God Almighty comes with a Thump on the Head. Then Jesus Christ comes with a balm to heal it."

"This world of imagination is the world of eternity."

"You cannot have Liberty in this world without what you call Moral Virtue & you cannot have Moral Virtue without the Slavery of that half of the Human Race who hate what you call Moral Virtue"

"I assert, for myself, that I do not behold the outward creation, and that to me it is hindrance and not action. "What !" it will be questioned, "when the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea !" Oh ! no, no ! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty !" I question not my corporeal eye any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through it, and not with it."

"...some say that Happiness is not Good for Mortals & they ought to be answerd that Sorrow is not fit for Immortals & is utterly useless to any one a blight never does good to a tree & if a blight kill not a tree but it still bear fruit let none say that the fruit was in consequence of the blight."

"The Goddess Fortune is the devils servant ready to Kiss any ones Arse."

"The Old & New Testaments are / the Great Code of Art."

"The vision of Christ that thou dost see Is my vision's greatest enemy. Thine has a great hook nose like thine; Mine has a snub nose like to mine. Thine is the Friend of all Mankind; Mine speaks in parables to the blind. Thine loves the same world that mine hates; Thy heaven doors are my hell gates."

"If He had been Antichrist, Creeping Jesus, He'd have done anything to please us; Gone sneaking into synagogues, And not us'd the Elders and Priests like dogs; But humble as a lamb or ass Obey'd Himself to Caiaphas."

"God wants not man to humble himself: That is the trick of the Ancient Elf. This is the race that Jesus ran: Humble to God, haughty to man, Cursing the Rulers before the people Even to the Temple's highest steeple, And when He humbled Himself to God Then descended the cruel rod. ‘If Thou Humblest Thyself, Thou humblest Me. Thou also dwell’st in Eternity."

"This life's dim windows of the soul Distorts the heavens from pole to pole And leads you to believe a lie When you see with, not through, the eye."

"Seeing this False Christ, in fury and passion I made my voice heard all over the nation. … I am sure this Jesus will not do Either for Englishman or Jew."

"I die, I die!" the Mother said, "My children die for lack of Bread."

"My Brother starv'd between two Walls, His Children's Cry my Soul appalls;"

"The iron hand crush'd the Tyrant's head And became a Tyrant in his stead."

"When a sinister person means to be your enemy, they always start by trying to become your friend."

"[T]he man who never alters his opinions is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind."

"I myself do nothing. The Holy Spirit accomplishes all through me."

"What is most needed today is a fundamental theological thinking, one centered upon the Godhead itself, and centered upon that which is most challenging or most offensive in the Godhead, one which has truly been veiled in the modern world, except by our most revolutionary thinkers and visionaries. If we allow Blake and Nietzsche to be paradigmatic of those revolutionaries, nowhere else does such a centering upon God or the Godhead occur, although a full parallel to this occurs in Spinoza and Hegel; but the language of Hegel and Spinoza is not actually offensive, or not in its immediate impact, whereas the language of Nietzsche and Blake is the most purely offensive language which has ever been inscribed. Above all this is true of the theological language of Blake and Nietzsche, but here a theological language is a truly universal language, one occurring in every domain, and occurring as that absolute No which is the origin of every repression and every darkness, and a darkness which is finally the darkness of God, or the darkness of that Godhead which is beyond “God.” Only Nietzsche and Blake know a wholly fallen Godhead, a Godhead which is an absolutely alien Nihil, but the full reversal of that Nihil is apocalypse itself, an apocalypse which is an absolute joy, and Blake and Nietzsche are those very writers who have most evoked that joy."

"And again to quote Blake: “It is better to murder an infant in the cradle than to nurse an ungratified desire.”"

"..I saw William Blake (in his dream), noble emanation of English genius... ...’Have confidence in your objects,’ he said, 'do not let yourself be intimidated by the horror of the world. Everything is ordered and correct and must fulfill its destiny in order to attain perfection. Seek this path'.. ..I awoke and found myself in Holland in the midst of boundless world turmoil. But my belief in the final release and absolution of all things, whether they please or torment, was newly strengthened."

"To me, it seems best to read Blake in company with his truest peers, Shakespeare and Milton, and with his greatest contemporaries, Wordsworth and Shelley. He was a visionary, rather than a mystic, and, like D. H. Lawrence and Sigmund Freud, he hoped to encourage us to exalt our human potential. Perhaps Blake can be best termed an apocalyptic humanist, who urges us never to forget that all deities reside in the human breast."

""Blake was among the first of European idealists to link his own traditions of thought" with the Indian classic..."

"I also liked the Romantic poets. Wordsworth, Keats, Burns and Blake were some of my favourites. There was something about their rebellious spirit against the evils of industrialization that moved me. Of course now, some of their pessimism, mysticism and limited critical realist visions make me quite uncomfortable."

"I learned this bit of wisdom from a principle of William Blake's which I discovered early and followed far too assiduously the first half of my aesthetic life, and from which I have happily released myself and this axiom was: "Put off intellect and put on imagination; the imagination is the man." From this doctrinal assertion evolved the theoretical axiom that you don't see a thing until you look away from it which was an excellent truism as long as the principles of the imaginative life were believed in and followed. I no longer believe in the imagination."

"There is no century in which Blake would not have seen angels."

"It is not at all certain that a merely moral criticism of society may not be just as "revolutionary" — and revolution, after all, means turning things upside down — as the politico-economic criticism which is fashionable at this moment. Blake was not a politician, but there is more understanding of the nature of capitalist society in a poem like "I wander through each charter'd street" than in three-quarters of Socialist literature."

"I think it was Blake's "The Tyger." I was given poems to copy, that was how my father taught me to do handwriting. "The Tyger" was one of them and it was so musical and mysterious. The wonderful image sank very deep very early. ("Do you remember the first poem that touched you deeply, that awakened you somehow?")"

""I was angry with my friend,/I told my wrath, my wrath did end./I was angry with my foe,/I told it not, my wrath did grow." As an angry child, often urged to "curb my temper," I used to ponder those words of William Blake, but they slid first into my memory through their repetitions of sound, their ominous rhythms."

"In the modern world, the Romantics were the last major cultural movement to assert the "truth of the imagination," defending art as a way of knowing the world that equalled or surpassed scientific reason. In their resistance to what Blake called "Satan's Mathematik Holiness," their goal was not to reject science but to enlarge it. ...the Romantics sought to understand by augmentation."

"Blake deeply admired science; he never failed to portray it heroically. But he was concerned that science saw the universe from an odd angle that hid as much as it revealed. Science screened the value of things, the beauty of things, the sacredness of things as if these qualities might not really be there. Blake called this Single Vision, and contrasted it with his ideal Fourfold vision: an understanding that included the poetic, the sensuous, and the visionary along with the rational. ...he fervently prayed for our culture to be saved from the scientist's severe abbreviation of reality: "God us keep from Single Vision and Newton's Sleep.""

"Freud was frank to admit that Romantic artists like Blake had discovered the unconscious before he had. But... he could hardly adopt Blake's unsettling view of the scientific psyche."

"Re-claiming, contextualizing, and interpreting their memories remain the historians' tasks. I am reminded of a line in William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence"-"To see a world in a grain of sand.""

"think: poems fixed this landscape: Blake, Donne, Keats"

"Most scientists would make very hard work of explaining how the concept of soul fits into the material universe, where there is nothing but "atoms and the void." Was this what Blake meant when he said that science was a tree of death? The death of religion? Of imagination? Both have been frequently suggested. ...Science is certainly our prime weapon against superstition and irrationalism, but in a world in which science flourishes—with or without God—love and fear remain, as do pleasure and regret, poetry and humor, art and music. The arts are not lessened by the sciences. Blake was mistaken: man's ineradicable gift, his questing curiosity, the divine discontent, is the common source of the arts and sciences."

"It may seem to be a long way from Blake's innocent talk of love and copulation to De Sade's need to inflict pain. And yet both are the outcome of a sexual mysticism that strives to transcend the everyday world. Simone de Beauvoir said penetratingly of De Sade's work that 'he is trying to communicate an experience whose distinguishing characteristic is, nevertheless its will to remain incommunicable'. De Sade's perversion may have sprung from his dislike of his mother or of other women, but its basis is a kind of distorted religious emotion."

"... and the wolf chewed up the children and spit out their bones ... But those were Foreign Children and it really didn't matter ..."

"You make 'em, I amuse 'em."

"Nonsense wakes up the brain cells. And it helps develop a sense of humor, which is awfully important in this day and age. Humor has a tremendous place in this sordid world. It's more than just a matter of laughing. If you can see things out of whack, then you can see how things can be in whack."

"When at last we are sure You've been properly pilled, Then a few paper forms Must be properly filled So that you and your heirs May be properly billed."

"You can get help from teachers, but you are going to have to learn a lot by yourself, sitting alone in a room."

"Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them."

"And that is a story that no one can beat, When I say that I saw it on Mulberry Street."

"I meant what I said, and I said what I meant An elephant's faithful, One hundred percent."

"On the 15th of May, in the Jungle of Nool, In the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool, He was splashing... enjoying the jungle's great joys... When Horton the elephant heard a small noise."

"A person's a person, no matter how small."

"My friends!", cried the elephant. "Tell me! Do tell! Are you safe? Are you sound? Are you whole? Are you well?"

"You're going to be roped! And you're going to be caged! And, as for your dust speck – hah! That we shall boil in a hot steaming kettle of Beezle-Nut Oil!"

"Don't give up! I believe in you all. A person's a person, no matter how small! And you very small persons will not have to die If you make yourselves heard! So come on, now, and TRY!"

"This", cried the Mayor, "is your town's darkest hour! The time for all Whos who have blood that is red To come to the aid of their country!", he said. "We've GOT to make noises in greater amounts! So, open your mouth, lad! For every voice counts!"

"Oh the things you can find If you don't stay behind!"

"In the places I go there are things that I see That I never could spell if I stopped with the Z. I'm telling you this 'cause you're one of my friends. My alphabet starts where your alphabet ends!"

"So, on beyond Z! It's high time you were shown That you really don't know All there is to be known."

"The sun did not shine. It was too wet to play. So we sat in the house All that cold, cold, wet day."

"We looked! Then we saw him Step in on the mat! We looked! And we saw him! The Cat in the Hat!"

"Maybe Christmas...", he thought, "...Doesn't come from a store." "Maybe Christmas... perhaps... means a little bit more!"

"Well, in Who-ville they say That the Grinch's small heart Grew 3 sizes that day."

"And today the great Yertle, that Marvelous he, Is King of the Mud. That is all he can see. And the turtles, of course... all the turtles are free As turtles and, maybe, all creatures should be."

"I know up on top you are seeing great sights, But down here on the bottom, We too should have rights."

"From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere."

"If you never did You should. These things are fun. and Fun is good.'"

"I am Sam. Sam-I-Am."

"That Sam-I-Am! That Sam-I-Am! I do not like that Sam-I-Am!"

"I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere. I do not like green eggs and ham. I do not like them, Sam-I-Am."

"Say! I like green eggs and ham! I do! I like them, Sam-I-Am!"

"I pulled, pulled, and pulled. And the next thing I knew, I was pulling the camel and Wubble-Chap too! "Now really," I thought, "this is rather unfair!" But he said, "Don't you stew. I am doing my share. "This is called teamwork. I furnish the brains. You furnish the muscles, the aches and the pains. I'll pick the best roads, tell you just where to go, And we'll find a good doctor more quickly, you know." Then he sat and he worked with his brains and his tongue And he bossed me around just because I was young. He told me go left. Then he told me go right. And that's what he told me all day and all night."

"A big man on a horse scared me out of my wits. He bellowed, "I'm General Genghis Kahn Schmitz. There's a war going on! And it's time that you knew Every lad in this land has his duty to do. We're marching to battle. We need you, my boy! We're about to attack. We're about to destroy The Perilous Poozer of Pompelmoose Pass! So get into line. You're a Private, First Class.""

"I'd have no more troubles... That's what the man said. So I started to go. But I didn't. Instead .... I did some quick thinking Inside of my head. Then I started back home To the Valley of Vung.I know I'll have troubles. I'll maybe get stung. I'll always have troubles. I'll maybe get bit By that Green-Headed Quail On the place where I sit. But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready, you see. Now my troubles are going To have troubles with me!"

"Mister!" he said with a sawdusty sneeze. "I am the Lorax. I speak for the trees. I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues. And I'm asking you, sir, at the top of my lungs" – He was very upset as he shouted and puffed – "What's that THING you've made out of my Truffula tuft?"

"I am the Lorax who speaks for the trees, Which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please! But I'm also in charge of the brown Bar-ba-loots, Who played in the shade in their Bar-ba-loot suits, And happily lived, eating Truffula fruits. Now, thanks to your hacking my trees to the ground, There's not enough Truffula fruit to go 'round! And my poor Bar-ba-loots are all getting the crummies Because they have gas, and no food, in their tummies!"

"UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."

"So . . . Catch!" calls the Once-ler. He lets something fall. "It's a Truffula Seed. It's the last one of all! You're in charge of the last of the Truffula Seeds. And Truffula Trees are what everyone needs. Plant a new Truffula. Treat it with care. Give it clean water. And feed it fresh air. Grow a forest. Protect it from axes that hack. Then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back."

"Now all that was left 'neath the bad-smelling sky was my big empty factory... the Lorax... and I. The Lorax said nothing. Just gave me a glance, just gave me a very sad, sad backward glance, as he lifted himself by the seat of his pants. And I'll never forget the grim look on his face when he heisted himself and took leave of this place, through a hole in the smog, without leaving a trace. And all that the Lorax left here in this mess was a small pile of rocks with the one word: UNLESS. Whatever that meant . . . well, I just couldn't guess."

"It's a troublesome world. All the people who're in it are troubled with troubles almost every minute. You oughta be thankful, a whole heaping lot, For the places and people you're lucky you're not!"

"And suppose that you lived in that forest in France Where the average young person just hasn't a chance To escape from the perilous pants-eating plants! But your pants are safe! You're a fortunate guy. And you ought to be shouting, "How lucky am I!""

"Thank goodness for all the things you are not! Thank goodness you're not something someone forgot, and left all alone in some punkerish place like a rusty tin coat hanger hanging in space."

"That's why I say, "Duckie! Don’t grumble! Don’t stew! Some critters are much-much, oh, ever so much-much, so muchly much-much more unlucky than you!""

"The more that you read, The more things you will know. The more that you learn, The more places you'll go."

"Young cat! If you keep Your eyes open enough, Oh, the stuff you will learn! The most wonderful stuff!"

"you'll miss the best things if you keep your eyes shut"

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose."

"With your head full of brains, and your shoes full of feet, You're too smart to go down any not-so-good-street."

"Out there things can happen, and frequently do, To people as brainy and footsy as you. And when things start to happen, don't worry, don't stew. Just go right along, you'll start happening too!"

"You're off to great places. Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So... get on your way."

"[...] right now, when the Japs are planting their hatchets in our skulls, it seems like a hell of a time for us to smile and warble: “Brothers!” It is a rather flabby battle cry. If we want to win, we've got to kill Japs, whether it depresses John Haynes Holmes or not. We can get palsy-walsy afterward with those that are left."

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."

"Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory."

"Those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."

"You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams."

"You want my opinion? We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love."

"There was an Old Man with a beard, Who said, "It is just as I feared!— Two Owls and a Hen, Four Larks and a Wren, Have all built their nests in my beard!""

"How pleasant to know Mr. Lear! Who has written such volumes of stuff! Some think him ill-tempered and queer, But a few think him pleasant enough."

"His mind is concrete and fastidious, His nose is remarkably big; His visage is more or less hideous, His beard it resembles a wig."

"Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve."

"They went to sea in a sieve, they did; In a sieve they went to sea; In spite of all their friends could say."

"Calico Pie, The little Birds fly Down to the calico tree, Their wings were blue, And they sang "Tilly-loo!" Till away they flew,— And they never came back to me!"

"Calico Jam, The little Fish swam, Over the syllabub sea, He took off his hat, To the Sole and the Sprat, And the Willeby-Wat,— But he never came back to me!"

"Who, or why, or which, or what, Is the Akond of Swat?"

"On the top of the Crumpetty Tree The Quangle Wangle sat, But his face you could not see, On account of his Beaver Hat."

"When awful darkness and silence reign Over the great Gromboolian plain, Through the long, long wintry nights. When the angry breakers roar As they beat on the rocky shore;— When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore"

"The Pobble who has no toes Had once as many as we; When they said, "Some day you may lose them all;"— He replied, — "Fish fiddle de-dee!""

"It's a fact the whole world knows, That Pebbles are happier without their toes."

"Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican jee! We think no Birds so happy as we! Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican jill! We think so then, and we thought so still!"

"On a little heap of Barley Died my aged uncle Arly, And they buried him one night;— Close beside the leafy thicket;— There, his hat and Railway-Ticket;— There, his ever-faithful Cricket;— (But his shoes were far too tight.)"

"The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea In a beautiful pea green boat, They took some honey, and plenty of money, Wrapped up in a five pound note. The Owl looked up to the stars above, And sang to a small guitar, "O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love, What a beautiful Pussy you are, You are, You are! What a beautiful Pussy you are!""

"Pussy said to the Owl, "You elegant fowl! How charmingly sweet you sing! O let us be married! too long we have tarried: But what shall we do for a ring?""

"They sailed away for a year and a day To the land where the bong-tree grows."

"Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling Your ring?" Said the Piggy, "I will."

"They dined on mince, and slices of quince, Which they ate with a runcible spoon; And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, They danced by the light of the moon, The moon, The moon, They danced by the light of the moon."

"On the Coast of Coromandel Where the early pumpkins blow, In the middle of the woods Lived the Yonghy-Bonghy-Bò. Two old chairs, and half a candle,— One old jug without a handle,— These were all his worldly goods."

"There he heard a Lady talking, To some milk-white Hens of Dorking,— 'Tis the lady Jingly Jones! On that little heap of stones Sits the Lady Jingly Jones!"

"I would be your wife most gladly! (Here she twirled her fingers madly,) But in England I've a mate! Yes! you've asked me far too late, For in England I've a mate."

"That state is a state of Slavery in which a man does what he likes to do in his spare time and in his working time that which is required of him. This state can only exist when what a man likes to do is to please himself. ¶ That state is a state of Freedom in which a man does what he likes to do in his working time and in his spare time that which is required of him. This state can only exist when what a man likes to do is to please God."

"Of patience there is this to be said. To be patient is to suffer. By their fruits men know one another, but by their sufferings they are what they are. And suffering is not merely the endurance of physical or mental anguish, but of joy also. A rabbit caught in a trap may be supposed to suffer physical anguish : but it suffers nothing else. The man crucified may be supposed to suffer physical & mental anguish, but he suffers also intense happiness and joy. The industrialist workman is often simply as a rabbit in a trap ; the artist is often as a man nailed to a cross. In patience souls are possessed. No lower view of the matter will suffice."

"The hardest theme in science fiction is that of the alien. The simplest solution of all is in fact quite profound—that the real difficulty lies not in understanding what is alien, but in understanding what is self. We are all aliens to each other, all different and divided. We are even aliens to ourselves at different stages of our lives. Do any of us remember precisely what it was like to be a baby?"

"We're not prophets. We're not here to inform the rich people of the world on how to make more money, or to inform governments on how to direct themselves. We are here to allow you to dream your dreams and make them happen, and have your nightmares a little in advance so you can prevent them from happening."

"You deserve whoever governs you … Everyone is responsible for the actions of their leaders."

"There is nothing finer in the world than the telling of tales. Split atoms if you wish, but splitting an infinitive—and getting away with it—is far nobler. Lance boils if you wish, but pricking pretensions is often cleaner and always more fun."

"“Being scared is nothing,” the old woman said. “Being bored, or ignorant—now that’s a crime.”"

"The battle was over. There were no victors."

"To fight an enemy properly, you have to know what they are. Ignorance is defeat."

"“We must know our enemy, at least a little.” “That’s dangerous,” Prufrax said, almost instinctively. “Yes, it is. What you know, you cannot hate.”"

"When evenly matched, you cannot win against your enemy unless you understand them. And if you truly understand, why are you fighting and not talking?"

"She saw that in all wars, the first stage was to dehumanize the enemy, reduce the enemy to a lower level so that he might be killed without compunction. When the enemy was not human to begin with, the task was easier."

"We’ve been fighting for so long, we’ve begun to lose ourselves. And it’s getting worse."

"There is no war so important that to win it, we must destroy our minds."

"“I’m going to take you out tonight,” he said. “Another Heisenberg dinner.” “What’s that?” “Uncertainty,” Edward said crisply. “We know where we are going, but not what we are going to eat. Or vice versa.” “Sounds wonderful. Which car?” “The Quantum, of course.” “Oh, Lord. We just had the speedometer fixed.” “And the steering went out?” “Shh! It’s still working. We’re cheating.”"

"Around her gulps of water, she repeated her prayer, until the monotony and futility silenced her."

"Can’t own a woman, Mike. Wonderful companions, can’t own them."

"“You’re a romantic, aren’t you?” she said. “I suppose I am.” “I am too. The silliest people in the world are romantics.”"

"He may not have had time, but even allowing him the time, Vergil simply did not think such things through. Brilliant in the creation, slovenly in the consideration of consequences. But wasn’t that true of every creator? Didn’t anyone who changed things ultimately lead some people—perhaps many people—to death, grief, torment?"

"Nothing will ever be the same again. Good! Wonderful! Wasn’t it all badly flawed anyway? No, perhaps not. Not until now."

"Information can be stored even more compactly than in molecular memory. It can be stored in the structure of space-time. What is matter, after all, but a standing-wave of information in the vacuum?"

"“Very evocative. He seems to be confirming what I said last year—that the universe really has no underpinnings, that when a good hypothesis comes along, one that explains the prior events, the underpinnings shape themselves to accommodate and a powerful theory is born.” “Then there is no ultimate reality?” “Apparently not. Bad hypotheses, those that don’t fit what happen on our level, are rejected by the universe. Good ones, powerful ones, are incorporated.”"

"Nothing is lost. Nothing is forgotten. It was in the blood, the flesh, And now it is forever."

"Sometimes I feel like a beetle crawling through a fusion power plant. I can feel a certain amount, see a certain amount, but I sure as hell don’t understand everything."

"“That’s insane,” Lanier said. “Not very. It’s politics.”"

"Grief is not productive. It simply represents an inefficiency in accepting change of status."

"Having one’s eyes opened doesn’t make one grateful."

"“We’d like to agree with you.” He glanced at Arthur. “We can’t, however,” Arthur said. “For the moment, then, amicable disagreement and open minds.”"

"Apocalypse could not be repealed by the democratic process."

"“It’s not impossible,” Minelli said. “No,” Edward admitted, “but it’s paranoid as hell, and that’s the last thing we need, more fear.”"

"I sometimes think we deserve to die, we’re all so goddamned stupid."

"Life on earth is hard. Competition for the necessities of life is fierce. How ridiculous to believe that the law of harsh survival would not be true elsewhere, or that it would be negated by the progress of technology in an advanced civilization..."

"Altruism is masked self-interest. Aggressive self-interest is a masked urge to self-destruction."

"A Stellar’s jay hopped along behind him, watching closely for dropped crumbs. “It’s dark,” he told the bird. “Go to sleep. I've eaten already. Where were you? No food now.” The bird persisted, however; it knew humans were liars."

"More and more I am nothing without someone. To be alone is to be in bad company."

"Conflict of the sexes is not a disease; it is an unavoidable byproduct like the smoke and water from a fire."

"Ours is an age of social anger."

"I explored new territory and described it. I did not create it. Don’t blame the conduit for the lightning."

"Poetry is dead and buried in a world of growing LitVid and illiteracy, vidiocy I’ve heard it called. Being dead, poetry has enormous freedom; being ignored, it can blossom like a rose in a manure heap. Poetry is risen. Poetry is the messiah of literature but the angel has not yet told anybody it is risen."

"Eccentricity is more than affectation to a poet. It’s a necessity."

"The feedback loop is half of the secret of existence."

"What he liked he despised for being likable."

"“From what we’ve been told, he wasn’t very humble, was he, Mr. Lascal?” Lascal shook his head. “I don’t know many writers who are.”"

"You can find nearly anything human in Los Angeles, good and bad. I don’t think it would be workable as a city without mental therapy."

"We have arisen as the result of purely natural processes; one of the great achievements of modern science has been the elimination of God or others teleologisms him as a necessity from our explanations."

"He wondered for a moment if they had stumbled onto something truly supernatural but dismissed that with a disgusted shudder."

"Some believe a superior being has guided humans. I see no compelling evidence for this. The human wish for guidance, for confirmation and external support, is an underlying theme in all they do and say, however. Very few stray far from this most fundamental of wishes: that they might have immortal and omniscient parents."

"Here was a creed without a coherent philosophy—a system without a sensible metaphysic. Here was puerile hypothesis and even outright fantasy masquerading as revealed the truth."

"There may be no such thing as prescience, but honed instincts are crucial in our game."

"We were innocent and did not know that the price of freedom—of individuality—is attention to politics, careful planning, careful organization; philosophy is no more a barrier against political disaster than it is against plague."

"“Maybe you administrators can work it all out in the council.” You administrators. That put us in our place. Paper pushers, bureaucrats, politicians. Cut the politics. We were the ones who stood in the way of the scientist’s goal of unrestrained research and intellection."

"That’s what politics is all about—coercion and lies."

"I felt myself growing older. I didn’t see it as an improvement."

"Whom could I blame? Ultimately, one man who had started a strangely secular church, attracting people good and bad, faithful and cynical, starting an organization too large and too well-financed and organized to simply fade: promulgating a series of lies become sacred truths. How often had that happened in human history, and how many had suffered and died?"

"Alienation without must be accompanied by alienation within; that is the law for every social level, even individuals. To harm one’s fellows, even one’s enemies, harms you, takes away some essential element from your self-respect and self-image."

"The sorrow never dies; it is merely nacred by time."

"“The train’s late. Fascists are supposed to make them run on time,” Diane said, still tapping her boot. “They never did on earth,” I said. “You mean it’s a myth?” I nodded. “So fascists aren’t good for anything?” Diane asked. “Uniforms,” I said. “Ours don’t even have good uniforms.”"

"That was the myth and I admit I found it attractive. I still do. It’s been said that a romantic is someone who never accepts the evidence of her eyes and ears."

"The slogan of those who advocated therapy was, “A sane society is a polite society.”"

"“Nobody’s ever satisfied with what they have?” “Not in human experience; not at the level of governments, nations, or planets.”"

"Equal in law is not equal in nature."

"Why does our sense of individuality prevent us from correcting our weaknesses?"

"My level of skepticism rose enormously; I’ve always bristled when people ask for, much less demand, trust."

"With a little ceremony, and not much in the way of clothing left to remove, we celebrated still being alive."

"Populists believed the people should dictate their needs to any individual who rose above the herd, and bring them low again—except of course for the leaders of whatever populist government took power, who, as political messiahs, would earn specific privileges themselves."

"Institutions, like any organism, hate to die."

"The universe stores the results of its operations as nature. I do not confuse nature with reality. At a fundamental level, reality is the set of rules the results of whose interactions are nature. Part of the problem of reconciling quantum mechanics with larger-scale phenomena comes from mistaking results for rules—they have been built into our brains, good for survival, but not for physics."

"The future seemed not just dangerous, not just bleak; it seemed incomprehensible."

"All states resort to force in the end."

"The Republic, despite the best efforts of the surviving government, was quickly being replaced by something worse than anarchy—passionate mob rule, directed by untutored but skilled opportunists."

"We are born in ignorance, we die in ignorance, but maybe sometimes we learn something important and pass it along to others before we die. Or we write it down in a little book."

"It's interesting how many science fiction writers get going when they are very young. I was on a program with Greg Bear, and he mentioned that he had gotten started writing when he was eight. And I began writing when I was ten."

"I remembered being so amazed by his stories from when my parents subscribed to OMNI magazine."

"Houses, are but badly built boats so firmly aground that you cannot think of moving them. They are definitely inferior things, belonging to the vegetable not the animal world, rooted and stationary, incapable of gay transition. I admit, doubtfully, as exceptions, snail-shells and caravans. The desire to build a house is the tired wish of a man content thenceforward with a single anchorage. The desire to build a boat is the desire of youth, unwilling yet to accept the idea of a final resting-place."

"BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN."

"They found, like many explorers before them, that somehow, in their absence, they had got into trouble at home."

"When a thing's done, it's done, and if it's not done right, do it differently next time."

"Only, the beastly Arctic won't freeze,"

"Softly, at first, as if it hardly meant it, the snow began to fall."

"A pigeon a day keeps the natives away"

"Grab a chance and you won't be sorry for a might-have-been."

"A lot of things were lucky," said Daddy, and suddenly, while they were walking along, brought his hand down on John's shoulder and gave it a bit of a squeeze. "You'll be a seaman yet, my son." And John, for one dreadful moment, felt that something was going wrong with his eyes. A sort of wetness, and hotness... Partly salt... Pleased though he was, he found himself biting his lower lip pretty hard, and looking the other way."

"She's got a rum job, but she knows how to do it, and to have a job and know how to do it is one of the best things in this life. And if only she stops hankering after Cambridge..."

"Dorothea blew out her candle and settled down in the middle of the big spare room bed. An owl called in the woods. 'Not a barn owl, but a tawny,' thought Dick, listening to the sharp 'Gewick! Gewick!' as he fell asleep. A smell of new-mown hay drifted from the meadows on the further side of the river. 'There isn't a lovelier place in all the world,' thought Dorothea. London last night, and now Beckfoot. The summer holidays had begun."

"What's hit's history: what's missed's mystery."

"I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead."

"A prig always finds a last refuge in responsibility."

"I am a lie who always speaks the truth."

"The Louvre is like the morgue; one goes there to identify one’s friends."

"Poets don’t draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently."

"True realism consists in revealing the surprising things which habit keeps covered and prevents us from seeing."

"Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils, but cannot wear them plausibly."

"Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what’s known as infinity."

"Depuis le jour de ma naissance, ma mort s'est mise en marche. Elle marche à ma rencontre, sans se presser."

"One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends."

"What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist’s presence makes itself felt above that of the model... With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul’s style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies."

"Film will only become an art when its materials are as inexpensive as pencil and paper."

"After the writer’s death, reading his journal is like receiving a long letter."

"Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort."

"An artist cannot speak about his art any more than a plant can discuss horticulture."

"The trouble about the Académie is that by the time they get around to electing us to a seat, we really need a bed."

"We must believe in luck. For how else can we explain the success of those we don’t like?"

"What is history after all? History is facts which become lies in the end; legends are lies which become history in the end."

"The poet never asks for admiration; he wants to be believed."

"Poetry is indispensable — if I only knew what for."

"Art produces ugly things which frequently become more beautiful with time. Fashion, on the other hand, produces beautiful things which always become ugly with time."

"A film is a petrified fountain of thought."

"The ear disapproves but tolerates certain musical pieces; transfer them into the domain of our nose, and we will be forced to flee."

"You’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive."

"Commissions suit me. They set limits. Jean Marais dared me to write play in which he would not speak in the first act, would weep for joy in the second and in the last would fall backward down a flight of stairs."

"That pile of paper on his left side went on living like the watch on a dead soldier’s wrist."

"I have lost my seven best friends, which is to say God has had mercy on me seven times without realizing it. He lent a friendship, took it from me, sent me another."

"Don’t for a moment believe He was killing the young; He was costuming angels."

"He has the manner of a giant with the look of a child, a lazy activeness, a mad wisdom, a solitude encompassing the world."

"There are too many souls of wood not to love those wooden characters who do indeed have a soul."

"The instinct of nearly all societies is to lock up anybody who is truly free. First, society begins by trying to beat you up. If this fails, they try to poison you. If this fails too, they finish by loading honors on your head."

"The skin of all of us is responsive to gypsy songs and military marches."

"Mirrors would do well to reflect a little more before sending back images."

"The joy of youth is to disobey, but the trouble is that there are no longer any orders."

"When a work appears to be ahead of its time, it is only the time that is behind the work."

"What the public criticizes in you, cultivate. It is you."

"Art is science made clear."

"One must be a living man and a posthumous artist."

"An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original."

"All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it."

"The worst tragedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood."

"In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator."

"Tact in audacity is knowing how far you can go without going too far."

"The extreme limit of wisdom — that’s what the public calls madness."

"If it has to choose who is to be crucified, the crowd will always save Barabbas ."

"There are truths which one can only say after having won the right to say them."

"We shelter an angel within us. We must be the guardians of that angel."

"Look out! Be on your guard, because alone of all the arts, music moves all around you."

"Such is the role of poetry. It unveils, in the strict sense of the word. It lays bare, under a light which shakes off torpor, the surprising things which surround us and which our senses record mechanically."

"Mettez un lieu commun en place, nettoyez-le, frottez-le, éclairez-le de telle sorte qu'il frappe avec sa jeunesse et avec la même fraîcheur, le même jet qu'il avait à sa source, vous ferez œuvre de poète. Tout le reste est littérature."

"A true poet does not bother to be poetical. Nor does a nursery gardener scent his roses."

"Victor Hugo was a madman who thought he was Victor Hugo."

"Life is a horizontal fall."

"Everything one does in life, even love, occurs in an express train racing toward death. To smoke opium is to get out of the train while it is still moving. It is to concern oneself with something other than life or death."

"A car can massage organs which no masseur can reach. It is the one remedy for the disorders of the great sympathetic nervous system. … The craving for opium can be endured in a car."

"If a hermit lives in a state of ecstasy, his lack of comfort becomes the height of comfort. He must relinquish it."

"There is always a period when a man with a beard shaves it off. This period does not last. He returns headlong to his beard."

"If an addict who has been completely cured starts smoking again he no longer experiences the discomfort of his first addiction. There exists, therefore, outside alkaloids and habit, a sense for opium, an intangible habit which lives on, despite the recasting of the organism.... The dead drug leaves a ghost behind. At certain hours it haunts the house."

"It is not I who become addicted, it is my body."

"Respect movements, flee schools."

"Do as the beautiful woman: see to your figure and your petticoats. Though, of course, I am not speaking literally."

"People would say to Al Brown: "You are not a boxer. You are a dancer." He laughed at this, and won."

"Do not take up cause against the inaccuracies printed about you. They are your protection."

"Be a constant outrage to modesty There is nothing to fear: modesty is exercised only among the blind."

"One is either judge or accused. The judge sits, the accused stands. Live on your feet."

"Hasten slowly. Run faster than beauty."

"Find first, seek later."

"Be helpful, even if it compromises you."

"Compromise yourself. Obscure your own trail."

"He who is affected by an insult is infected by it."

"Understand that some of your enemies are amongst your best friends."

"Fight any instinct to be humorless, for humorlessness is the worst of all absurdities."

"Do not fear being ridiculous in relation to the ridiculous."

"See your disappointments as good fortune. One plan's deflation is another's inflation."

"Do not close the circle. Leave it open. Descartes closes the circle. Pascal leaves it open. Rousseau's triumph over the encyclopedists is to have left his circle open when they closed theirs."

"Allow the power of the soul to grow as flagrant as the power of sex."

"Expect neither reward nor beatitude. Return noble waves for ignoble."

"Hate only hatred."

"Disavow anyone who provokes or accepts the extermination of a race to which he does not belong."

"Be a mere assistant to your unconscious. Do only half the work. The rest will do itself."

"Consider metaphysics as an extension of the physical."

"Know that your work speaks only to those on the same wavelength as you."

"Anything of any importance cannot help but be unrecognizable, since it bears no resemblance to anything already known."

"The ultimate politeness in art consists of speaking only to those who are able to uncover and measure its relationships. Anything else is symbolic, and symbolism is merely transcendental imagery."

"Poetry, being elegance itself, cannot hope to achieve visibility. In that case, you ask me, of what use is it? Of no use. Who will see it? No one. Which does not prevent it from being an outrage to modesty, though its exhibitionism is squandered on the blind. It is enough for poetry to express a personal ethic, which can then break away in the form of a work. It insists on living its own life. It becomes the pretext for a thousand misunderstandings that go by the name of glory..."

"Beauty is always the result of an accident. Of a violent lapse between acquired habits and those yet to be acquired. It baffles and disgusts. It may even horrify. Once the new habit has been acquired, the accident ceases to be an accident. It becomes classical and loses its shock value."

"Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal... unnable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort, the trifling feeling of escape experienced at a masked ball. He distances himself from that which he feels and sees. He invents. He transfigures. He mythifies. He creates. He fancies himself an artist. He imitates, in his small way, the painters he claims are mad."

"Accuracy is vexing to a crowd of would-be fantasizers. Hasn't our age coined the term "escapism," when in fact the only way to escape oneself is to allow oneself to be invaded?"

"Poetry is a religion without hope. The poet exhausts himself in its service, knowing that, in the long run, a masterpiece is nothing but the performance of a trained dog on very shaky ground."

"Poetry is an ethic. By ethic I mean a secret code of behavior, a discipline constructed and conducted according to the capabilities of a man who rejects the falsifications of the categorical imperative. This personal morality may appear to be immorality itself in the eyes of those who lie to themselves, or who live a life of confusion, in such a manner that, for them, a lie becomes the truth, and our truth becomes a lie..."

"Beauty cannot be recognized with a cursory glance."

"The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication: that is why so many bad artists are unable to give it up."

"Originality consists in trying to be like everybody else — and failing."

"I met a young man of nineteen or twenty, who at that time vibrated with all the youth of the world. This was Jean Cocteau, then a passionately imaginative youth to whom every great line of poetry was a sunrise, every sunset the foundations of the Heavenly City."

"The unknown mountain nests in the inhospitable interior of southern Calabria are usually connected only by a mule track with the railway that runs close to the coast: whoever wants to go there has to walk on foot if he has no donkey at his disposal. I think back to that warm afternoon in the month of May when we the four of us, after a long, tiring ride in the harsh sun, packed with the heavy burden of our backpacks, sweat-dripping and a little gasping, entered the city gate of Palizzi.."

"Now, I should like to say something else to you about the connection with music, primarily that of Bach, i.e. the Fugue or, put more simply, the canon.. .It has a great deal in common with my own motifs, which I make turn on various axes too. Nowadays I have such a powerful sense of relationship, of affinity, that when I am listening to Bach I frequently get inspired and feel an overwhelming instinct for his insistent rhythm, a cadence seeking something of the infinite. In the Fugue everything is based on a single motif, often consisting of just a few notes. In my work, too, everything revolves around a single closed contour.."

"But to get back to the point: did you ever imagine that your dad, who lives so far away from the bustle and intrigue of the world, working on his prints day after day like a hermit, would some day be drawn into the sickening scene of vain officialdom, despite himself?.. .But what on earth can I do about it? Luckily I can swear by God and all his angels that I never moved a finger to get the decoration or licked the boots of any bigwigs."

"In mathematical quarters, the regular division of the plane has been considered theoretically.. .Does this mean that it is an exclusively mathematical question? In my opinion, it does not. [Mathematicians] have opened the gate leading to an extensive domain, but they have not entered this domain themselves. By their very nature they are more interested in the way in which the gate is opened than in the garden lying behind it."

"After the first proof [of 'Sphere Spirals'] my high expectations were, as always, greatly disappointed. I am now struggling on - with some feeling of despair - so that I at least achieve a passable result."

"As long as there have been men.. ..upon this globe.. ..we have held firmly to the notion of.. ..all of which must continue to be everlasting in time and infinite in space."

"The ideas that are basic to [my work] often bear witness to my amazement and wonder at the laws of nature which operate in the world around us. He who wonders discovers that this is in itself a wonder. By keenly confronting the enigmas that surround us, and by considering and analyzing the observations that I had made, I ended up in the domain of mathematics."

"The fact that, from 1938 onwards, I concentrated more on the interpretation of personal ideas was primarily the result of my departure from Italy. In Switzerland, Belgium, and Holland where I successively established myself, I found the outward appearance of landscapes and architecture to be less striking than those which are particularly to be seen in the southern part of Italy. Thus I felt compelled to withdraw from the more or less direct and true-to-life illustrating of my surroundings."

"It is human nature to want to exchange ideas, and I believe that, at bottom, every artist wants no more than to tell the world what he has to say. I have sometimes heard painters say that they paint 'for themselves': but I think they would soon have painted their fill if they lived on a desert island. The primary purpose of all art forms, whether it's music, literature, or the visual arts, is to say something to the outside world; in other words, to make a personal thought, a striking idea, an inner emotion perceptible to other people’s senses in such a way that there is no uncertainty about the maker's intentions."

"The result of the struggle between the thought and the ability to express it, between dream and reality, is seldom more than a compromise or an approximation. Thus there is little chance that we will succeed in getting through to a large audience, and on the whole we are quite satisfied if we are understood and appreciated by a small number of sensitive, receptive people."

"It may seem paradoxical to say that there are similarities between a poetical and a commercial mind, but it is a fact that both a poet and a businessman are constantly dealing with problems that are directly related to people and for which sensitivity is of prime importance. The business-like mind is sometimes described as being cold, sober, calculating, hard; but perhaps these are simply qualities that are necessary for dealing with people if one wants to achieve anything. One is always concerned with the mysterious, incalculable, dark, hidden aspects for which there is no easy formula, but which form essentially the same human element as that which inspires the poet."

"When someone forgets himself, this by no means makes him altruistic; when a thinking person forgets himself, he immediately also forgets his fellowman, he loses himself and his humanity by becoming engrossed in his subject. Thus he is in a sense more contemplative than a feeling person."

"As far as I know, there is no proof whatever of the existence of an objective reality apart from our senses, and I do not see why we should accept the outside world as such solely by virtue of our senses. These reality enthusiasts are possibly playing at hide-and-seek; at any rate they like to hide themselves, though they are not usually aware of it. They simply do it because they happen to have been born with a sense of reality, that is, with a great interest in so-called reality, and because man likes to forget himself."

"I do indeed believe that there is a certain contrast between, say, people in scientific professions and people working in the arts. Often there is even mutual suspicion and irritation, and in some cases one group greatly undervalues the other. Fortunately there is no one who actually has only feeling or only thinking properties. They intermingle like the colors of the rainbow and cannot be sharply divided. Perhaps there is even a transitional group, like the green between the yellow and the blue of the rainbow. This transitional group does not have a particular preference for thinking or feeling, but believes that one cannot do without either the one or the other. At any rate, it is unprejudiced enough to wish for a better understanding between the two parties... It is clear that feeling and understanding are not necessarily opposites but that they complement each other."

"In my prints I try to show that we live in a beautiful and orderly world and not in a chaos without norms, as we sometimes seem to. My subjects are also often playful. I cannot help mocking all our unwavering certainties. It is, for example, great fun deliberately to confuse two and three dimensions, the plane and space, or to poke fun at gravity. Are you sure that a floor cannot also be a ceiling? Are you absolutely certain that you go up when you walk up a staircase? Can you be definite that it is impossible to eat your cake and have it?"

"It's pleasing to realize that quite a few people enjoy this sort of playfulness and that they are not afraid to look at the relative nature of rock-hard reality."

"To tell you the truth, I am rather perplexed about the concept of "art]. What one person considers to be "art" is often not "art" to another. "Beautiful" and "ugly" are old-fashioned concepts that are seldom applied these days; perhaps justifiably, who knows? Something repulsive, which gives you a moral hangover, and hurts your ears or eyes, may well be art. Only "kitsch" is not art — we're all agreed about that. Indeed, but what is "kitsch"? If only I knew!"

"lf l am not mistaken, the words "art" and "artist" did not exist during the Renaissance and before: there were simply architects, sculptors, and painters, practicing a trade."

"I am a graphic artist heart and soul, though I find the term "artist" rather embarrassing."

"My work has nothing to do with people, nothing to do with psychology. I am much more cerebral than Willink. I do not wish to be deep at all. I know that I don't hide anything at all in this work. When Carel Willink paints a naked lady in a street, I think: what is that lady doing there?. ..the house facades give me a lugubrious impression. So it is a lugubrious street. My work is not lugubrious. If you ask Willink: 'Why are those naked mistresses there', you do not receive an answer. With me you always get an answer when you ask: why.."

"..and to think now that great mathematicians find my work interesting because I am able to illustrate their theories. They can not imagine that I was such a bad pupil in mathematics. I don't understand it myself neither. I never could understand why it was necessary to prove something that everyone already sees. I saw it, I knew it, so it is how it is… But yes, you had to prove it. I did overcome it when I realized I can make something else - I thought I was a good-for-nothing. In my family there were no other artists to find.. .I was just a weird duck, right?"

"I first made this one [open spiral in which eyes, mouth and forehead of a woman are recognizable) but I cannot stand it that something is cut off. I thought, why is that human cut off here? Then I made two of them, who have together an [interconnected] endlessness. It is also meant as a reaction against sculptors. I see them as a little inferior - no, that is not well-expressed – but sculptors are too limited. They see sculpturing as something superior, but everybody can do modeling. Drawing is much more difficult, much more immaterial."

"At moments of great enthusiasm it seems to me that no one in the world has ever made something this beautiful and important."

"I am always wandering around in enigmas. There are young people who constantly come to tell me: you, too, are making Op Art. I haven't the slightest idea what that is, Op Art. I've been doing this work for thirty years now."

"I believe that producing pictures, as I do, is almost solely a question of wanting so very much to do it well."

"I could fill an entire second life with working on my prints."

"I don't grow up. In me is the small child of my early days."

"So let us then try to climb the mountain, not by stepping on what is below us, but to pull us up at what is above us, for my part at the stars; amen."

"The things I want to express are so beautiful and pure."

"To have peace with this peculiar life; to accept what we do not understand; to wait calmly for what awaits us, you have to be wiser than I am."

"My work is a game, a very serious game."

"(1) What are the possible shapes for a tile that can produce a regular division of the plane, that is, a tile that can fill the plane with its congruent images such that every tile is surrounded in the same manner?"

"(2) Moreover, in what ways are the edges of such a tile related to each other by isometries?"

"It is a neat depiction of one of Escher's enduring fascinations: the contrast between the two-dimensional flatness of a sheet of paper and the illusion of three-dimensional volume that can be created with certain marks. In 'Drawing Hands', space and the flat plane coexist, each born from and returning to the other, the black magic of the artistic illusion made creepily manifest."

"As a kid growing up in the 1950s I became acutely aware of the changes taking place in American culture and I must say I didn't much like it. I witnessed the debasement of architecture, and I could see a decline in the quality of things like comic books and toys, things made for kids. Old things seemed to have more life, more substance, more humanity in them."

"What we kids didn't understand was that we were living in a commercial, commodity culture. Everything in our environment had been bought and sold. As middle class Americans, we basically grew up on a movie set. The conscious values that are pushed are only part of the picture. The medium itself plays a much bigger part than anyone realizes: the creation of illusion. We are living surrounded by illusion, by professionally created fairy tales. We barely have contact with the real world."

"About the only power you have is the power to discriminate. Living in a culture like this, you have to make choices and search out what has the most authentic content or substance. In the 1960s, while on LSD, I realized that my mind was a garbage receptacle of mass media images and input. I spent my whole childhood absorbing so much crap that my personality and mind are saturated with it. God only knows if that affects you physically! As a kid I became increasingly interested in earlier periods of culture. I turned into a little nostalgia boy, and I became steeped in the Our Gang fantasy from watching them on TV. So much so, that my speech patterns were affected. The style of those Our Gang comedies was so charming that I started acting and talking like Jackie Cooper and Alfalfa. They had these cute kids, artificial mannerisms. It must have been embarrassing for people to hear me talk like that."

"I took some bad acid in November of 1965, and the after effect left me crazy and helpless for six months. My mind would drift into a place that was very electrical and crackly, filled with harsh, abrasive, low grade, cartoony, tawdry carnival visions. There was a nightmarish mechanical aspect to everyday life. My ego was so shattered, so fragmented that it didn't get in the way during what was the most unself-conscious period of my life. I was kind of on automatic pilot and was still constantly drawing. Most of my popular characters—Mr. Natural, Flaky Foont, Angelfood McSpade, Eggs Ackley, The Snoid, The Vulture Demonesses, Av' n' Gar, Shuman the Human, the Truckin' guys, Devil Girl—all suddenly appeared in the drawings in my sketchbook in this period, early 1966. Amazing! I was relieved when it was finally over, but I also immediately missed the egoless state of that strange interlude. LSD put me somewhere else. I wasn't sure where. All I know is, it was a strange place. Psychedelic drugs broke me out of my social programming. It was a good thing for me, traumatic though, and I may have been permanently damaged by the whole thing, I'm not sure. I see LSD as a positive, important life experience for me, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone else."

"I was totally amazed. This little home made underground comix thing was turning into a business before my eyes. It went from us going around Haight Street trying to sell these things we had folded and stapled ourselves to suddenly being a business with distributors, lawyers, contracts, and money talk. … The whole thing began to take on a heaviness that I believe had a negative effect on my work. I was only twenty-five years old when all this happened. It was a case of "too much too soon," I think. I became acutely self-conscious about what I was doing. Was I now a "spokesman" for the hippies or what? I had no idea how to handle my new position in society! … Take Keep On Truckin'... for example. Keep on Truckin'... is the curse of my life. This stupid little cartoon caught on hugely. … I didn't want to turn into a greeting card artist for the counter-culture! I didn't want to do 'shtick'—the thing Lenny Bruce warned against. That's when I started to let out all my perverse sex fantasies. It was the only way out of being "America's Best Loved Hippie Cartoonist.""

"Before industrial civilization, local and regional communities made their own music, their own entertainment. The esthetics were based on traditions that went far back in time—i.e. folklore. But part of the con of mass culture is to make you forget history, disconnect you from tradition and the past. Sometimes that can be a good thing. Sometimes it can even be revolutionary. But tradition can also keep culture on an authentic human level, the homespun as opposed to the mass produced. Industrial civilization figured out how to manufacture popular culture and sell it back to the people. You have to marvel at the ingenuity of it! The problem is that the longer this buying and selling goes on, the more hollow and bankrupt the culture becomes. It loses its fertility, like worn out, ravaged farmland. Eventually, the yokels who bought the hype, the pitch, they want in on the game. When there are no more naive hicks left, you have a culture where everybody is conning each other all the time. There are no more earnest "squares" left—everybody's "hip", everybody is cynical."

"I was lucky to be part of the "underground comix" thing in which cartoonists were completely free to express themselves. To function on those terms means putting everything out in the open—no need to hold anything back—total liberation from censorship, including the inner censor! A lot of my satire is considered by some to be "too hard." My "negro" characters are not about black people, but are more about pushing these "uncool" stereotypes in readers' faces, so suddenly they have to deal with a very tacky part of our human nature. … Who did I think I was appealing to? I don't know. I was just being a punk, putting down on paper all these messy parts of the culture we internalize and keep quiet about. I admit I'm occasionally embarrassed when I look at some of that work now."

"People have no idea of the sources for my work. I didn't invent anything; It's all there in the culture; it's not a big mystery. I just combine my personal experience with classic cartoon stereotypes."

"The fine art world and the commercial art industry are both all about money. It's hard to say which is more contemptible: the fine art world with its double talk and pretensions to the cultural high ground, or the world of commercial art trying to sell to the largest mass market it can reach. A serious artist really shouldn't be too deeply involved in either of these worlds. It's best to be on the fringe of them. In general, if you want to be a success and make the money, you have to play the game. It's no different in the fine art world, it's just a slightly different game. Essentially, you're marketing an illusion. It's much easier to lie to humans and trick them than to tell them the truth. They'd much rather be bamboozled than be told the truth, because the way to trick them is to flatter them and tell them what they want to hear, to reinforce their existing illusions. They don't want to know the truth. Truth is a bring-down, a bummer, or it's just too complicated, too much mental work to grasp."

"My generation comes from a world that has been molded by crass TV programs, movies, comic books, popular music, advertisements and commercials. My brain is a huge garbage dump of all this stuff and it is this, mainly, that my work comes out of, for better or for worse. I hope that whatever synthesis I make of all this crap contains something worthwhile, that it's something other than just more smarmy entertainment—or at least, that it's genuine high quality entertainment. I also hope that perhaps it's revealing of something, maybe. On the other hand, I want to avoid becoming pretentious in the eagerness to give my work deep meanings! I have an enormous ego and must resist the urge to come on like a know-it-all. Some of the imagery in my work is sorta scary because I'm basically a fearful, pessimistic person. I'm always seeing the predatory nature of the universe, which can harm you or kill you very easily and very quickly, no matter how well you watch your step. The way I see it, we are all just so much chopped liver. We have this great gift of human intelligence to help us pick our way through this treacherous tangle, but unfortunately we don't seem to value it very much. Most of us are not brought up in environments that encourage us to appreciate and cultivate our intelligence. To me, human society appears mostly to be a living nightmare of ignorant, depraved behavior. We're all depraved, me included. I can't help it if my work reflects this sordid view of the world. Also, I feel that I have to counteract all the lame, hero-worshipping crap that is dished out by the mass-media in a never-ending deluge."

"What the hell is this?? Who can tell me?? Does anybody know?? How can I find out more about it?? One thing's sure: the human mind can't "know" it...why does one want to "know"?? Is it a quest for "freedom"? One no longer wishes to be a puppet dancing on the strings of...of what? Animal instincts?? Learned reflexes? Programmed behavior?? Ingrained habits of perception?? How limited are we by the experience of our senses, by our physical nature?? To be fully alive is a stupendous struggle! We want the rewards without the struggle--- ---a fatal error! ...No such thing as an easy life! Everybody has a hard time...struggle or die! To find out what's really going on it's necessary to get around the ego..an art requiring persistent and determined effort...Me, me, me...myself & I...oh no!!! Trapped in my stupid self!"

"I never had a strategy in my dealing with other humans! I've always been very passive socially. I went along with their agenda. I had none of my own! Left to my own devices I stayed in my room or wandered aimlessly in the streets, fantasizing about bizarre things I yearned to do to big ladies, or filled with self-pity and resentment. I was helpless in the presence of other people! My main concern was to make them like me by being as agreeable as possible, and secondly to impress them with my brilliance, my sharp wit, my originality, and my fundamental saintliness. Over time, and after years—decades—of diligent practice, I became very good at this cute little performance of mine. But this performance was improvised in the moment, catered to suit whoever I happened to be with. There was no strategy. It was always an effort. Only in solitude was I completely relaxed. Funny thing..."

"I'm such a negative person, and always have been. Was I born that way? I don't know. I am constantly disgusted by reality, horrified and afraid. I cling desperately to the few things that give me some solace, that make me feel good. I hate most of humanity. Though I might be very fond of particular individuals, humanity in general fills me with contempt and despair. I hate most of what passes for civilization. I hate the modern world. For one thing there are just too goddamn many people. I hate the hordes, the crowds in their vast cities, with all their hateful vehicles, their noise, their constant meaningless comings and goings. I hate cars. I hate modern architecture. Every building built after 1955 should be torn down! I despise modern popular music. Words cannot express how much it gets on my nerves—the false, pretentious, smug assertiveness of it. I hate business, having to deal with money. Money is one of the most hateful inventions of the human race. I hate the commodity culture, in which everything is bought and sold. No stone is left unturned. I hate the mass media, and how passively people suck it up. … I hate having to eat, shit, maintain the body—I hate my body. … Nature is horrible. It's not cute and lovable. It's kill or be killed. … How I hate the courting ritual! I was always repelled by my own sex drive, which in my youth, never left me alone. … I hate the way the human psyche works, the way we are traumatized and stupidly imprinted in early childhood and have to spend the rest of our lives trying to overcome these infantile mental fixations. And we never fully succeed in this endeavor. I hate organized religions. I hate governments. It's all a lot of power games played out by ambition-driven people, and foisted on the weak, the poor, and on children. Most humans are bullies. Adults pick on children. Older children pick on younger children. Men bully women. The rich bully the poor. People love to dominate. I hate the way humans worship power—one of the most disgusting of all human traits. I hate the human tendency toward revenge and vindictiveness. I hate the way humans are constantly trying to trick and deceive one another, to swindle, cheat, and take unfair advantage of the innocent, the naïve and the ignorant. I hate all the vacuous, false, banal conversation that goes on among people. Sometimes I feel suffocated. I want to flee from it. For me, to be human is, for the most part, to hate what I am. When I suddenly realize that I am one of them, I want to scream in horror."

"As a matter of survival I've created this anti-hero alter-ego, a guy in an ill-fitting suit—part humunculus and part clown. Yep, that's me alright … I could never relate to heroes. I have no interest in drawing heroic characters. It's not my thing, man. I'm more inclined toward the sordid underbelly of life. I find it more interesting to draw grotesque, lurid, or absurd pictures, and I especially enjoy depicting my fevered sexual obsessions."

"My work has a strong negative element. I have my own inner demons to deal with. Drawing is a way for me to articulate things inside myself that I can't otherwise grasp. What I don't want to do, what I dread more than anything, is to leave a legacy of crap. I don't want my work to be tossed in the dustbin of history, and become more of the second rate, mediocre junk that future connoisseurs will have to move out of the way so they can get at the good stuff."

"Killing yourself is a major commitment, it takes a kind of courage. Most people just lead lives of cowardly desperation. It's kinda half suicide where you just dull yourself with substances."

"When I come up against the real world, I just vacillate."

"I knew I was weird by the time I was four. I knew I wasn't like other boys. I knew I was more fearful. I didn't like the rough and tumble most boys were into. I knew I was a sissy."

"I wasn’t that passionate about it [the radical counterculture]. I agreed with it, but at the political demonstrations I would get very nervous when people started chanting in unison. I didn’t like that. I usually disliked those smash-the-state kind of guys, even though I agreed politically with them. I took LSD, I said “groovy” and “far-out,” but I was kind of a detached observer."

"I was taking LSD periodically, every couple of months. I was in a strange state of mind, influenced by these visions. … I was trying to draw it in my sketchbook, and that began to coalesce into these comic strips that were stylistically based on grotesque, vulgar humor comics of the thirties and forties. … All of those characters came out of that crazy visionary period that I couldn’t shut off. It was spontaneous, but I was so crazy, I was really out of my mind, it was like schizophrenia. It was like what produces art by crazy people in a madhouse. Anything could be an influence, anything I heard. I was in Chicago in early ’66 and the radio was on, there was some tune playing, it was a black station, and this announcer said, That was Mr. Natural. I just started drawing Mr. Natural, this bearded guru-type character in my sketchbook, it just came out."

"For a while I was most well known for that [the Janis Joplin album cover], and for “Keep on Truckin’.” That was a drawing that came out of LSD trips, and the words came from a Blind Boy Fuller song from 1935. I drew it in my sketchbook and then for Zap. It sort of caught the popular imagination. It became a horrible popular thing."

"I was never as cocksure again after that first LSD inspiration. Especially with fame and reputation. You become very uncertain, you have to follow your own act. I never did get that kind of spontaneous cocksureness back again. It’s like going from being the observer to the observed. I had been used to being invisible when I was young. After I became well-known, it was very hard to be anonymous in the world. Of course, at first I liked all the attention. Suddenly, good-looking girls were interested in me! Wow! I couldn’t believe it."

"I’m an outsider. I will always be an outsider."

"The giant female bodybuilder proves unthinking people wrong who believe feminine beauty can never be harmonious with well developed musculature."

"As a woman with a big ass, I’ve always liked Robert Crumb. Those who are familiar with Crumb’s art only in passing will know him for the big, sturdy, sexualized women he drools over in his comics. “Nice big legs!” one drawing reads, next to an arrow pointing to some nice, big legs. Crumb draws himself as a paltry little nerd, sometimes clinging to the legs of an enormous woman, his eyes hidden completely behind bottle-bottom glasses. Flecks of saliva tend to fly across the paradigmatic Crumb page."

"Crumb’s comics are, to be frank, kind of sexist. He has also at times used racist imagery in his comics, to satirical but nonetheless unpleasant effect. The goddesses he manufactures are powerful but they’re not human. They’re iron buttocks, straining shirts. But Kominsky-Crumb is a person, and she draws through the experience of being desired by and desiring Robert Crumb. In this sense, the show is engaging and delightful but also, in a mutual kind of way, redemptive."

"命は闇の中のまたたく光だ。"

"We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation."

"Children understand intuitively that the world they have been born into is not a blessed world."

"I believe that children's souls are the inheritors of historical memory from previous generations. It's just that as they grow older and experience the everyday world that memory sinks lower and lower. I feel I need to make a film that reaches down to that level. If I could do that I would die happy."

"It's difficult. [My female protagonists] immediately become the subjects of rorikon gokko (play toy for Lolita Complex males). In a sense, if we want to depict someone who is affirmative to us, we have no choice but to make them as lovely as possible. But now, there are too many people who shamelessly depict [such protagonists] as if they just want [such girls] as pets, and things are escalating more and more."

"You see, whether you can draw like this or not, being able to think up this kind of design, it depends on whether or not you can say to yourself, 'Oh, yeah, girls like this exist in real life.' If you don’t spend time watching real people, you can’t do this, because you’ve never seen it. Some people spend their lives interested only in themselves. Almost all Japanese animation is produced with hardly any basis taken from observing real people, you know. It’s produced by humans who can’t stand looking at other humans. And that’s why the industry is full of otaku!"

"Most people depend on the internet and cellphones to survive, but what happens when they stop working? I wanted to create a mother and child who wouldn't be defeated by life without them."

"If it is a dying craft we can't do anything about it. Civilisation moves on. Where are all the fresco painters now? Where are the landscape artists? What are they doing now? The world is changing. I have been very fortunate to be able to do the same job for 40 years. That's rare in any era."

"Actually I think CGI has the potential to equal or even surpass what the human hand can do."

"Every morning, not in recent days, I see my friend who has a disability. It’s so hard for him just to do a high five; his arm with stiff muscle can’t reach out to my hand. Now, thinking of him, I can’t watch this stuff and find it interesting. Whoever creates this stuff has no idea what pain is. I am utterly disgusted. If you really want to make creepy stuff, you can go ahead and do it. I would never wish to incorporate this technology into my work at all. I strongly feel that this is an insult to life itself. I feel like we are nearing the end of times. We humans are losing faith in ourselves."

"I couldn't do them if I didn't know horses lived behind them."

"His formidable originality within the picture-book convention may not have been altogether apparent to Keeping himself, which is both a strength and a weakness: the strength that he could communicate with unrivalled emotional intensity — but possibly only with one child in twenty; the concomitant weakness is that there was not a lot he could do to broaden this minority appeal and ensure that his books remained in print over longer periods. ~ Douglas Martin in Charles Keeping: an illustrator's life (1993) he is a good auther"

"Act well at the moment, and you have performed a good action to all eternity."

"Happy the heart to whom God has given enough strength and courage to suffer for Him, to find happiness in simplicity and the happiness of others."

"Never tell evil of a man, if you do not know it for certainty, and if you know it for a certainty, then ask yourself, 'Why should I tell it?'"

"Who in the same given time can produce more than others has vigor; who can produce more and better, has talents; who can produce what none else can, has genius."

"All affectation is the vain and ridiculous attempt of poverty to appear rich."

"You may tell a man, thou art a fiend, but not, your nose wants blowing. To him alone who can bear a thing of that kind, you may tell all."

"Who makes quick use of the moment is a genius of prudence."

"The discovery of truth by slow progressive meditation is wisdom. Intuition of truth, not preceded by perceptible meditation, is genius."

"Who seldom speaks, and with one calm well-timed word can strike dumb the loquacious, is a genius among those who study nature."

"Say not you know another entirely, till you have divided an inheritance with him."

"I am prejudiced in favour of him who can solicit boldly, without imprudence. He has faith in humanity — he has faith in himself. No one who is not accustomed to give grandly can ask nobly and with boldness."

"Too much gravity argues a shallow mind."

"He who makes too much or too little of himself has a false measure for everything."

"He who has no taste for order will be often wrong in his judgements, and seldom considerate or conscientious in his actions."

"The more honesty a man has, the less he affects the air of a saint — the affectation of sanctity is a blotch on the face of piety."

"The craftiest wiles are too short and ragged a cloak to cover a bad heart."

"Have you ever seen a pedant with a warm heart?"

"If you see one cold and vehement at the same time, set him down for a fanatic."

"He who, when called upon to speak a disagreeable truth, tells it boldly and has done, is both bolder and milder than he who nibbles in a low voice, and never ceases nibbling."

"Him, who incessantly laughs in the street, you may commonly hear grumbling in his closet."

"Superstition always inspires littleness, religion grandeur of mind: the superstitious raises beings inferior to himself to deities."

"The jealous is possessed by a "fine mad devil" and a dull spirit at once."

"Good may be done by the bad — but the good alone can be good."

"There are but three classes of men — the retrograde, the stationary, the progressive."

"The prudent sees only the difficulties, the bold only the advantages, of a great enterprise; the hero sees both, diminishes those, makes these preponderate, and conquers."

"Let none turn over books, or roam the stars in quest of God, who sees him not in man."

"Trust not him with your secrets, who, when left alone in your room, turns over your papers."

"A woman whose ruling passion is not vanity, is superior to any man of equal faculties."

"Trust him little who praises all, him less who censures all, and him least of all who is indifferent about all."

"You are not very good if you are not better than your best friends imagine you to be."

"Where there is much pretension, much has been borrowed — nature never pretends."

"Neatness begets order; but from order to taste there is the same difference as from taste to genius, or from love to friendship."

"The public seldom forgive twice."

"He submits to be seen through a microscope, who suffers himself to be caught in a fit of passion."

"Venerate four characters: the sanguine, who has checked volatility and the rage for pleasure; the choleric, who has subdued passion and pride; the phlegmatic, emerged from indolence; and the melancholy, who has dismissed avarice, suspicion and asperity."

"All great minds sympathize."

"Actions, looks, words, steps, form the alphabet by which you may spell characters."

"If you mean to know yourself, interline such of these aphorisms as affect you agreeably in reading, and set a mark to such as left a sense of uneasiness with you; and then show your copy to whom you please."

"I am not as these are, the poet saith In youth's pride, and the painter, among men At bay, where never pencil comes nor pem"

"From perfect grief there need not be Wisdom or even memory; One thing then learned remains to me — The woodspurge has a cup of three."

"Tell me now in what hidden way is Lady Flora the lovely Roman? Where's Hipparchia, and where is Thais, Neither of them the fairer woman? Where is Echo, beheld of no man, Only heard on river and mere— She whose beauty was more than human?— But where are the snows of yester-year?"

"I have been here before, But when or how I cannot tell: I know the grass beyond the door, The sweet, keen smell, The sighing sound, the lights around the shore."

"If God in his wisdom have brought close The day when I must die, That day by water or fire or air My feet shall fall in the destined snare Wherever my road may lie."

"Still we say as we go,— "Strange to think by the way Whatever there is to know, That shall we know one day.""

"Gather a shell from the strewn beach And listen at its lips: they sigh The same desire and mystery, The echo of the whole sea's speech."

"Was it a friend or foe that spread these lies? Nay, who but infants question in such wise, 'T was one of my most intimate enemies."

"If the light is It is because God said 'Let there be light.'"

"Thou fill'st from the wingèd chalice of the soul Thy lamp, O Memory, fire-wingèd to its goal."

"The blessed damozel lean'd out From the gold bar of Heaven; Her eyes were deeper than the depth Of waters still'd at even; She had three lilies in her hand, And the stars in her hair were seven."

"Around her, lovers, newly met 'Mid deathless love's acclaims, Spoke evermore among themselves Their heart-remember'd names; And the souls mounting up to God Went by her like thin flames."

"From the fix'd place of Heaven she saw Time like a pulse shake fierce Through all the worlds. Her gaze still strove Within the gulf to pierce Its path; and now she spoke as when The stars sang in their spheres."

"The sun was gone now; the curl'd moon Was like a little feather Fluttering far down the gulf; and now She spoke through the still weather. Her voice was like the voice the stars Had when they sang together."

"We two will stand beside that shrine, Occult, withheld, untrod, Whose lamps are stirr'd continually With prayer sent up to God; And see our old prayers, granted, melt Each like a little cloud."

"We two will lie i' the shadow of That living mystic tree Within whose secret growth the Dove Is sometimes felt to be, While every leaf that His plumes touch Saith His Name audibly."

"A Sonnet is a moment's monument,— Memorial from the Soul's eternity To one dead deathless hour."

"At length their long kiss severed, with sweet smart: And as the last slow sudden drops are shed From sparkling eaves when all the storm has fled, So singly flagged the pulses of each heart."

"Beauty like hers is genius."

"Even as the moon grows queenlier in mid-space When the sky darkens, and her cloud-rapt car Thrills with intenser radiance from afar,— So lambent, lady, beams thy sovereign grace When the drear soul desires thee."

"And Love, our light at night and shade at noon, Lulls us to rest with songs, and turns away All shafts of shelterless tumultuous day."

"Each hour until we meet is as a bird That wings from far his gradual way along The rustling covert of my soul."

"Sometimes thou seem'st not as thyself alone, But as the meaning of all things that are."

"Look in my face; my name is Might-have-been; I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell."

"When all desire at last and all regret Go hand in hand to death, and all is vain, What shall assuage the unforgotten pain And teach the unforgetful to forget?"

"Eat thou and drink; to-morrow thou shalt die. Surely the earth, that's wise being very old, Needs not our help. Then loose me, love, and hold Thy sultry hair up from my face; that I May pour for thee this golden wine, brim-high, Till round the glass thy fingers glow like gold. We'll drown all hours: thy song, while hours are toll'd, Shall leap, as fountains veil the changing sky."

"Now kiss, and think that there are really those, My own high-bosom'd beauty, who increase Vain gold, vain lore, and yet might choose our way! Through many years they toil; then on a day They die not, — for their life was death, — but cease; And round their narrow lips the mould falls close."

"Watch thou and fear; to-morrow thou shalt die."

"Now while we speak, the sun speeds forth: can I Or thou assure him of his goal? God's breath Even at this moment haply quickeneth The air to a flame; till spirits, always nigh Though screen'd and hid, shall walk the daylight here."

"Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die Outstretch'd in the sun's warmth upon the shore, Thou say'st: "Man's measur'd path is all gone o'er: Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh, Man clomb until he touch'd the truth; and I, Even I, am he whom it was destin'd for." How should this be? Art thou then so much more Than they who sow'd, that thou shouldst reap thereby?"

"Nay, come up hither. From this wave-wash'd mound Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me; Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd. Miles and miles distant though the last line be, And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,— Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea."

"I believe His name should be placed first on the list of men, within my own range of knowledge, who have raised and changed the spirit of modern art: raised in absolute attainment; changed in direction of temper."

"He was, as I believe it is generally admitted, the chief intellectual force in the establishment of the modern romantic school in England."

"Rossetti makes the remark somewhere, bitterly but with great truth, that the worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank."

"Dante Gabriel Rosetti Buried all of his libretti, Thought the matter over—then Went and dug them up again."

"All I have produced before the age of seventy is not worth taking into account. At seventy-three I have learned a little about the real structure of nature, of animals, plants, trees, birds, fishes and insects. In consequence when I am eighty, I shall have made still more progress. At ninety I shall penetrate the mystery of things; at one hundred I shall certainly have reached a marvelous stage; and when I am a hundred and ten, everything I do, be it a dot or a line, will be alive. I beg those who live as long as I to see if I do not keep my word. Written at the age of seventy five by me, once Hokusai, today Gwakyo Rojin, the old man mad about drawing."

"Thank you for allowing me to use colors as rich and deep as you please. I had always wanted to do so, yet was never allowed because of the color capabilities of our lithographers today. Now that I have done it, I don't think I'll ever go back."

"The whole question of pictures made to order is a darn peculiar form of merchandize. Buyers seem to like the tiresome MP blue, for one thing, and girls having a pleasant chat for another. They must look pleasant like Daybreak and Garden of Allah and not contemplative like Hilltop, Stars and Dreaming, which are not so popular .... There are countless artists whose shoes I'm not worthy to polish — whose prints would not pay the printer! ... I'm beginning to doubt my judgment!"

"I'm done with girls on rocks! I've painted them for thirteen years and I could paint them and sell them for thirteen more. That's the peril of the commercial art game. It tempts a man to repeat himself. it's an awful thing to get to be a rubber stamp. I'm quitting my rut now while I'm still able."

"Modernistic-Abstractionist-Art... consists of 75% explanation and 25% God knows what!"

"How do ideas come? What a question! If they come of their own accord, they are apt to arrive at the most unexpected time and place. For the most part the place is out of doors, for up in this northern wilderness when nature puts on a show it is an inspiring one. There seem to be magic days once in a while, with some rare quality of light that hold a body spellbound: In sub-zero weather there will be a burst of unbelievable color when the mountain turns a deep purple, a thing it refuses to do in summer. Then comes the hard part: how to plan a picture so as to give to others what has happened to you. To render in paint an experience, to suggest the sense of light and color, air and space, there is no such thing as sitting down outside and trying to make a “portrait” of it. It lasts for only a minute, for one thing, and it isn’t an inspiration that can be copied on the spot..."

"It is generally admitted that the most beautiful qualities of a color are in its transparent state, applied over a white ground with the light shining through the color. A modern Kodachrome is a delight when held up to the light with color luminous like stained glass. So many ask what is meant by transparent color, as though it were some special make. Most all color an artist uses is transparent: only a few are opaque, such as vermillion, cerulean blue, emerald green, the ochres and most yellows, etc. Colors are applied just as they come from the tube, the original purity and quality is never lost: a purple is pure rose madder glowing through a glaze of pure blue over glaze, or vice versa, the quality of each is never vitiated by mixing them together. Mix a rose madder with white, let us say, and you get a pink, quite different from the original madder, and the result is a surface color instead of a transparent one, a color you look on instead of into. One does not paint long out of doors before it becomes apparent that a green tree has a lot of red in it. You may not see the red because your eye is blinded by the strong green, but it is there never the less. So if you mix a red with the green you get a sort of mud, each color killing the other. But by the other method. when the green is dry and a rose madder glazed over it you are apt to get what is wanted, and have a richness and glow of one color shining through the other, not to be had by mixing. Imagine a Rembrandt if his magic browns were mixed together instead of glazed. The result would be a kind of chocolate. Then too, by this method of keeping colors by themselves some can be used which are taboo in mixtures."

"There is an implied warranty that a commissioned work should last a lifetime. There is to be no charge."

"I don't know what people find or like in me, I'm hopelessly commonplace! ... Current appreciation of my work is a bit "highbrow", I've always considered myself a popular artist."

"Maxfield Parrish was certainly one of our most prominent illustrators and hardly a home in America existed that didn’t have a Maxfield Parrish print. I’m an illustrator. Maxfield Parrish was a painter-illustrator. He was in the Golden Age of Illustration. When I was in art school I admired him. He was one of my gods."

"However rationalistic his motives, Parrish's elaborately artificial methods give his pictures a good deal of aura and a surrealistic, even slightly hallucinogenic feeling, which puts an odd spin on the otherwise generically picturesque imagery and its cliched eulogizing of the rural past. If you discovered them unlabeled in the right contemporary gallery, you might mistake them for essays in postmodern duplicity. But Parrish himself was innocent of ironic intent, and the heartfelt romance and hard-won beauty of his calendar-art vision offers a gratifying break from late-modernist cynicism. What Parrish made may have been kitsch, but it was great kitsch."

"In 1925 it was estimated that one out of every five American homes had a Parrish print on its wall. He was, and still remains the most reproduced artist in the history of art."

"Even though I am a great admirer of Maxfield Parrish's work, I sometimes have to admit that, over the years, I've just seen enough. Viewing the same works time and time again has made his art lose some of its spontaneity... it has become part of the cultural wallpaper; the equivalent of the art world's background noise. But I have again discovered what beautiful noise it is... His painstaking technique and dramatic subject matter were, in my opinion, unparalleled and much of his vision still holds up against current illustrators and their methods."

"David Galin, among other researchers, has pointed out that teachers have three main tasks: first, to train both hemispheres — not only the verbal, symbolic, logical left hemisphere, which has always been trained in the traditional education, but also the relational, holistic right hemisphere, which is largely neglected in today's schools; second, to train students to use the cognitive style suited to the tasks at hand; and third, to train students to be able to bring both styles — both hemispheres — to bear on a problem in an integrated manner. When teachers can pair the complementary modes or fit one mode to the appropriate task, teaching and learning will become a much more precise process. Ultimately, the goal will be to develop both halves of the brain. Both modes are necessary for full human functioning and both are necessary for creative work of all kinds, whether writing or painting, developing a new theory in physics, or dealing with environmental problems."

"This is a difficult goal to present to teachers, coming as it does at a time when education is under attack from many quarters. But our society is changing rapidly and the difficulties of foreseeing what kinds of skills future generations will require are increasing. Although we have so far depended on the rational, left half of the human brain to plan our children's future and to solve the problems they might encounter on the way to that future, the onslaught of profound change is shaking our confidence in technological thinking and in the old methdods of education. Without abandoning training in tradtional verbal and computational skills, concerned teachers are looking for teaching techniques that will enchance children's intuitive and creative powers, thus preparing students to meet new challenges with flexibility, inventiveness, and imagination and with the ability to grasp complex arrays of interconnected ideas and facts, to perceive underlying patterns of events, and to see old problems in new ways."

"As a teacher and parent, I've had a very personal interest in seeking new ways of teaching. Like most other teachers and parents, I've been well aware — painfully so, at times — that the whole teaching/learning process is extraordinarily imprecise, most of the time a hit-and-miss operation. Students may not learn what we think we are teaching them and what they learn may not be what we intended to teach them at all."

"I remember one clear example of the problem of communicating what is to be learned. You may have heard of or gone through a similar experience with a student or your child. Years ago, the child of a friend whom I was visiting arrived home from his day at school, all excited about something he had learned. He was in the first grade and his teacher had started the class on reading lessons. The child, Gary, announced that he had learned a new word. "That's great, Gary," his mother said. "What is it?" He thought for a moment, then said, "I'll write it down for you." On a little chalkboard the child carefully printed, HOUSE. "That's fine, Gary," his mother said. "What does it say?" He looked at the word, then at his mother and said matter-of-factly, "I don't know."The child apparently had learned what the word looked like — he had learned the visual shape of the word perfectly. The teacher, however, was teaching another aspect of reading — what words mean, what words stand for or symbolize. As often happens, what the teacher had taught and what Gary had learned were strangely incongruent.As it turned out, my friend's son always learned visual material best and fastest, a mode of learning consistently preferred by a number of students. Unfortunately, the school world is mainly a verbal, symbolic world, and learners like Gary must adjust, that is, put aside their best way of learning and learn the way the school decrees. My friend's child, fortunately, was able to make this change, but how many other students are lost along the way?"

"As parents, we can do a great deal to further this goal by helping our children develop alternative ways of knowing the world — verbally/analytically and visually/spatially. During the crucial early years, parents can help to shape a child's life in such a way that words do not completely mask other kinds of reality. My most urgent suggestions to parents are concerned with the use of words, or rather, not using words."

"I believe that most of us are too quick to name things when we are with small children. By simply naming a thing and letting it go at that when a child asks, "What is that?" we communicate that the name or label is the most important thing, that naming is sufficient. We deprive our children of their sense of wonder and discovery by labeling and categorizing things in the physical world. Instead of merely naming a tree, for example, try also guiding your child through an exploration of the tree both physically and mentally. This exploration may include touching, smelling, seeing from various angles, comparing one tree with another, imagining the inside of the tree and the parts underground, listening to the leaves, viewing the tree at different times of the day or during different seasons, planting its seeds, observing how other creatures — birds, moths, bugs — use the tree, and so on. After discovering that every object is fascinating and complex, a child will begin to understand that the label is only a small part of the whole. Thus taught, a child's sense of wonder will survive, even under our modern avalanche of words."

"There is a saying among art educators that a person just starting out in color will mix ten gallons of mud before learning how to make beautiful color."

"I think half the point of painting a picture is that you don't know what will happen … that if painters did know what was going to happen they wouldn't bother to do it."

"I paint people not because of what they are like... but how they happen to be."

"I always felt that my work hadn't much to do with art; my admirations for other art had very little room to show themselves in my work because I hoped that if I concentrated enough the intensity of scrutiny alone would force life into the pictures. I ignored the fact that art, after all, derives from art. Now I realize that this is the case."

"My colour has no symbolic function whatever. I don't want any colour to be noticeable. I want the colour to be the colour of life, so that you would notice it as being irregular if it changed. I don't want it to operate in the modernist sense as colour, something independent. I don't want people to say, "Oh, what was that red or that blue picture of yours, I've forgotten what it was.""

"When I look at a body I know it gives me choices of what to put in a painting; what will suit me and what won't. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so."

"I am only interested in painting the actual person; in doing a painting of them, not in using them to some ulterior end of art. For me, to use someone doing something not native to them would be wrong."

"URGENT SUBTLE CONCISE ROBUST"

"There is another Set of Gentry more noxious to the art than these, and those are your Picture-Jobbers from abroad, who are always ready to raise a great Cry in the Prints, whenever they think their Craft is in Danger; and indeed it is in their Interest to depreciate every English Work, as hurtful to their Trade, of continually importing Ship Loads of dead Christs, Holy Families, Madona's, and other dismal, dark Subjects, neither entertaining nor ornamental; on which they scrawl the terrible cramp Names of some Italian Masters, and fix on us poor Englishmen the Character of Universal Dupes."

"After the March to Finchley, the next print I engraved, was the Roast Reef of old England; which took its rise from a visit I paid to France the preceding year. The first time an Englishman goes from Dover to Calais, he must be struck with the different face of things at so little a distance. A farcical pomp of war, pompous parade of religion, and much bustle with very little business. To sum up all, poverty, slavery, and innate insolence, covered with an affectation of politeness, give you even here a true picture of the manners of the whole nation... By the fat friar, who stops the lean cook that is sinking under the weight of a vast sirloin of beef, and two of the military bearing off a great kettle of soup maigre, I meant to display to my own countrymen the striking difference between the food, priests, soldiers, &c. of two nations so contiguous, that in a clear day one coast may be seen from the other."

"[T]he connoisseurs and I are at war you know; and because I hate them, they think I hate Titian—and let them!"

"Any two opposite colours of the rainbow (eg yellow and blue) , form a third between them, thus imparting to each other their peculiar qualities . The sight of what they were originally is quite lost, and instead, a most pleasing green is found, which colour, nature has chosen for the vestment of the earth, and with the beauty of which the eye never tires."

"Experience teaches us that the eye may be subdued and forced into forming and disposing of objects even quite contrary to what it would naturally see them, by pre judgement of the mind or some other persuasive motive."

"A great many people seem to delight most in what they least understand."

"On why our features sag, It is by the natural and unaffected movements of the muscles, caused by the passions of the mind, that every man's character would in some measure be written in his face, by the time he arrives at forty years of age."

"In pictures of comic character, rich humour, and moral satire, and particularly in displaying the human figure and countenance in its common and popular forms, he certainly excelled all other painters... Hogarth was certainly an artist of peculiar and distinguished talents. He stood alone in art, and formed a school of his own. He was at once the Pictorial Satirist, Moralist, and Historian of the age in which he lived. I use the latter term, from the conviction that his pictures will always be referred to with pleasure and advantage, as recording the features, costume, and corporeal characteristics of many eminent and illustrious persons, and of many public and private events of his time."

"He pleaded the cause of virtue—it was vice that he painted in disgusting colours; and though the judicious spectator may occasionally discover grossness in the production of this great Artist, yet they were such as scenes from nature produced, and such as the great Moralist always contrasted, by displaying virtue at the same time in the loveliest attire, and giving her the most attractive expression."

"William Hogarth was rather below the middle size; his eye was peculiarly bright and piercing; his look shrewd, sarcastic, and intelligent; the forehead high and round. He was active in person, bustling in manner, and fond of affecting a little state and importance: of a temper cheerful, joyous, and companionable; fond of mirth and good fellowship; desirous of saying strong and pointed things;—ardent in friendship—and in resentment. His lively conversation—his knowledge of character—his readiness of speech—and quickness of retort, made many covet his company, who were sometimes the objects of his satire; but he employed his wit on those who were present, and spared or defended the absent. His personal spirit was equal to his satiric talents; he provoked, with his pencil, the temper of those whom it was not prudent to offend; with him no vice nor folly found shelter behind wealth, or rank, or power."

"[H]is character as an artist is to be gathered from numerous works, at once original and unrivalled. His fame has flown far and wide; his skill as an engraver spread his reputation as a painter; and all who love the dramatic representation of actual life—all who have hearts to be gladdened by humour—all who are pleased with judicious and well-directed satire—all who are charmed with the ludicrous looks of popular folly—and all who can be moved with the pathos of human suffering—are admirers of Hogarth. That his works are unlike those of other men, is his merit, not his fault. He belonged to no school of art; he was the produce of no academy; no man living or dead had any share in forming his mind, or in rendering his hand skilful. He was the spontaneous offspring of the graphic spirit of his country, as native to the heart of England as independence is, and he may be fairly called, in his own walk, the first-born of her spirit."

"The ingenious Mr Hogarth [is one of the most] useful Satyrists that any Age hath produced."

"These derisive prints give only a distorted idea of a world which to Hogarth was always strange and uncongenial: that of the patron supporting an obedient circle and in addition favouring the foreigner to the detriment of a home-grown art."

"They said he could not paint flesh. There's flesh and blood for you."

"The Temple of Nature was his academy,—and his topography the map of the human mind."

"His engravings, though coarse, are forcible, in a degree scarcely to be paralleled. Every figure is drawn from the quarry of nature; and, though seldom polished, is always animated."

"[T]he matchless Election Entertainment... [i]n that inimitable print (which in my judgment as far exceeds the more known and celebrated March to Finchley as the best comedy exceeds the best farce that ever was written) let a person look till he be saturated... when he shall have sufficiently admired this wealth of genius, let him fairly say what is the result left on his mind. Is it an impression of the vileness and worthlessness of his species? or is it not the general feeling which remains, after the individual faces have ceased to act sensibly upon his mind, a kindly one in favour of his species? was not the general air of the scene wholesome? did it do the heart hurt to be among it? Something of a riotous spirit, to be sure, is there, some worldly-mindedness in some of the faces, a Dodingtonian smoothness which does not promise any superfluous degree of sincerity in the fine gentleman who has been the occasion of calling so much good company together: but is not the general cast of expression in the faces, of the good sort? do they not seem cut out of the good old rock, substantial English honesty?"

"Hogarth adopted a new line of art, purely English; his merits are known to the public, more from his prints than from his paintings: both deserve our attention. His pictures often display beautiful colouring, as well as accurate drawing: his subjects generally convey useful lessons of morality, and are calculated to improve the man, as well as the artist: and he teaches with effect, because he delights while he instructs. It has been said of him, that in his pictures he composed comedies; his humour never fails to excite mirth, and it is directed against the fit objects of ridicule or contempt. The powers of his pencil were not perverted to the purposes of personal attack; the application of his satire was general, and the end at which he aimed was the reformation of folly or of vice."

"It cannot, indeed, be truly said of Hogarth, that he improved the practice of the arts of Painting and Engraving, which he professed; but he merited the praise of having more powerfully exhibited their moral utility than any of his predecessors."

"Hogarth resembles Butler, but his subjects are more universal, and amidst all his pleasantry, he observes the true end of comedy, reformation; there is always a moral to his pictures. Sometimes he rose to tragedy, not in the catastrophe of kings and heroes, but in marking how vice conducts insensibly and incidentally to misery and shame. He warns against encouraging cruelty and idleness in young minds, and discerns how the different vices of the great and the vulgar lead by various paths to the same unhappiness."

"It is to Hogarth's honour that in so many scenes of satire or ridicule, it is obvious that ill-nature did not guide his pencil. His end is always reformation, and his reproofs general."

"In only one branch of painting, and that not the most honoured even in our own country, did we produce a unique, idiosyncratic national school. That is the school of narrative composition founded by Hogarth and perfected a hundred years later. It would be absurd to claim a place for him beside Titian and Velasquez, even beside Goya. He was in no sense a great painter, but he is a national figure comparable to Dr Johnson or Trollope, of whom we may well be proud... The school which Hogarth founded may be defined as the detailed representation of contemporary groups, posed to tell a story and inculcate a moral precept. The figures are not merely caught and preserved in certain attitudes; previous and subsequent events are implicit in the scene portrayed. Hogarth's moral lessons are commonplace, commonsensical: that extravagance leads to destitution, debauchery to madness, crime to the gallows, loveless marriage to infidelity and so on. It remained for the more delicate sentiment of the Victorians to refine on these maxims."

"He was pure Cockney, intolerant of everything foreign. English painting, so far as it has excelled at all, has done so in inverse relation to the influence of Italy and France. I do not know of any foreign painter except Svoboda who rivalled the English School in their own métier. Comparable Parisians of the nineteenth century tended towards the lubricious or the allegorical. There is one corner of the artistic field that will remain for ever England."

"They say the first sentence in any speech is always the hardest. Well, that one's behind me, anyway."

"Contemporary poets are skeptical and suspicious even, or perhaps especially, about themselves. They publicly confess to being poets only reluctantly, as if they were a little ashamed of it. But in our clamorous times it's much easier to acknowledge your faults, at least if they're attractively packaged, than to recognize your own merits, since these are hidden deeper and you never quite believe in them yourself."

"Inspiration is not the exclusive privilege of poets or artists. There is, there has been, there will always be a certain group of people whom inspiration visits. It's made up of all those who've consciously chosen their calling and do their job with love and imagination. It may include doctors, teachers, gardeners — I could list a hundred more professions. Their work becomes one continuous adventure as long as they manage to keep discovering new challenges in it. Difficulties and setbacks never quell their curiosity. A swarm of new questions emerges from every problem that they solve. Whatever inspiration is, it's born from a continuous "I don't know.""

"Any knowledge that doesn't lead to new questions quickly dies out: it fails to maintain the temperature required for sustaining life."

""There's nothing new under the sun": that's what you wrote, Ecclesiastes. But you yourself were born new under the sun. And the poem you created is also new under the sun, since no one wrote it down before you. And all your readers are also new under the sun, since those who lived before you couldn't read your poem. And that cypress under which you're sitting hasn't been growing since the dawn of time. It came into being by way of another cypress similar to yours, but not exactly the same."

"The world — whatever we might think when terrified by its vastness and our own impotence, or embittered by its indifference to individual suffering, of people, animals, and perhaps even plants, for why are we so sure that plants feel no pain; whatever we might think of its expanses pierced by the rays of stars surrounded by planets we've just begun to discover, planets already dead? still dead? we just don't know; whatever we might think of this measureless theater to which we've got reserved tickets, but tickets whose lifespan is laughably short, bounded as it is by two arbitrary dates; whatever else we might think of this world — it is astonishing."

"Granted, in daily speech, where we don't stop to consider every word, we all use phrases like "the ordinary world," "ordinary life," "the ordinary course of events"… But in the language of poetry, where every word is weighed, nothing is usual or normal. Not a single stone and not a single cloud above it. Not a single day and not a single night after it. And above all, not a single existence, not anyone's existence in this world. It looks like poets will always have their work cut out for them."

"Here we are, naked lovers, beautiful to each other—and that's enough. The leaves of our eyelids our only covers, we're lying amidst deep night."

"Toy balloon once kidnapped by the wind — come home, and I will say: There are no children here."

"They were or they weren't. On an island or not. An ocean or not an ocean Swallowed them up or it didn't."

"I'm working on the world, revised, improved edition, featuring fun for fools blues for brooders, combs for bald pates, tricks for old dogs."

"Our snakes have shed their lightning, our apes their flights of fancy, our peacocks have renounced their plumes. The bats flew out of our hair long ago. We fall silent in mid-sentence, all smiles, past help. Our humans don't know how to talk to one another."

"I am too close for him to dream of me. I don't flutter over him, don't flee him beneath the roots of trees. I am too close. The caught fish doesn't sing with my voice. The ring doesn't roll from my finger. I am too close."

"My cry could only waken him. And what a poor gift: I, confined to my own form, when I used to be a birch, a lizard shedding times and satin skins in many shimmering hues."

"In Heraclitus' river a fish has imagined the fish of all fish, a fish kneels to the fish, a fish sings to the fish, a fish begs the fish to ease its fishy lot."

"I, the solitary fish, a fish apart (apart at least from the tree fish and the stone fish), write, at isolated moments, a tiny fish or two whose glittering scales, so fleeting, may only be the dark's embarrassed wink."

"No other sense can make up for your missing sense of taking part. Even sight heightened to become all-seeing will do you no good without a sense of taking part. You shall not enter, you have only a sense of what the sense should be, only its seed, imagination."

"I knock at the stone's front door. "It's only me, let me come in.""I don't have a door," says the stone."

"Born. So he was born, too. Born like everyone else. Like me, who will die. The son of an actual woman. A new arrival from the body's depths. A voyager to Omega."

"Our stockpile of antiquity grows constantly, it's overflowing, reckless squatters jostle for a place in history, hordes of sword fodder, Hector's nameless extras, no less brave than he, thousands upon thousands of singular faces, each the first and last for all time, in each a pair of inimitable eyes. How easy it was to live not knowing this, so sentimental, so spacious."

"I remember it so clearly — how people, seeing me, would break off in midword. Laughter died. Lovers' hands unclasped. Children ran to their mothers. I didn't even know their short-lived names. And that song about a little green leaf — no one ever finished it near me."

"I'm sorry that my voice was hard. Look down on yourselves from the stars, I cried, look down on yourselves from the stars. They heard me and lowered their eyes."

"Yes, she loved him very much. Yes, he was born that way. Yes, she was standing by the prison wall that morning. Yes, she heard the shots. You may regret not having brought a camera, a tape recorder. Yes, she has seen such things."

"Yes, the memory still moves her. Yes, just a little tired now. Yes, it will pass. You may get up. Thank her. Say good-bye. Leave, passing by the new arrivals in the hall."

"Whose side are you on?" "I don't know." "This is a war, you've got to choose." "I don't know." "Does your village still exist?" "I don't know." "Are those your children?" "Yes."

"This adult male. This person on earth. Ten billion nerve cells. Ten pints of blood pumped by ten ounces of heart. This object took three billion years to emerge."

"He feels like a handle broken off a jug, but the jug doesn't know it's broken and keeps going to the well."

"Within him, there's awful darkness, in the darkness a small boy. God of humor, do something about him, OK? God of humor, do something about him today."

"I am a tarsier and a tarsier's son, the grandson and great-grandson of tarsiers, a tiny creature, made up of two pupils and whatever simply could not be left out..."

"And only we few who remain unstripped of fur, untorn from bone, unplucked of soaring feathers, esteemed in all our quills, scales, tusks, and horns, and in whatever else that ingenious protein has seen fit to clothe us with, we, my lord, are your dream, which finds you innocent for now."

"So he's got to have happiness, he's got to have truth, too, he's got to have eternity — did you ever!"

"He has only just learned to tell dreams from waking; only just realized that he is he; only just whittled with his hand né fin a flint, a rocket ship; easily drowned in the ocean's teaspoon, not even funny enough to tickle the void: sees only with his eyes; hears only with his ears; his speech's personal best is the conditional; he uses his reason to pick holes in reason. In short, he's next to to one, but his head's full of freedom, omniscience and the Being beyond his foolish meat — did you ever!"

"He's no end of fun, for all you say. Poor little beggar. A human, if ever we saw one."

"Everything the dead predicted has turned out completely different. Or a little bit different — which is to say, completely different."

"I believe in the refusal to take part. I believe in the ruined career. I believe in the wasted years of work. I believe in the secret taken to the grave."

"I lost a few goddesses while moving south to north and also some gods while moving east to west."

"My siblings died the day I left for dry land and only one small bone recalls that anniversary in me."

"Gone, lost, scattered to the four winds. It still surprises me how little now remains, one first person sing., temporarily declined in human form, just now making such a fuss about a blue umbrella left yesterday on a bus."

"My apologies to the felled tree for the table's four legs. My apologies to great questions for small answers."

"I know I won't be justified as long as I live, since I myself stand in my own way. Don't bear me ill will, speech, that I borrow weighty words, then labor heavily so that they may seem light."

"My choices are rejections, since there is no other way, but what I reject is more numerous, denser, more demanding than before. A little poem, a sigh, at the cost of indescribable losses."

"My dreams — even they're not as populous as they should be. They hold more solitude than noisy crowds."

"And how can we talk of order overall when the very placement of the stars leaves us doubting just what shines for whom?Not to speak of the fog's reprehensible drifting! And dust blowing all over the steppes as if they hadn't been partitioned! And the voices coasting on obliging airwaves, that conspiratorial squeaking, those indecipherable mutters! Only what is human can truly be foreign."

"I felt age within me. Distance. The futility of wandering. Torpor. I looked back setting my bundle down. I looked back not knowing where to set my foot. Serpents appeared on my path, spiders, field mice, baby vultures. They were neither good nor evil now — every living thing was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic."

"The going's rough, and so we need the laugh of bright incisors, molars of goodwill. Our times are still not safe and sane enough for faces to show ordinary sorrow."

"On this third planet from the sun among the signs of bestiality a clear conscience is Number One."

"Millennia have passed since you first called me archaeology. I no longer require your stone gods, your ruins with legible inscriptions. Show me your whatever and I'll tell you who you were."

"Secret codes resound. Doubts and intentions come to light."

"Show me your little poem and I'll tell you why it wasn't written any earlier or later than it was.Oh no, you've got me wrong. Keep your funny piece of paper with its scribbles. All I need for my ends is your layer of dirt and the long gone smell of burning."

"We call it a grain of sand but it calls itself neither grain nor sand. It does just fine without a name, whether general, particular, permanent, passing, incorrect or apt."

"The window has a wonderful view of a lake, but the view doesn't view itself. It exists in this world colorless, shapeless, soundless, odorless, and painless."

"There's no life that couldn't be immortal if only for a moment.Death always arrives by that very moment too late.In vain it tugs at the knob of the invisible door. As far as you've come can't be undone."

"He managed to come into the world at what was still a fitting time. All that was to pass passed in this house. Not in housing projects, not in furnished but empty quarters, among unknown neighbors on fifteenth floors that student field trips rarely reach."

"Few of them made it to thirty. Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees. Childhood ended as fast as wolf cubs grow. One had to hurry, to get on with life before the sun went down, before the first snow."

"And who's this little fellow in his itty-bitty robe? That's tiny baby Adolf, the Hitlers' little boy!"

"God was finally going to believe in a man both good and strong, but good and strong are still two different men."

"There's nothing more debauched than thinking."

"It's shocking, the positions, the unchecked simplicity with which one mind contrives to fertilize another! Such positions the Kama Sutra itself doesn't know."

"After every war someone has to tidy up. Things won't pick themselves up, after all.Someone has to shove the rubble to the roadsides so the carts loaded with corpses can get by."

"Those who knew what this was all about must make way for those who know little. And less than that. And at last nothing less than nothing."

"Something doesn't start at its usual time. Something doesn't happen as it should. Someone was always, always here, then suddenly disappeared and stubbornly stays disappeared."

"I shake my memory. Maybe something in its branches that has been asleep for years will start up with a flutter.No. Clearly I'm asking too much. Nothing less than one whole second."

"If there are angels they must, I hope, find this convincing, this merriment dangling from terror, not even crying Save me Save me since all of this takes place in silence."

"Nothing's a gift, it's all on loan. I'm drowning in debts up to my ears. I'll have to pay for myself with my self, give up my life for my life."

"We're extremely fortunate not to know precisely the kind of world we live in. One would have to live a long, long time, unquestionably longer than the world itself."

"For the sake of research, the big picture and definitive conclusions, one would have to transcend time, in which everything scurries and whirls."

"The counting of weekdays would inevitably seem to be a senseless activity; dropping letters in the mailbox a whim of foolish youth; the sign "No Walking On The Grass" a symptom of lunacy."

"I'd have to be really quick to describe clouds — a split second's enough for them to start being something else. Their trademark: they don't repeat a single shape, shade, pose, arrangement."

"They aren't obliged to vanish when we're gone. They don't have to be seen while sailing on."

"The paper is breathless Under the hand And the pencil is poised Like a warlock's wand."

"There is a kind of laughter that sickens the soul. Laughter when it is out of control: when it screams and stamps its feet, and sets the bells jangling in the next town. Laughter in all its ignorance and cruelty. Laughter with the seed of Satan in it. It tramples upon shrines; the belly-roarer. It roars, it yells, it is delirious: and yet it is as cold as ice. It has no humour. It is naked noise and naked malice."

"Each day I live in a glass room Unless I break it with the thrusting Of my senses and pass through The splintered walls to the great landscape."

"But we have seen it in the air, A fairy like a William Pear"

"O'er seas that have no beaches To end their waves upon, I floated with twelve peaches, A sofa and a swan."

"I saw all of a sudden No sign of any ship."

"It's not their fault if, in the heat Of their transactions, I repeat It's not their fault if vampires meet And gurgle in their spats."

"When Uncle Jake Became a snake He never found it out; And so as no one mentions it One sees him still about."

"Leave the stronger and the lesser things to me! Lest that conger named Vanessa who is longer than a dresser visits thee."

"To live at all is miracle enough."

"Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls."

"This tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven."

"It was not often that Flay approved of happiness in others. He saw in happiness the seeds of independence, and in independence the seeds of revolt."

"This is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inwards as deeply. It is the love of a man or of a woman for their world. For the world of their centre where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame."

"There he was. The infant Titus. His eyes were open but he was quite still. The puckered-up face of the newly-born child, old as the world, wise as the roots of trees. Sin was there and goodness, love, pity and horror, and even beauty for his eyes were pure violet. Earth’s passions, earth’s griefs, earth’s incongruous, ridiculous humours—dormant, yet visible in the wry pippin of a face."

"Autumn returned to Gormenghast like a dark spirit re-entering its stronghold."

"It was not possible for him to visit his library as often as he wished, for the calls made upon him by the endless ceremonials which were his exacting duty to perform robbed him for many hours each day of his only pleasure—books."

"He also knew when to stop. In the fine art of deceit and personal advancement as in any other calling this is the hallmark of the master."

"These days a passion to accumulate knowledge of any and every kind consumed him; but only as a means to an end. He must know all things, for only so might he have, when situations arose in the future, a full pack of cards to play from."

"Never having had either positive cruelty or kindness shown to her by her parents, but only an indifference, she was not conscious of what it was that she missed—affection."

"It was not certain what significance the ceremony held, for unfortunately the records were lost, but the formality was no less sacred for being unintelligible."

"What is Time, O sister of similar features, that you speak of it so subserviently? Are we to be the slaves of the sun, that secondhand, overrated knob of gilt, or of his sister, that fatuous circle of silver paper? A curse upon their ridiculous dictatorship!"

"The ritual which his body had had to perform for fifty years had been no preparation for the unexpected."

"At the back of their personal troubles, hopes and fears, this less immediate trepidation grew, this intangible suggestion of change, that most unforgivable of all heresies."

"Drear ritual turned its wheel."

"The summer was heavy with a kind of soft grey-blue weight in the sky—yet not in the sky, for it was as though there were no sky, but only air, an impalpable grey-blue substance, drugged with the weight of its own heat and hue."

"“She thinks she’s a lady.” And then he grinned until the very lake seemed to be in danger of engulfment. “Oh, dear!” the poor thing. Tries so hard, and the more she tries, the less she is. Ha! ha! ha! Take it from me, Fuchsia dear, The only ladies are those to whom the idea of whether they are or not never occurs. Her blood’s all right—Irma’s—same as mine, ha, ha, ha! but it doesn’t go by blood. It’s equipoise, my Gipsy, equipoise that does it—with a bucketful of tolerance thrown in."

"What had happened? As he asked himself the question, he knew the answer. That no one had thought fit to tell him! No one! It was a bitter pill for him to swallow. He had been forgotten. Yet he had always wished to be forgotten. He could not have it both ways."

"Through honeycombs of stone would now be wandering the passions in their clay. There would be tears and there would be strange laughter. Fierce births and deaths beneath umbrageous ceilings. And dreams, and violence, and disenchantment."

"Titus is seven. His confines, Gormenghast. Suckled on shadows; weaned, as it were, on webs of ritual: for his ears, echoes, for his eyes, a labyrinth of stone: and yet within his body something other – other than this umbrageous legacy. For first and ever foremost he is child. A ritual, more compelling than ever devised, is fighting anchored darkness. A ritual of the blood; of the jumping blood. These quicks of sentience owe nothing to his forebears, but to those feckless hosts, a trillion deep, of the globe’s childhood. The gift of the bright blood. Of blood that laughs when the tenets mutter ‘Weep’. Of blood that mourns when the sere laws croak ‘Rejoice!’ O little revolution in great shades!"

"Withdrawn and ruinous it broods in umbra: the immemorial masonry: the towers, the tracks. Is all corroding? No. Through an avenue of spires a zephyr floats; a bird whistles; a freshet bears away from a choked river."

"So limp of brain that for them to conceive an idea is to risk a haemorrhage."

"If ever he had harboured a conscience in his tough narrow breast he had by now dug out and flung away the awkward thing—flung it so far away that were he ever to need it again he could never find it."

"A spider lowered itself, fathom by fathom, on a perilous length of thread and was suddenly transfixed in the path of a sunbeam and, for an instant, was a thing of radiant gold."

"At an ink-stained desk, with his chin cupped in his hands, Titus was contemplating, as in a dream, the chalk-marks on the blackboard. They represented a sum in short division, but might as well have been some hieroglyphic message from a moonstruck prophet to his lost tribe a thousand years ago."

"It was thought that he had genius, if only because he had been able to delegate his duties in so intricate a way that there was never any need for him to do anything at all. His signature, which was necessary from time to time at the end of long notices which no one read, was always faked, and even the ingenious system of delegation whereon his greatness rested was itself worked out by another."

"His face wore the resigned expression of one who knew that the only difference between one day and the next lies in the pages of a calendar."

"This extreme air of abstraction, of empty and bland removedness, was almost terrifying. It was that kind of unconcern that humbled the ardent, the passionate of nature, and made them wonder why they were expending so much energy of body and spirit when every day but led them to the worms. Deadyawn, by temperament or lack of it, achieved unwittingly what wise men crave: equipoise."

"How merciful a thing is man’s ignorance of his immediate future! What a ghastly, paralysing thing it would have been if all those present could have known what was about to happen within a matter of seconds!"

"This upstart, this dangerous, unprecedented upstart, whose pursuit of the doctrines was propelled by a greed for personal power as cold as it was tameless."

"There is something about a swarm that is damaging to the pride of its individual members."

"They knew now that they could never accomplish that long carpet-journey with anything like Cutflower’s air, but he reminded them at every footstep, every inclination of the head, that the whole point of life was to be happy."

"There are times when the emotions are so clamorous and the rational working of the mind so perfunctory that there is no telling where the actual leaves off and the images of fantasy begin."

"The tremendous gulf between the sexes yawned—and an abyss, terrifying and thrilling, sheer and black as the arbour in which they sat; a darkness wide, dangerous, imponderable and littered with the wrecks of broken bridges."

"The walls of Gormenghast were like the walls of paradise or the walls of an inferno. The colours were devilish or angelical according to the colour of the mind that watched them. They swam, those walls, with the hues of hell, with the tints of Zion. The breasts of the plumaged seraphim; the scales of Satan."

"Other people’s faults can be fascinating. One’s own are dreary."

"There is danger in deep water, and danger is more real than beauty in a boy’s mind."

"The days wear out the months and the months wear out the years, and a flux of moments, like an unquiet tide, eats at the black coast of futurity."

"He knew that he was caught up in one of those stretches of time when for anything to happen normally would be abnormal. The dawn was too tense and highly charged for any common happening to survive."

"He was meaner, more irritable, more impatient for the ultimate power which could only be his through the elimination of all rivals; and if he had ever had any scruples, any love at all for even a monkey, a book, or a sword-hilt, all this, and even this, had been cauterized and drowned away."

"What had his memory done to her that he should now be seeing a creature so radically at variance with the image that had filled his mind?"

"He had learned that there were other ways of life from the ways of his great home. He had completed an experience. He had emptied the bright goblet of romance; at a single gulp he had emptied it. The glass of it lay scattered on the floor. But with the beauty and the ugliness, the ice and the fire of it on his tongue and in his blood he could begin again."

"The lives of the Outer Dwellers had become almost normal again. Bitterness was their bread and rivalry their wine."

"“Then be silent,” said Titus, and in spite of his anger, the heady wine of autocracy tasted sweet upon his tongue—sweet and dangerous—for he was only now learning that he had power over others, not only through the influence of his birthright but through a native authority that was being wielded for the first time—and all this he knew to be dangerous, for as it grew, this bullying would taste ever sweeter and fiercer and the naked cry of freedom would become faint and the Thing who had taught him freedom would become no more than a memory."

"His days were full of meaningless ceremonies whose sacredness appeared to be in inverse ratio to their comprehensibility or usefulness."

"It was when he saw the great walls looming above him that he began to run. He ran as though to obey an order. And this was so, though he knew nothing of it. He ran in the acknowledgement of a law as old as the laws of his home, the law of flesh and blood. The law of longing. The law of change. The law of youth. The law that separates the generations, that draws the child from his mother, the boy from his father, the youth from both. And it was the law of quest. The law that few obey for lack of valour. The craving of the young for the unknown and all that lies beyond the tenuous skyline."

"He was as young as twenty years allowed, and as old as it could make him."

"“There is no point in erecting a structure,” said Muzzlehatch, taking no notice of Titus’s question, “unless someone else pulls it down. There is no value in a rule until it is broken. There is nothing in life unless there is death at the back of it. Death, dear boy, leaning over the edge of the world and grinning like a boneyard.”"

"“I am a beggar.” “You are a travesty,” said Titus, “and when you die the earth will breathe again.”"

"And yet, though his eyes shone with the thrill of his discovery, he suffered at the same time a pang of resentment—a resentment that this alien realm should be able to exist in a world that appeared to have no reference to his home and which seemed, in fact, supremely self-sufficient."

"“Life must be various, incongruous, vile and electric. Life must be ruthless and as full of love as may be found in a jaguar’s fang.” “I like the way you talk, young man,” said Grass, “but I don’t know what you’re saying.”"

"Art should be artless, not heartless."

"“You have a rough manner,” said Titus. “But you have saved me twice. Why are you helping me?” “I have no idea,” said Muzzlehatch. “There must be something wrong with my brain.”"

"An aching to be once again in the land from which he grew gave him no rest. There is no calm for those who are uprooted. They are wanderers, homesick and defiant. Love itself is helpless to heal them though the dust rises with every footfall—drifts down the corridors—settles on branch or cornice—each breath an inhalation from the past so that the lungs, like a miner’s, are dark with bygone times. Whatever they eat, whatever they drink, is never the bread of home or the corn of their own valleys. It is never the wine of their own vineyards. It is a foreign brew."

"What was important, now, with her eyes bent upon him, and the shadow of a branch trembling across her breast, was the immemorial game of love: no less a game for being grave. No less grave for being wild. Grave as a great green sky. Grave as a surgeon’s knife."

"“So you thought you’d come back, my wicked one. Where have you been?” “In hell,” said Titus. “Swigging blood and munching scorpions.” “That must have been great fun, my darling.” “Not so,” said Titus, “hell is overrated.”"

"His mind fell asleep. His wits fell awake. His cock trembled like a harp-string."

"“There’s something else, Mr. Muzzlehatch.” “I’m sure there is. In fact there is everything else.”"

"“Let go of my arm, or I will scream for God.” “He never helped you. Have you forgotten?”"

"Pompous as only failures can be."

"“Let him play,” whispered Cheeta. “Let him make believe that he’s alive again.”"

"Once there were islands all a-sprout with palms: and coral reefs and sands as white as milk. What is there now but a vast shambles of the heart? Filth, squalor, and a world of little men."

"Mervyn Peake is a finer poet than Edgar Allan Poe, and he is therefore able to maintain his world of fantasy brilliantly through three novels. It (Gormenghast trilogy) is a very, very great work … a classic of our age."

"Words were shapes and sounds to him. He saw them, as if he were listening to an unknown language, in shapes."

"You are the first person who has been able to illustrate the book adequately since Tenniel, though I still argue as I think I argued with you years ago that your Alice is a little bit too much of a gamin."

"Change and growth cannot be halted, time must run on. That is the whole moral of the three books."

"[Peake's books] are actual additions to life; they give, like certain rare dreams, sensations we never had before, and enlarge our conception of the range of possible experience."

"There was a library and it is ashes. Let its long length assemble." These words made me a writer. When I was in middle school, my mother brought home a used paperback copy of Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast…Reading this at the age of 13, I understood that fantasy, the place I was looking for, is not to be found in dragons, ghosts, or magic wands. It resides in language. Fantasy is death by owls. It’s mourning through gesture. It’s music, incantation in half-light. An inverted heart."

"The host of specifically religious suggestions and images, in a story that until now has been devoid of such concern, suggests very strongly that Peake is here referring to the Christian religion as a debasing influence. Peake’s treatment of Gormenghast’s ritual shows that he dislikes any system of values imposed on the individual from outside, offering him nothing directly relevant for himself and encouraging him in whatever weakness he possesses. So, here, the Lamb can break down but not build; despite his worshipper’s praise, he does not really understand how to keep his creatures alive. Still the Lamb glories in his power. True, in changing men he has destroyed them, denying them freedom to develop for themselves; to the Lamb, however, that is incidental to his own gratification."

"For Peake, the weight of moral standards comes from their being part of a tradition, and any tradition lies outside the individual’s potential and needs. Thus adherence to a morality impedes development of the whole self and denies real maturity."

"(Woman psychic) In June of 1987, men will begin talking about their feelings; women all over America will be sorry within minutes."

"(Sylvia) You almost never see a real lady popping out of a cake."

"(Sylvia at typewriter) On Getting Old in America. By Sylvia. Page One. 1. Best to do it somewhere else."

"(Dr. Paul Johns, animal linguist, on cats) It seems their entire language consists of two phrases, uttered with varying degrees of intensity: "Hurry that dinner, willya" and "Everything here is mine." (p. 35)"

"(Sylvia to blindfolded cat) Just put your paw on the map, and that's where we'll go for our vacation. It's a big country, and yet you picked Cleveland."

"(Voice on television) Midol relives the special pain that women get (Sylvia) when they realize they picked the wrong man, again."

"(Voice on television) Honey, I love you, but I got to be moving on. (Sylvia) Break his kneecaps."

"(Woman to psychic) Which do you think is the more impossible dream: the perfect man or the perfect handbag?"

"(Sylvia at typewriter) Common misunderstandings of young married couples. (Young husband to tearful wife) Jeannie, when I said that your dinner tasted like airplane food, that was meant as a compliment."

"(Woman psychic to woman client) So how come the tall, dark, handsome stranger I see in your future is a woman?"

"(Man at dinner table) Bet you don't know what a male swan is called. (Woman at dinner table) Sure I do. A swine."

"(Voice on television) Mom, can a douche make you feel more confident? (Sylvia) Not like a good stock portfolio."

"(Sylvia at typewriter) The best place to discuss your sexual dissatisfaction with your partner is 1) in the bedroom 2) in a car, traveling at high speed 3) in a crowded elevator."

"(Sylvia to her daughter) Rita, your body may be a temple. Mine is a Chevy Vega."

"(Doctor in bed) I dreamt I died and went to Heaven and they handed me some old Ms. magazines, a paper sheet, and made me sit in a little room with a bunch of other doctors."

"(Sylvia at typewriter) For feminine protection, every day use a hand grenade."

"(Sylvia to character in book she is reading, Death by) Get out of that tub! Get in your car and get out of there! (Character) Suddenly I felt compelled to get out of that tub and out of that motel. I dressed and hopped in my car. Later I stopped for gas, and met a great guy. We got married and raise cocker spaniels."

"(Cartoon title) A cat being cured of hairballs through a television ministry. (Voice on television) Place your right paw on the screen."

"(Cartoon title) Don't throw that old diaphragm away! (Sylvia at typewriter) Because it can be used as: 1. Doorknob cover (no need to worry about fingerprints ever again) 2. Bathtub stopper 3) Rainhat for cat 4. Small frisbee."

"(Sylvia at typewriter) A lady never offers a new lover a complimentary tooth brush, razor and sewing kit the next morning."

"(Woman sitting by swimming pool) To me the most important quality in a kitchen is that it be in someone else's house, or in a restaurant."

"(Devil describes Hell) It's like you go to a Van Halen concert and you're the oldest one there, and there's a mix-up in the tickets, and you have to stand for the whole thing and it's hot and the kid next to you loses his lunch on your shoe. . . . I know. You thought it was going to be witty and Noel Cowardish."

"(Sylvia driving to nervous passenger Venusian Gernif) Don't be silly. You're not going to be the first interplanetary traveler to die in a Chevy."

"(Young girl rejecting Devil's attempt to purchase her soul) Bag your face. . . . You set off the smoke detector, ham breath. **(p. 142)"

"(Man in bar) I like an older woman. (Sylvia) I'll pass that along."

"(Sylvia at typewriter) In the heat of the moment, I said a lot of unforgiveable things. Please call me. I've thought of a few more."

"(Man on television) The investment firm of Smith Barney: they make money the old-fashioned way--they earn it. (Sylvia) Right. The rest of us pick it off trees in the backyard."

"(Television) Our station is experiencing technical difficulties, so please try and amuse yourselves in whatever way you did before you became so emotionally dependent on us."

"(Television) Being a woman is as much a state of mind as a state of being. (Sylvia) Right. You stop paying attention, you might turn into a tuna."

"(Man on television) Man is the hunter. Woman is the civilizing influence, and when women abandon that role, men become (Sylvia) Cranky, and start wars."

"(Sylvia) Being a monopoly means never having to say you're sorry."

"(Woman on television) Frank, Frank, make me feel like a woman. (Man on television) Could you pick up my laundry?"

"(Man on television) Rita, you must believe me, alien beings are among us. (Sylvia) Yeah, in public office."

"(Sylvia at typewriter) "Superwoman." The definition is 1. A woman who has supernatural powers and uses them to fight evil. 2. A woman who has supernatural powers and uses them to combine a family and a career. (p. 184)"

"(Woman in office) Help, I am a rich woman being kept prisoner in a working woman's body. (p. 196)"

"(Man in suit to Indian woman) Oh guru, ancient mother of the world, we men have been crippled. We have never learned how to feel; we don't even know how to cry. Oh my wise guru, can you teach me to cry? (Guru) Sure. No problem. Tomorrow I'll start you at a dead-end job, pay you at women's wages and then I'll throw in sole support of a pre-school child."

"(Man on television) If women want time off to bear children, they can't expect to be treated as equals. (Sylvia) Okay, give men time off to bear children."

"(Television) Women hold up half the sky. (Sylvia) Uh huh, but in a poor neighborhood."

"(Streetwalker to friend) First he wants me to put on bunny ears and patent leather shoes, then he wants me to eat a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich. I go, "Mister, you are so sick. I don't do nitrites."

"(Man in bar) Can you imagine a world without men? (Sylvia) No crime, and lots of happy, fat women."

"(Bartender Harry) What's your ethnic background? (Sylvia) Woman."

"(Sylvia) I'm planning to live fast, die young, and make a good looking corpse. (Bartender Harry) I think you're off schedule. (p. 216)"

"(Man at bar) You know the kind of woman I could really go for? . . . Someone intelligent, witty, passionate about her work, totally involved in life, and willing to give it all up for me."

"(Sylvia to Venusian Gernif): What would happen if you wore a dress? Well, some people would invite you to parties. And some people would attempt to beat you to death."

"(Television) There's a special feeling about being a woman. You do so much for everyone around you. But some days (Sylvia) You realize you've been had."

"(Sylvia) A really good haircut is as effective in changing one’s life as A) 3 months of psychotherapy. B) 6 months of psychotherapy."

"(Television) Angry women beat up shoe salesman who posed as gynecologist. (Sylvia) I hate guys who do that."

"(Sylvia) The experienced traveler always flies first class so that when the engine falls off the plane, she’s drinking champagne."

"(Pilot’s voice on airplane public address system) Geez, I’m sorry about that landing. . . . Why don’t I just go up and try again? (p. 52)"

"(Sylvia) Things you can do when you’re a grown-up: . . . .3) Default on a home equity loan and lose everything. (p. 57)"

"(Television announcer) The Supreme Court staggered the nation today when they ruled that conception begins the minute you think about sex. (pp. 60-61)"

"(Sylvia) A mature person doesn’t scream at her waiter: “Don’t tell me your name and don’t put anything freshly ground on my salad!” (p. 69)"

"(Sylvia) Where do you stand? . . . .Do you think that people who like cake should be allowed to serve in combat positions? (p. 74)"

"(Television) With men or boys at home, your bathroom needs cleaning every day. (Sylvia) Not if you bolt the door. (p. 75)"

"(Sign) Mid-year resolutions of the barely under-control. (Woman at desk) I will try to be more understanding of others. I will try to be more patient when dealing with the incompetent people that surround me. I will not slap anyone first thing in the morning. (Sign on desk) The buck stops before it gets here. (p. 78)"

"(Woman to Devil) I want to refinance my soul. (Devil) You’re going to take a bath on points. (p.78)"

"(Sylvia’s answering machine) Hi, at the sound of the beep please tell me what you like best about me."

"(Sylvia) In the beginning Eve was alone in Eden. (Eve) Everything is so beautiful and amicable. (Serpent) I bet deep down, you wish you had an irritating companion."

"(Cat) So she says I can’t have catnip any more because it’s like a drug. So, like, what’s she worried about: I’m not going to do well in school or what?"

"(Sylvia) Yes, feminism was the apple Eve bit into."

"(Sylvia) There’s not enough coffee in the whole world to turn me into a functional human being."

"(Sylvia) A cat who’s just been told that he’ll have to eat that special canned cat food that comes from the veterinarian for the rest of his life. (Cat) Shoot me now."

"(Woman at typewriter) Dear Syl, . . . Is nothing forever? (Sylvia) Red wine on a white couch."

"(Sylvia) What do you hope never to hear your pilot say? 1) ”I had the worst fight of my life with my wife this morning.” 2) “Let’s see how fast this baby will go.” 3) “Whoops.”"

"(Bartender Harry) How can you tell the male bird from the female bird? (Sylvia) He's the one with the furrowed brow; she's the happy-go-lucky one....He's the one reading the sports page; she's the one with 12 pairs of tiny shoes. (Harry) I don't have time for this."

"(Man in bar) I have the right to bear arms. It's in the Constitution. (Sylvia) I'm in complete agreement. I'd like to see a lot more women carry guns. [Pause] Cat got your tongue?"

"(Television) Alabama's ban against vibrators stands...State says there's no constitutional right to an orgasm. (Sylvia) Rita, get my copy of the Bill of Rights. (Rita) I think that's in the Declaration of Independence. (p. 20)"

"(First Bad Girl) Conservatives say gay marriage undermines the institution of marriage. . . .(Second Bad Girl) The minute women got driver's licenses, marriage was doomed."

"(Man in bed, wearing glasses and suit) I dreamt I was in the shower with a bunch of gay guys and no one looked at me twice. **(p. 21)"

"(Man in bar) The kind of woman I want just isn't around anymore. (Sylvia) Perhaps if you wait for a full moon."

"(Television) Men are naturally more aggressive than women. (Sylvia) All the more reason to keep them locked up after dark."

"(Man in bar) How come only ugly women are for the equal rights amendment? (Sylvia) How come the guys who ask that question always have bad breath?"

"(Television) The brain is differently wired in men and women. (Sylvia) In men, the wires are loose."

"(Television) A recent study concludes that women over 40 have statistically as much chance of getting killed by a terrorist as of getting married. (Sylvia) And would rather."

"(Television news announcer) The Supreme Court staggered the nation today when they ruled that conception begins the minute you think about sex."

"(Television news announcer) The Senate passed a bill today that would outlaw abortion unless the doctor's life is in danger. **(p. 30)"

"(Television) The insurance industry is perfectly willing to stop discriminating against women, if some other group would volunteer to take their place."

"(Sylvia) I'm staying in this tub until the Soviets pull out of Afghanistan."

"(Television) Spray and wash gets out what America gets into. (Sylvia) Send some to El Salvador."

"(Woman organizing picnic) Most normal people would agree that pizza is nature's perfect food, right?"

"(Signs on refrigerator) Could be a leftover tuna casserole inside...Or one of those pesky, black...U.N. helicopters."

"(Television) Spokesmen for the right wing of the Republican Party are tying to associate the Democrats with a so-called feminist agenda...that causes women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians. (Sylvia) Heavy schedule."

"(Woman) I'm curious about my demise. (Devil)...at a party...When you hear about the latest presidential betrayal on an issue you hold dear, you pitch over the terrace railing and fall 43 stories."

"(First woman)...Men lose their sense of humor as they get older...their brains shrink...So men will be getting grumpier, just as we're getting...(Second woman) Shorter."

"(Second Bad Girl) Women who form relationships with murderers [in prison]. I don't get it. (First bad girl) Well, you know where they are at nights. (Second bad girl) At least, they're not lying on your couch watching TV."

"(Telephone) Hi, this is Sylvia's opinion hotline....How fair are you? Would you support laws mandating discrimination in hiring, housing, and employment against anyone who lacked a sense of humor, knowing that these laws would impact most heavily on fundamentalists?"

"(First Bad Girl) The Southern Baptist convention decided that women should submit graciously to their husbands. (Second Bad Girl) Graciously? Seems like submitting would be enough. (First Bad Girl) Who wants submission with attitude? (Second Bad Girl) Even the IRS doesn't ask for "gracious.""

"(Sylvia at typewriter) What is Newt Gingrich's Real Name? 1) Newton Minnow 2) Fig Newton 3) Isaac Newton 4) Wayne Newton"

"(Sylvia) Rita! Get my smelling salts! (Rita) Ma, you used them up when you discovered that repeal of the estate tax benefits only the very, very rich."

"(The Woman Who Does Everything Better Than You) ...it's a worse shock to lose one of your five homes than it is to lose your only home. I'm sure psychologists will back me up on this."

"(Sylvia) Rita! Did you hear that! Tax cuts benefit the rich! Oh, the shock! Quick, get my medication! (Rita) Plain, or with peanuts?"

"(Sylvia) Rita, I want to have my cake and eat it too. (Rita) Sorry, Ma, it only works for Republicans. (p. 88)"

"(Wicked witch hexing babies) Women of future generations will have undreamt of career opportunities. You two will use yours to despoil the environment."

"(Sylvia at typewriter) I feel much lighter now that I've given up my civil liberties. I recommend it to everyone! (p. 94)"

"(Television) Humor will never be the same. Sarcasm, irony, and cynicism will disappear. (Sylvia) Right. I'm having mine surgically removed. (Rita) Ma, cut it out!"

"(Television) We are aggressively striking the terrorists in Iraq, defeating them there so that we will not have to face them in our own country. (Sylvia) Oh, good. So once we get rid of those, there won't be any more."

"(Sylvia) Rita! Is Bush still president? (Rita) Ma, I didn't want to tell you...You seemed so happy."

"(Sylvia) [This] sends the wrong message to the international community. It says we support the U.N. only when it serves our interests exclusively. [pause] Wait a minute! That is our message."

"(Woman on telephone) Yes of course if you were imprisoned in a foreign land by a right-wing junta and our government was unresponsive to your plight, I would organize demonstrations and move heaven and earth for your release, but I'm not going to pick you up at the airport."

"(Mary Frances) ...look-alike wives for humiliating public appearances...The pseudo-wife's job is to look supportive, while the real spouse is at home throwing his stuff out the window."

"(Sylvia FineLine greeting card) Before you showed us your financial statement, we felt poor...but after leaving your house, we felt so pumped we bought a second car!"

"(Woman in bed) I dreamt that my HMO canceled my group insurance and I couldn't get an individual policy because I had a pre-existing condition, but they wouldn't tell me what it was."

"(Cat) In 1989, I resolve to develop a longer attention..."

"(Cat in bed) The Shedd Aquarium in Chicago recently identified a new species of fish...virtually extinct in the wild, and they haven't even named it yet. I dreamt I ate it."

"Can't see my little Willy."

"Do you like Kipling?" "I don't know, you naughty boy, I've never kippled."

"For Heaven's sake, send help! There's a man trying to get into my room and the door's locked!"

"I want to back the favourite, please. My sweetheart gave me a pound to do it both ways!"

"'Isaiah' – what a funny name for a teddy bear!" "Well, you see one eye's 'igher than the other."

"Could you exchange this lucky charm for a baby's feeding-bottle?"

"I like seeing experienced girls home." "But I'm not experienced!" "You're not home yet!"

"I've been struggling for years to get a fur coat. How did you get yours?" "I left off struggling."

"Judge: "You are prevaricating, sir. Did you or did you not sleep with this woman?" Co-respondent: "Not a wink, my lord!""

"She didn't ask me to the christening, so I'm not going to the wedding."

"In the past the mood of the comic postcard could enter into the central stream of literature, and jokes barely different from McGill's could casually be uttered between the murders in Shakespeare's tragedies. That is no longer possible, and a whole category of humour, integral to our literature till 1800 or thereabouts, has dwindled down to these ill-drawn postcards, leading a barely legal existence in cheap stationers' windows. The corner of the human heart that they speak for might easily manifest itself in worse forms, and I for one should be sorry to see them vanish."

"The game of life is the game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later, with astounding accuracy."

"Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement."

"If one asks for success and prepares for failure, he will get the situation he has prepared for."

"Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way."

"The factory workers say that it's impossible to do anything right. If you arrive five minutes early you are a saboteur; if you arrive five minutes late you are betraying socialism; if you arrive on time they say, "Where did you get the watch?""

"Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Yes? Well socialism is exactly the reverse."

"Progress is man's indifference to the lessons of history."

"The tragedy of marriage is that while all women marry thinking that their man will change, all men marry believing their wife will never change."

"...But love is like the measles; the later in life it affects you, the more severe the consequences" "Is there anything you can take for it?" "Only wedding vows"

"When old men decided to barter young men for pride and profit, the transaction was called war."

"In my opinion, people in our society are becoming like clones. Children are not reading books , and they are not learning by doing. They're just sitting and watching each other be pretty. Like my vases."

"As with respect to viewers, I must say that gallery-viewing is increasingly becoming more of a fashion than a love. Many of the openings have turned into exhibitions of pompousness. Also, there are groups of viewers that enter galleries with their already formed judgments. Amidst all these there are also groups that show absolutely no reaction towards the works, these are the worst. They are neither approving nor disapproving. A smaller percentage constitutes honest art-lovers who ask questions, and their views are worthwhile and they inspire real energy in an artist."

"Poetical spaces too can be painted like a vase."

"I never have restricted myself into a frame of a particular technique. My techniques are determined simultaneously along with the subjects of my works. It is similar to the works of a poet, the form of a poem is determined at the same time as its content."

"Some say it appears that painting has come to an end. I say the problem is that the painters' curiosity has come to an end, and this is more observable in the West and not in the East, since in the East there are plenty of untouched and unexplored spaces that could still inspire an artist as sources of creativity."

"These days there are painters that go inside a factory in order to be inspired by the noise of machines, so that it affects their works. Of course, artists need sensibility; sensibility towards their environment and their community, but when they are stirred enough by their experiences in their society they can create their art in small studios."

"As for the value of color I am close to the philosophy of Fauvists: Matisse, Raoul Dufy, and Vlaminck. In other words, color for me is the most important constituent of painting. The composition and form extract themselves from the depth of color. My colors are the spirit of my paintings. For example, when the space is sad it is my pallet of colors that convey this sadness first."

"Seurat and Signac mixed paintings with the dry and abstract laws of science. This approach, in my opinion, usually strays from the purpose of art in general. Because it means that one cannot expect from an artifact, that is created with mathematical laws, to establish an improbable and irrational relationship between the work and the viewer."

"If I were the type of artist that didn't care whether or not my works communicated with viewers then I wouldn't bother exhibiting them, I might as well stock them in a warehouse. But I do exhibit and I do care because I want to communicate back to the viewer what I've viewed. My paintings are inspired by my homeland's traditional spaces. My colors are the colors of monasteries and mosques, the color of ruins of Sassanid and Seljuq era, colors of Bazaars of Isfahan and Shiraz, and colors of northern-Iran's ceramics. I have sensed all these colors, forms and everything within my painting's frame from the viewer's own world."

"I am biased towards the belief that every painter must be grounded in strong and faultless drawing skills, and until one has not experimented with all styles of painting and has not comprehended their potentialities one's work is not complete. Even an abstract painter must know how to draw as well as a figurative artist. As for me, drawing has never created any problem, since I know how to draw anatomy correctly if I had to, I understand the function of muscle groups and sculpture."

"In my paintings, the question on whether figures are similar or not is not of any importance, the slightest change of figure or color can create a new painting and it doesn't really matter if a subject is revisited by an artist repeatedly. With enough time in between paintings, an artist can always bring to it something new."

"I love to experiment with all styles, and do not have any particular prejudice or bias towards any specific style. These works appear, and they turn out, the way they should. I do not decide in what style I want to paint. I am only experimenting. Even Picasso, when he arrived at Cubism, had already experimented with a lot of other styles."

"I believe any philosophizing about art is absurd and empty. Unfortunately, in the last century a phenomenon has emerged in which the status of “work of art” were granted to many foolish, tacky, and distasteful works as long as they were accompanied by ten or twelve pages of philosophizing justification."

"It must be said that an authentic work of art needs no philosophical justification. In principle, if Philosophical Treatises could explain a work of art then there would be no justification for the existence of that work art. Put it differently, a work of art precisely enters into the scene when philosophy and other experimental sciences are inept of representing or elucidating an artistic vision."

"As Amish say "There is a vast difference between putting your nose in other people's business and putting your heart in other people's problems,” and there is also a vast difference between using the ‘grammar of language’ and the ‘grammar of painting’. In a language we have subjects, adjectives, verbs, and so on, and in painting we have light, composition, geometric planes, and lines. It is by using this grammar that one can understand a work of art. This is very similar to Ferdinand Saussure’s, distinction between “la langue” and “la parole” for interpretation of written words."

"How would you explain Manet’s '? Yes, you may say that the mirror in the back of the barmaid, like Plato’s , shows that the reflections in the mirror are as close as the viewers get to viewing reality, which is mixed up with the inner reality of the barmaid, her reflection in the mirror, and her own picture in front of the viewer and image of Manet himself as the painter and as the creator of that painting in that mirror. Yet we know that this picture cannot be real since the artist cannot simultaneously be painting the picture and be steering at the barmaid in the guise of a client in the picture. Since, if the picture shows the true reality the mirror must reflect the painter performing the act of painting! Explanations like these are, of course, stating the obvious. The truth pf this painting is all revealed at that very moment in which it connects with the subconscious of the viewers. Manet does not want to warn his viewers that “look! I am showing you the illusion of picturing reality in painting”. If he really wanted to give such a warning he would have written such a warning underneath his work, pretty much the same way that wrote '. But, even Magritte’s warning is not that clear! What is not a pipe, that illustration of a pipe? If so, then that is obvious, and what is the point of stating the obvious? Perhaps Magritte like Ferdinand de Saussure wants to say there is a difference between the pipe as a ‘signifier’ and the pipe as a ‘signified’. As I stated the grammar of painting is different from the grammar of language."

"The pronouncements by Hegel and Nietzsche, on "the End of Art" and "the Death of God" ignited the fad of Endism in the western culture in the final century of the last millennium. Daniel Bell 's "The End of Ideology" (1960), Martin Heidegger's "The End of Philosophy" (1973), Theodore J. Lowpdi's "The End of Liberalism" (1979), Arthur Danto's "the End of Art" (1984), Bill McKibben's "The End of Nature" (1989), Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History" (1992), Kenichi Ohmae's "The End of the Nation State" (1996), Jorie Graham 's "The End of Beauty" (1999), Chris Dillow's "The End of Politics” (2007) were just some of such seemingly endless stream of "endings", which made one wonders that at such high rate will there anything be left for a future ending!"

"It is easy to start a war, but its end is decided by will-o-the-wisp, which is so effective in deceiving travelers on this road!"

"A hero; in our dark, indifferent and cruel universe is the one who makes life bearable and meaningful for human condition."

"If Marx were still alive, he would write: “Social networks are the opium of nations!"

"Performance of the violinist -- it's all in the interpretation and all the virtuosity comes out of the context of the interpretation!"

"I'll have to calm down a bit. Or else I'll burst with happiness."

"Maybe my passion is nothing special, but at least it's mine."

"A person can find anything if he takes the time, that is, if he can afford to look. And while he’s looking, he’s free, and he finds things he never expected."

"I only want to live in peace, plant potatoes and dream!"

"Those damn Moomins. I don't want to hear about them any more. I could vomit on the Moomintrolls."

"Art is the Flower - Life is the Green Leaf. Let every artist strive to make his flower a beautiful living thing, something that will convince the world that there may be, there are, things more precious more beautiful - more lasting than life itself... you must offer real, living - beautifully coloured flowers - flowers that grow from, but above, the green leaf – flowers that are not dead – are not dying – not artificial – real flowers springing from your own soul – not even cut flowers - You must offer the flowers of the art that is in you – the symbols of all that is noble – and beautiful – and inspiring - flowers that will often change a colourless leaf - into an established and thoughtful thing."

"(J. D. Sedding's) aphorism 'There is hope in honest error, none in the icy perfection of the mere stylist' became a personal motto for Mackintosh."

"All humanity inspires me. Every passer-by is my unconscious sitter; and as strange as it may seem, I really draw folk as I see them. Surely it is not my fault that they fall into certain lines and angles."

"I see everything in a grotesque way. When I go to the theatre, for example, things shape themselves before my eyes just as a I draw them — the people on the stage, the footlights, the queer faces and garb of the audience in the boxes and stalls. They all seem weird and strange to me. Things have always impressed me in this way."

"It takes only one man to make an artist, but forty to make an Academician."

"I’m so affected, that even my lungs are affected."

"There was a young man with a salary, Who had to do drawings for Malory; When they asked him for more, He replied, 'Why? Sure You've enough as it is for a gallery.'"

"I shall not live much longer than did Keats."

"What is a portrait good for, unless it shows just how the subject was seen by the painter? In the old days before photography came in a sitter had a perfect right to say to the artist: "Paint me just as I am." Now if he wishes absolute fidelity he can go to the photographer and get it."

"I think the title page I drew for Salomé was after all "impossible". You see booksellers couldn't stick it up in their windows."

"Of course, I have one aim, the grotesque. If I am not grotesque I am nothing."

"I have always done my sketches, as people would say, for the fun of it... I have worked to amuse myself, and if it has amused the public as well, so much the better for me."

"The general opinion appears to be that it is very funny to make yourself out as fast or as foolish as possible; though even worse than this is the painful orthodoxy of those individuals who claim Shakespeare for their favourite poet, Beethoven for their favourite composer, and Raphael for their favourite painter."

"Advertisement is an absolute necessity of modern life, and if it can be made beautiful as well as obvious, so much the better for the makers of soap and the public who are likely to wash."

"The poster first of all justified its existence on the grounds of utility, and should it further aspire to beauty of line and colour, may not our hoardings claim kinship with the galleries, and the designers of affiches pose proudly in the public eye as the masters of Holland Road or Bond Street Barbizon (and, recollect, no gate money, no catalogue)?"

"What view the bill-sticker and sandwich man take of the subject I have yet to learn. The first is, at least, no bad substitute for a hanging committee, and the clothes of the second are better company than somebody else’s picture, and less obtrusive than a background of stamped magenta paper."

"One’s ears are weary of the voice of the art teacher who sits like the parrot on his perch, learning the jargon of the studios, making but poor copy and calling it criticism. We have had enough of their omniscience, their parade of technical knowledge, and their predilection for the wrong end of the stick."

"The only place in London where one can forget that it is Sunday."

"When an Englishman has professed his belief in the supremacy of Shakespeare amongst all poets, he feels himself excused from the general study of literature. He also feels himself excused from the particular study of Shakespeare."

"Pope has more virulence and less vehemence than any of the great satirists. His character of Sporus is the perfection of satirical writing. The very sound of words scarify before the sense strikes."

"How few of our young English impressionists knew the difference between a palette and a picture! However, I believe that Walter Sickert did — sly dog!"

"His sketches were numerous and so were his mistakes."

"Oscar loved purple and gold, Aubrey put everything down in black and white. And while every connoisseur declared that line of the artist superb, there were others who deplored that he did not know where to draw it."

"I see you have a feeling for draperies, and I suggest you cultivate it."

"Why, you don't know anything about editing. Neither of you, not even with me, can run a magazine."

"He was shy, nervous, and self-conscious, without any of the intellectual assurance and ease so characteristic of him eighteen months later when his success was unquestioned."

"Imitable, Aubrey, imitable, surely."

"Superbly premature as the flowering of his genius was, still he had immense development, and had not sounded his last stop. There were great possibilities in the cavern of his soul, and there is something macabre and tragic in the fact that one who added another terror to life should have died at the age of a flower."

"A work of art should express only that which elevates the soul and pleases it in a noble manner. The feeling of the artist should not overstep these limits; it is wrong to venture beyond."

"Hunting, fishing, drawing, and music occupied my every moment; cares I knew not, and cared naught about them. I purchased excellent and beautiful horses, visited all such neighbors as I found congenial spirits, and was as happy as happy could be."

"I cannot write at all, but if I could how could I make a little book, when I have seen enough to make a dozen large books? I will not write at all."

"Captain Hall expressed some doubts as to my views respecting the affection and love of pigeons, as if I made it human, and raised the possessors quite above the brutes. I presume the love of the mothers for their young is much the same as the love of woman for her offspring. There is but one kind of love; God is love, and all his creatures derive theirs from his; only it is modified by the different degrees of intelligence in different beings and creatures."

"I took down my portfolio, to select a drawing to copy in oil. He had never seen my works before, and appeared astonished as his eyes ranged over the sheets. He expressed the warmest admiration, and said, "How hopeless must be the task of my giving any instruction to one who can draw like this?" I pointed out to him that nature is the great study for the artist, and assured him that the reason why my works pleased him was because they are all exact copies of the works of God, — who is the great Architect and perfect Artist; and impressed on his mind this fact, that nature indifferently copied is far superior to the best idealities."

"Thank God it has rained all day. I say thank God, though rain is no rarity, because it is the duty of every man to be thankful for whatever happens by the will of the Omnipotent Creator; yet it was not so agreeable to any of my party as a fine day would have been."

"A true conservationist is a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children."

"A wasp in a wig is altogether beyond the appliances of art."

"It is a curious fact that with Through the Looking-Glass the faculty of making book illustrations departed from me. … I have done nothing in that direction since."

"Please let me know to what extent you have used, or intend using, the pruning knife."

"The nine Wise Words are full of wisdom, besides being decidedly funny."

"How true it is that some have greatness thrust upon them! - and you may be quite sure that it was none of my seeking."

"Tenniel is the man."

"Mr. Tenniel is the only artist, who has drawn for me, who resolutely refused to use a model, and declared he has no more needed one than I should need a multiplication-table to work on a mathematical problem!"

"Tenniel raised the political cartoon to a new level of dignity and importance."

"Tenniel, who had started as a child prodigy, nearly ended as one. When a boy, fencing with his father, he lost the sight of one eye. But the remaining one saw more than most."

"We worked together for seven years. Tenniel and other artists declared I would not work with Carroll for seven weeks! I accepted the challenge, but I, for that purpose, adopted quite a new method. No artist is more matter-of-fact or businesslike than myself: to Carroll I was not Hy. F., but someone else, as he was someone else. I was wilful and erratic, bordering on insanity. We therefore got on splendidly."

"To have known the man was even as great a treat as to read his books. Lewis Carroll was as unlike any other man as his books were unlike any other author's books. It was a relief to meet the pure simple, innocent dreamer of children, after the selfish commercial mind of most authors."

"In More Romps there is plenty of healthy spirit, but just a suspicion of vulgarity, against which Mr. Harry Furniss would do well to guard in his future illustration of childish revelry."

"The artist's tact in meeting the author in the wood where things have no names kept their association alive for the seven years that Carroll was puttering with the book [Sylvie and Bruno] and that Furniss was supposed to be looking at the pictures."

"There's a Polar Bear In our Frigidaire - He likes it 'cause it's cold in there."

"Once there was a tree, and she loved a little boy."

"Once I spoke the language of the flowers, Once I understand each word the caterpillar said, Once I smiled in secret at the gossip of the starlings, And shared a conversation with the housefly in my bed."

"When the light turns green, you go. When the light turns red, you stop. But what do you do when the light turns blue with orange and lavender spots?"

"If you have to dry the dishes (Such an awful boring chore) If you have to dry the dishes ('Stead of going to the store) If you have to dry the dishes And you drop one on the floor Maybe they won't let you Dry the dishes anymore"

"How do you do! My name is Sue! Now you gonna die!"

"Rollin' Stone, Wanna see my picture on the cover. Wanna buy five copies for my mother [Yeah!] Wanna see my smilin' face, on the cover, The cover of the Rollin Stone."

"The years had a way of piling themselves one atop the next, unnoticed and uncounted; that was how young men turned into old ones."

"A death was more than an ending; it was like pulling a thread from a richly patterned cloth."

"“Confession,” he said, “must be sincere. It must come from the heart. False confession, made to avoid the pain of Questioning, is useless to Church and God alike. Our aim is salvation; the salvation of the souls of these poor wretches in our charge, if necessary by the breaking of their bodies. Set against this, all else is straw in the wind.”"

"He like the Church he serves is blind and empty and vainglorious. This God they prattle on about, where’s His justice, where’s His compassion? Does it please Him to see dying people hounded in His name, does He snigger at His bumbling priests, is He satisfied when men drop dead chopping stone out for His temples, twisted little God dying tepid-faced on a cross....She thought, I’ll go out and look for other gods, and maybe they’ll be better and anyway they can’t be worse."

"She said faintly, “Are you...real?” Amusement showed in his face. “Real?” he said. “Define reality and I can answer you.” He waved a hand. “Look into solid earth, into rock, and see the galaxies of all Creation. What you call reality melts; there is a whirling, a spinning of forces, a dance of motes and atoms. Some of them we call planets, one of them is Earth. Nothingness within nothingness enclosing nothing, that is reality. Tell me what you want, and I can answer.”"

"The waves were indifferent, and the wind; and the rocks neither knew nor cared who owned them, Christ’s Vicar or an English King."

"She curled her lip. She had discovered cynicism."

"“I was arguing with Father Sebastian the other day,” she said thoughtfully. “I quoted the thing about giving all you have to the poor. He said that was all very well but you had to come to terms with the Scriptures and realize there had to be teachers and leaders for the people’s own good. It seemed an awful get-out to me, and I couldn’t help saying so. I told him if the Church would sell half her altar plate she could buy shoes for everybody in the country, and a lot else besides; and that if the Pope would make a start in Rome I’d see about getting rid of a few job lots of furniture down in Corfe. I’m afraid he didn’t take very kindly to it. I know it was wrong of me but he annoys me sometimes; he’s so pious, and it seems to mean so very little. He’d walk miles in the snow to pray for a sick child, he’s a very good man; but if there was more money about to start with, maybe the child wouldn’t have been taken ill. It all seems so unnecessary....”"

"She stopped dead; and the look in her eyes showed plainly she’d just received the import of a crude lesson in economics."

"It’s a terrible thing, being afraid. It’s like an illness; like wanting to fall down, and not being able to faint. You see you never get used to it. You live with it and live with it and every day it’s worse; and one day it’s the worst of all. I thought, when it...happened, I wouldn’t be afraid. But I was wrong...."

"It is not size or age or childishness that separates children from adults. It is "responsibility.""

"I have always been a pencil."

"Love is a disease which fills you with a desire to be desired."

"I paint things as they are. I don't comment. I record."

"Le vieux con!"

"I am quite incapable of doing them [making landscapes], even the shadow. My trees look like spinach and my sea like heaven knows what.. ..[the Mediterranean landscape was] the devil to paint, precisely because it is so beautiful."

"I'm very much alone all day, I read a litle but, in the long run, it gives me a headache. I draw and paint as much as I can, indeed till my hand grows tired, and when night begins to fall I hope Jeanne d'Armagnac [his cousin] will come to my bedside. She does sometimes, and cheers me up and plays with me, and I listen to her talk, without daring to look at her. She is so tall and so beautiful! And I am neither tall nor beautiful."

"I have tried to draw realistically and not ideally.. .It may be a defect, for I have no mercy on warts, and I like adorning them with wanton hairs, rounding them off and giving them a bright surface.. . - A painter in embryo.. ..- Write me a line soon. I am feverish with anxiety."

"I could never have believed that such kindness existed: to receive my wretched drawings and then thank me into the bargain. And you need not be so scrupulous about my drawings. Just use those you like.. ..But, I am madly, crazily happy at the thought that your prose [Devismes novel 'Cocotte'], like so many fireworks, will frame my daubs, that you should have offered me a helping hand on the arduous road towards getting known..."

"When my pencil starts moving, it must be allowed its head or - bang! - nothing more happens."

"There are two young Englishmen in the next rooms to ours who are superb; their two sisters, looking like umbrellas, are here too, dressed in pink, with a little friend in blue with red hair. She is a type I have tried to draw on horseback but have not succeeded."

"Love is when the desire to be desired takes you so badly, that you feel you could die of it! [And then probably with a fourth sniff as a break] Eh? What? Isn't that so, my dear chap?"

"I can't do it, I can't do it. I simply can't help turning a deaf ear to it and banging my head against the wall - yes - and all for an art that escapes me and will never know all the trouble I have taken on its behalf."

"Lautrec was still satisfying his rather classical art-teacher Cormon in Paris. The unreal conventions of Cormon imposed and discouraged him, according to Henri Perruchot"

"The Mirlitons in the Place Vendôme, opposite the column! What a crush! A lot of people, a lot of women, and a lot of nonsense! It's a crush made up of gloved hands manipulating tortoiseshell or gold lorgnettes; but it's a crush all the same!"

"In Paris [Summer of 1881].. ..Lautrec found 'with wild joy' his [older] friend Princeteau. The affection linking the sixteen-year-old cripple to the deaf-mute of thirty-seven was stronger than ever. Their respective infirmities served to increase their friendship, They saw each other every day. Lautrec called Princeteau his 'master'; Princeteau called Lautrec his 'studio foster-child.' Indeed, Lautrec imitated him 'like a monkey.' He copied his methods, his brushwork and his technique which had both solidity and fluency and was much concerned with the management of light."

"As far as Lautrec is concerned, I believe the truest reason is that Lautrec thinks of one thing only, that's himself and not the others. So it's probable that these gentlemen will have judged it preferable to do the same, i.e., to manage without him."

"De Lautrec has an excellent portrait of a woman at the piano ['Mademoiselle Dihau at the piano, 1890'] and a large painting ['At the Moulin Rouge: The dance'] which holds its own very well. There's a great distinction in it, despite the risqué subject."

"Here's a short note for Bernard and Lautrec, to whom I'd solemnly promised to write.1 I'm sending it to you [Theo van Gogh, in Paris] so that you can give it to them sometime, it's not in the least urgent and it will be a reason for you to see what they're doing and to hear what they're saying, if you want."

"I don't believe that my peasant [his painting 'Portrait of a peasant'] will do any harm, for example, to the Lautrec that you [Theo] have ['Young woman at a table / Poudre de riz', 1887] and I dare even believe that the Lautrec will, by simultaneous contrast, become even more distinguished, and mine will gain from the strange juxtaposition, because the sunlit and burnt, weather-beaten quality of the strong sun and strong air will show up more clearly beside the face powder and stylish outfit. What a mistake that Parisians haven't acquired sufficient taste for rough things.."

"The dinosaur world I grew up in was classical. They were universally seen as scaley herps that inhabited the immobile continents. There was no hint that birds were their direct descendents. Being reptiles, dinosaurs were cold-blooded and rather sluggish except perhaps for the smaller more bird-like examples. They all dragged their tails. Forelimbs were often sprawling. Leg muscles were slender in the reptilian manner. Intellectual capacity was minimal, as were social activity and parenting; the Knight painting of a Triceratops pair watching over a baby threatened by the Tyrant King was a notable exception. Hadrosaurs and especially sauropods were dinosaurian hippos, the latter perhaps too titanic to even emerge on land, and if they did so were limited by their bulk to lifting one foot of the ground at a time. Suitable only for the lush, warm and sunny tropical climate that enveloped the world from pole to pole before the Cenozoic, a cooling climate and new mountain chains did the obsolete archosaurs in, leaving only the crocodilians. Dinosaurs and the bat-winged pterosaurs were merely an evolutionary interlude, a period of geo-biological stasis before things got really interesting with the rise of the energetic and quick witted birds and especially mammals, leading with inexorable progress to the apex of natural selection: Man. It was pretty much all wrong. Deep down I sensed something was not quite right. Illustrating dinosaurs I found them to be much more reminiscent of birds and mammals than of the reptiles they were supposed to be. I was primed for a new view."

"Ever since the early '80s I have applied feathers to many of the small dinosaurs, and never did smaller theropods without them. I did so because birds evolved from small theropods, and the evidence for the latter having the high metabolic rates that would have promoted the evolution of insulation was solid. I used to receive endless grief for this. The counter-argument was that no feathers had been found on any dinosaurs, and scales had, so I was engaging in unfounded speculation. But these points were actually not scientific. Scales had been discovered only on large dinosaurs, so illustrating small ones with scales was no less speculative than putting feathers on them. It would be like illustrating little mammals with naked skin if all we had was elephants and rhinos to base mammal integument on. I knew that my thesis was logical, so I bided my time."

"Novelist Michael Crichton wrote Jurassic Park as a screenplay option for the Steven Spielberg flick. I am ambiguous about Crichton’s body of work, as it includes dubious anti-scientific elements. But I can’t be too upset about a fellow who includes me in the acknowledgements of his bestselling novel. I ended up doing some preliminary studies of Tyrannosaurus and Deinonychus for the movie(s). These were significantly altered by Spielberg and Stan Winston and his effects team for copyright purposes. In the film, some of my skeletals show up posted on Sam Neill's (ak.a. Dr. Grant's) trailer wall. I was accidentally responsible for the avian term 'raptor' being improperly applied to dromaeosaurs. In another Hunteria paper and PDW, I synonymized Deinonychus with Velociraptor, which Crichton picked up on and shortened into the convenient handle 'raptor'. The movie was okay, but I will never forgive them for presenting Brachiosaurus as such a heavy limbed clunker. I had nothing to do with that. I thought it was too bad the potentially omnivorous brachiosaurs – which were unlikely to have been as placid as cattle – missed the opportunity to snarf up the bratty kids when they were up in the tree."

"Alas, producers of commercial dinosaur products continue to churn out low quality product that is either obsolete or improperly derivative. Dino documentaries and books have become so plentiful that they are no longer special and I do not try to keep up with them. There are also serious problems with quality and accuracy which often fail to meet the expectations of scientists. More about those problems here. I about kicked in the TV screen when one dino doc claimed that the brain of Tyrannosaurus was as large as that of a gorilla when its IQ was not all that much better than a croc’s. And why are the theropods shown pausing to challenge their prey before they charge, when the actual focus of predators is to hit and overwhelm the victim before it knows what is happening? The low standards are not surprising considering how the media and press frequently carry product that promotes belief in the paranormal. But these are quibbles. Dinosaur science has almost completely transformed over the half century that my neural network has been aware of it. The old stand-bys from Allosaurus to the always strange Stegosaurus are still fascinating, but we now know about armored sauropods, fat-bellied therizinosaurs and multi-winged, near avian, sickle claws. The reptile model is out and the avian-mammalian is dominant."

"The biggest living terrestrial predator, the Siberian tiger, at about a third of a metric ton (300 kg) pales in comparison to the biggest of the meat-eating dinosaurs, which reached 5 to perhaps 20 metric tons - the size of elephants and bigger. But while elephants cannot run, the biggest predatory dinosaurs probably ran as fast as horses, and they hunted herbivores that themselves were as big as or bigger than elephants."

"How would we think and feel about predatory dinosaurs if they were alive today? Humans have long felt antipathy toward carnivores, our competitors for scarce protein. But our feelings are somewhat mollified by the attractive qualities we see in them. For all their size and power, lions remind us of the little creatures that we like to have curl up in our laps and purr as we stroke them. Likewise, noble wolves recall our canine pets. Cats and dogs make good companions because they are intelligent and responsive to our commands, and their supple bodies make them pleasing to touch and play with. And, very importantly, they are house-trainable. Their forward-facing eyes remind us of ourselves. However, even small predaceous dinosaurs would have had no such advantage. None were brainy enough to be companionable or house-trainable; in fact, they would always be a danger to their owners. Their stiff, perhaps feathery bodies were not what one would care to have sleep at the foot of the bed. The reptilian-faced giants that were the big predatory dinosaurs would truly be horrible and terrifying. We might admire their size and power, much as many are fascinated with war and its machines, but we would not like them. Their images in literature and music would be demonic and powerful - monsters to be feared and destroyed, yet emulated at the same time."

"If not for the long tail, one might mistake a theropod for a big, toothy, marauding bird in the dark. That theropods are birdlike is logical, since birds are their closest living relatives. Remember that next time you eat a drumstick or scramble some eggs."

"Tyrannosaurus rex did not have 6-to-8-inch serrated teeth and an arc of D-cross-sectioned teeth set in a massive, powerful skull just to consume rotting carcasses! These were killing tools. In sharp contrast are the weak beaks and feet of vultures and condors- the only true living scavengers."

"What gave archosaurs the edge as large predators at this time, and therapsids the edge as smaller ones? Frankly, I am not sure. Both seem to have had heightened metabolic rates and fur or feather insulation... Perhaps the chief advantage enjoyed by thecodonts centered around their big, slashing attack jaws. These may have made them better big-game hunters, while the more precise cutting teeth of therapsids were more suitable for smaller prey."

"By the Cretaceous crocodilians of essentially modern form were the theropods [sic] main competitors. Yet crocodilians appear to be less abundant in most Mesozoic deposits than they are later in the mammal-dominated Cenozoic. Not only that, but they tended to be small-bodied: few specimens were as big as American alligators or Nile crocodiles. It is possible that theropods were eating the crocs. Even today, big cats once in a while kill a fairly large crocodilian. A tyrannosaur could have swallowed one whole, and gone into the water after them. Constant attacks could have suppressed croc populations, and favored the smaller, harder to catch species."

"When one reads about Tyrannosaurus and Brontosaurus, one is not dealing with species, like lions or African elephants. Instead, these are genera, a group of animal species. For example, the lion is in the genus Panthera. Species of Panthera include the lion Panthera leo, the tiger P. tigris, and the leopard P. pardus, among others. So saying Tyrannosaurus is much like saying "the big cats"."

"To a fair extent the Tyrannosaurus species are the tyrannosaur's of tyrannosaurs; they have taken to an extreme the development of skull size, strength, and power. This and the larger, more forward-pointing mid-upper jaw teeth suggest a more potent wounding ability than the albertosaur's. The stoutness of Tyrannosaurus relative to albertosaurs is readily apparent in the skeletal restorations. They are not as graceful, but they have a well-proportioned, majestic attractiveness of their own."

"This is the theropod. Indeed, excepting perhaps Brontosaurus, this is the public's favourite dinosaur, having fought King Kong for the forced favor of Fay Wray and smashed Tokyo (with inferior special effects) in the guise of Godzilla."

"The culmination of tyrannosaur evolution, T. rex was one of the very last North American dinosaurs. Nothing else combined its size, speed, and power. Since its demise we have had to make do with lions and tigers and bears, and other "little" mammalian carnivores."

"[Velociraptors] are among my very favourite dinosaurs. Their long upcurved skulls, slender yet compact proportions, and great sickle claws make these elegant, attractive, yet demonic animals. There is nothing else like them. Pound for pound, these are among the most powerful of known predators; certainly no other theropod had such a combination of foot, hand, and head weaponry... Among theropods only Tyrannosaurus, with its extreme skull strength, equalled Velociraptor in total power relative to weight."

"Put a leopard and a [Deinonychus] together and the former would be in trouble."

"[Deinonychus] is usually considered a small dinosaur. But the largest individual was an eleven-foot-long animal whose head approached half a yard long, and was of male-timber-wolf mass. If alive today it would be considered a big predator."

"Dinosaur remains have been found by humans for millennia and probably helped form the basis for belief in mythical beasts including dragons."

"Although some dinosaurs may have spent some time feeding in the water like moose or fishing cats, at most a few became strongly amphibious in the manner of hippos, much less marine as per seals and whales. The only strongly aquatic dinosaurs are some birds. The occasional statement that there were marine dinosaurs is therefore incorrect - these creatures of Mesozoic seas were various forms of reptiles that had evolved over the eons."

"Dinosaurs seem strange, but that is just because we are mammals biased toward assuming the modern fauna is familiar and normal, and past forms are exotic and alien. Consider that elephants are bizarre creatures with their combination of big brains, massive limbs, oversized ears, teeth turned into tusks, and noses elongated into hose-like trunks. Nor were dinosaurs part of an evolutionary progression that was necessary to set the stage for mammals culminating into humans. What dinosaurs do show is a parallel world, one in which mammals were permanently subsidiary, whereas the dinosaurs show what largely diurnal land animals that evolved straight from similarly day-loving ancestors should actually look like. Modern mammals are much more peculiar, having evolved from nocturnal beasts that came into their own only after the entire elimination of nonavian dinosaurs. While dinosaurs dominated the land, small nocturnal mammals were just as abundant and diverse as they are in our modern world. If not for the accident of the later even, dinosaurs would probably still be the global norm."

"When it was assumed that birds did not evolve from dinosaurs, it was correspondingly presumed that their flight evolved among climbers that first glided and then developed powered flight. This has the advantage that we know that arboreal animals can evolve powered flight with the aid of gravity, as per bats. When it was realized that birds descended from deinonychosaurs, many researchers switched to the hypothesis that running dinosaurs learned to fly from the ground up. This has the disadvantage that it is not certain whether it is practical for tetrapod flight to evolve among ground runners working against gravity. The characteristics of birds indicate that they evolved from dinosaurs that had first evolved as bipedal runners, and then evolved into long armed climbers. If the ancestors of birds had been entirely arboreal, then they should be semiquadrupedal forms whose sprawling legs were integrated into the main airfoil, like bats. That birds are bipeds whose erect legs are separate from the wings indicates that their ancestors evolved to run."

"Peace for Paris"

"This is what I do, I draw, I reacted graphically, just drawing something spontaneously with pen and paper and then sharing it as a raw reaction. With so much violence and tragedy — we just want a bit of peace."

"I do graphics commercially for a living, but when I get affected by things, when something happens in the world, I usually communicate online with my drawings."

"I just wanted something symbolic, something that everybody could understand easily, and everybody could share regardless of where they’re from and whether they’re a keen observer of illustration usually. I just wanted something universal. … a few people from different places follow my work, and I enjoy communicating to them, usually for happier reasons. What I do in general is try to communicate with people — and I’m aware that the more you want to communicate to a larger audience, the more universal and simple you have to be. It’s an image for everyone. It’s not my image — it’s not a piece of work that I’m proud of or anything — I didn’t create it to get credit or benefit from it. I just wanted to express myself, and from experience I know that through social media people like expressing themselves, or need to express themselves. It is somehow quite organic, the way these things go — you can’t really plan on it. I would just say that if people have used it so much, and if they felt like it was useful for them to share, then the image worked and I’m happy, so to speak, even though happiness is not really a thought that springs to my mind in such horrible times."

"The image started showing up on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram within hours of the attacks in Paris: a simple, slightly off-kilter rendering of the Eiffel Tower framed by a circle so as to look like a peace sign. Most people who shared the image, which has since become the dominant visual symbol of grief over the attacks, probably didn’t know where it originated, or who was responsible for coming up with it.… the creator of the drawing was a French illustrator named Jean Jullien, who posted it to his Twitter page around midnight Paris-time with the caption “Peace for Paris,” and watched it swiftly take flight. Jullien, whose work tends to be marked by a light touch and a breezy, sometimes high concept sense of humor, has made a habit of reacting to the news in graphic form before, drawing pictures to mark the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, the legalization of gay marriage in Ireland, and the massacre at Charlie Hebdo in Paris last January."

"In the wake of Friday night’s Paris attacks, which left over 120 people dead in six incidents around the city, one poignant sketch began circulating social media to honor the victims. The symbol, including Paris’ iconic Eiffel Tower in the form of a peace sign, shows solidarity with the French capital and has been shared widely along with the hashtags #PrayforParis and #jesuisparis"

"Just in case our enemies needed another reason to despise us, today the inactivist group Somnolent Tilty-Headed Wankers for Peace launched an exciting new graphic: the same old clapped-out hippie peace symbol but incorporating the Eiffel Tower (right)! Isn't that a cool, stylish way of showing how saddy-saddy-sadcakes you are about all those corpses in the streets of Paris? It's already gone viral! And that's all that matters, isn't it? Our enemies use social media to distribute snuff videos as a means of recruitment. We use it to confirm to them how passive and enervated we are: What was it the last time blood ran in the streets of Paris? Oh, yeah, a pencil - for all those dead cartoonists. But, given that blood in the streets of Paris looks like becoming a regular event, it helps to have something of general application. What about, ooh, a tricolor with a blue tear at the end? No, better yet: a peace symbol with a croissant in the middle. No, wait... What's that? All you are saying is give peace a chance? But what, in fact, are the chances of peace for Paris and France? What are the odds? Oh, sorry. All they were saying is give peace a chance. And, having said it, they've gone back to sleep until the next atrocity requires another stupid hashtag or useless avatar. Parisians should be revolted by this third-rate gimmick, and revile those who created and promoted it."

"We do, to what extent of freedom we have earned or are allowed by others and ourselves, what we most want to do. We say - speak, paint, carve, write, express ourselves...as we damn please. And in both the doing of things and the talking about them - which together seem to me to sum up life - we so crave freedom or liberty or whatever one may choose to call it as to justify our Declaration's romantically terming it an unalienable right of Man, bestowed on Man by his Creator."

"While reasonable men will ungrudgingly submit to such curtailment of their liberties as will promote at least the greater liberty of all, to the exact degree to which such curtailment may become unreasonable will the enforcement of it have to rest on force. Force against reason: reason, because it has the power of enlisting force to fight for it, will win. From the recognition of that truth has come democracy."

"Art must unquestionably have a social value; that is, as a potential means of communication it must be addressed, and in comprehensible terms, to the understanding of mankind."

"Here’s a test you can try at home: put a two-year-old in a playpen with an apple and a rabbit. If it plays with the apple and eats the rabbit, you’ve got a carnivore. According to numerous studies … vegetarians have 60% less cancer than meat-eaters, and a tiny fraction of the heart attack rate. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out we aren’t very well designed to eat meat."

"Until mid 2002, I was a meat eater. I have always instinctively been opposed to cruelty to animals, as all decent and sensible people are, but didn’t know much about how food animals were raised or processed. I assumed humans had always eaten meat because it was natural for us to, and that food animals were raised on farms where they were fairly oblivious to their surroundings and only moderately inconvenienced until their swift and humane execution. Nothing could be further from the truth. Over 95% of animals raised for food are born, live, and die in horribly painful conditions. ... Another misconception I had was about the relative intelligence and awareness of farm animals. Since becoming vegan, I’ve met rescued “food” animals now living natural lives outdoors … Cows, pigs and chickens are as smart, friendly and loving, as dogs and cats, and create friendships with other animals and people in much the same ways. Each has its own personality and its own set of likes and dislikes. If you think you’re an animal advocate because you care about saving dogs and cats in city shelters but still eat meat, think again."

"[Describing her visit to a slaughter facility in Pennsylvania] The floor was very slippery and the walls and everything else were covered with blood. Dried blood had formed a crust on the chains. I surely didn't want to fall down in all that blood and guts. The workers wore non-slip boots, yellow aprons, and helmets. It was a scene of controlled, mechanized chaos."

"Sue Coe … has done more through her paintings and prints to help animals than any other artist in history."

"I have no doubt that Sue's art … is of historic importance. A hundred years from now and more, assuming our species has managed to survive, Sue Coe's work will hang in all the great museums of the world."

"The sea raises you to your feet. And dead calm. Strands of light hold your hand. Now you have left this shore. Now you are in the wind of an invisible sail."

"The nights are no longer warm,"

"FOG: Fog covers this region. / Can you still hear my voice? / I don't understand trees. / They try to grab our hair. / A branch has fallen on you. I know that. / Could you look behind me: / is there a load / on my back, as well?"

"IN THE SUN: Sickle moon still there in daylight. // We long for things as they were. / We want them back, / our blue-black nights, and the stars."

"THE DESCENT: Faster I travel into the cold of the mountain / than I return from it. / One can't see the sun. / Wait, I come closer / as beside me the frozen snow / dwindles."

"OPEN: Gnats, too, are partly / air / and the swarming of seagulls / at the wind's mercy / inchoate / I walk / in front and between myself / in, out / abrupt and weary, an old heavy gate / I beat my own lintel to pieces."

"When I hate so much / that my eyes no longer close, / when I love so much / that I move, eyes open / close, far, without effort / not naming the country, the wind's evil"

"Without moving anything / I want to see / the way this autumn / makes the birds move."

"Up down / on summer's lake / the flying ant / finds a wall in the air"

"I lower the bill of my cap stop looking / thoughts ready to go / sit in this train that's as long as the journey"

"In the restaurant, eyes / above a soup bowl's rim / Is it she? / Changes shape, is and is not. / Now she's spat out a bit of bone, / I don't think it's her, / I'm leaving, I'm done eating. / This is a long and mad journey: / I see her on the faces of others, my own."

"I was reading the Book of Job. / People I knew came and went, / I read their book, / the seasons turned away, / I had been reading for a long time. / I was quiet. Not a single leaf to be seen. / I looked up: it had gone dark on me, / that star / in the middle of the sentence: // Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?"

"Two there on the beach / as close together as nostrils. / Calm sea day."

"Down the ages / they conduct their long monologue: / can'y you hear? / They hope for it from others, / wait for ones like themselves, / they were born that way. / And so has the world been arranged / that those others grow weary / and begin to take care of the chores."

"That this time would be another, / but it is, / it is about to go under, every moment. / Facts bleed their color, / see how they break up and dissolve, / their fabric does not last; / you do see, don't you? / Not even your disaster / deserves belief."

"One a child, one old / almost half a century apart // both / need my hand in this city"

"And what about the three-year-old on the beach, in the heather: / "What if I take away the water," sand, rock / "what if I take away the sand, the rock, / the ground, the air, what then, what?""

"Hunkered down out on the spacious ice / coat-hems touching the snow / she slaps her knees, tries to sweet-talk her dog / but it won't come, does not remember its name, / left it there, / she does not remember her own, either, / and here on the shore I keep shouting, in vain."

"Driving through rain with you, / in a sea of rain / I saw only the bridges, their railings, / the passing lanes, / when the earth rose into my eyes / I heard, I heard that I had loved."

"Stood there who knows how long looked / at the clouds the hedge / when someone came out of the door it was her daughter."

"They speak their loud dialects, / Sicilians, Sardinians, / Calabrians, / they all have their own taverns. / At the other end of the alley, / on the other side / a quiet spot, / waiters and patrons at tables, / their faces, hairdos / out of Pompeii's frescoes. / Large eyes look at us, / the door does not open out, / it opens in."

"When you grow to become visible in the world / and build a nest / above your head / there are times when you fly up there / and it is light and swims in the air"

"I was born near the Po and it is the only respectable river in all Italy. To be respectable, a river must flow through a plain because water was created to stay horizontal and only when it is perfectly horizontal does it preserve its natural dignity. Niagara falls is an embarrassing phenomenon, like a man who walks on his hands."

"Minutes and seconds are strictly city preoccupations. In the city people hurry, hurry so as not to waste a single minute, and fail to realize that they are throwing a lifetime away."

"The party delegate was one of those gloomy, tight-lipped persons who seem to have been made for wearing a red scarf round the neck and a tommy-gun slung from one shoulder."

"Those were the days when there was a great deal of argument about that piece of international machinery known as the &lsquo;Atlantic Pact&rsquo;, which may have owed its name to the fact that between words and deeds there lies the breadth of an ocean."

"But the young people of today are benighted creatures born with telephone numbers imprinted on their brains, and where passion is concerned they have about as much grace as a pig in a cornfield."

"In the valley a bicycle is just as necessary as a pair of shoes, in fact more so. Because even if a man hasn&rsquo;t any shoes he can still ride a bicycle, whereas if he hasn&rsquo;t a bicycle he must surely travel on foot."

"&lsquo;Don Camillo, the system of teaching Christian charity by knocking people over the head is one that doesn&rsquo;t appeal to me,&rsquo; the Lord answered severely."

"Italian humorist Giovanni Guareschi–a staunch anti-communist journalist and writer–coined a famous sentence to mock Stalinists “Contrordine, compagni!”, i.e., “Counter-order, comrades!”. It was the sudden announcement of an impromptu change in policies and ideas that activists ought to support with the same enthusiasm and dedication they previously displayed for their blatant contrary. Guareschi’s amusing assumption was that, no matter what, communists dully obey whatever kind of order comes from the party, inhaling the “official truth” (even typos in articles and manifestos) from a “third nostril” that nature provided them with."

"I’m single and my entire youth was spent enjoying time with friends, but these times I’m trying to be more responsible and take more care and use my energy in cinema. It makes me happier."

"You know in childhood it is difficult to be different. I spent long times in hospitals and it was complicated, but it made me know how strong I can be, and it helped me to get my wills. A long time ago I started to shoot my little short with my own cam with friends, but in 2005 came my first professional work. I visited an FX make up workshop and took a look at what else the teacher was doing outside of classes. He was working for movies and then I offered myself for work and have them take benefit of my peculiar body."

"Born and brought up in New York City and having survived and thrived there, I carry with me a cargo of memories, some painful and some pleasant, which have remained in the hold of my mind. I have an ancient mariner’s need to share my accumulation of experience and observations. Call me, if you will, a graphic witness reporting on life, death, heartbreak and the never-ending struggle to prevail…or at least to survive."

"As the story unfolds it is at 55 Dropsie Avenue where Frimme Hersh deals with God; where the street singer fails to grasp his chance for gory. It is on Dropsie Avenue where a diminutive enemy defeats the super, and Willie comes of age. It is in an alley of Dropsie Avenue where Jacob Shtarkah tries to find the meaning of life. It is also on Dropsie Avenue, finally, where I undertake the biography of the street itself, through the physical evolution of the block, the rise and fall of the tenement building at No.55 and the ethnic and social changes of the stream of occupants."

"The tenement – the name derives from a fifteenth-century legal term for a multiple dwelling – always seemed to me a “ship afloat in concrete.” After all didn’t the building carry passengers on a voyage through life? No. 55 sat at the corner of Dropsie avenue near the elevated train, or the elevated as we called it in those days. It was a treasure house of stories that illustrated tenement life as I remembered it, stories that needed to be told before they faded from memory. Within its “railroad flats,” with rooms strung together train-like lived low-paid city employees or laborers and their turbulent families. Most were recent immigrants, intent on their own survival. They kept busy raising children and dreaming of the better lie they knew existed “uptown.” Hallways were filled with a rich stew of cooking aromas, sounds of arguments and the tinny wail from Victrolas. What community spirit there was stemmed from the common hostility of tenants to the landlord or his surrogate superintendent. Typically, the buildings tenants came and went with regularity, depending on the vagaries of their fortunes. But many remained for a lifetime, imprisoned by poverty or old age. There was no real privacy or anonymity. Everybody knew about everybody. Human dramas, both good and bad, instantly gathered witness like ants swarming around a piece of dropped food. From window to window or on the stoop below, the tenants analyzed, evaluated and critiqued each happening, following an obligatory admission that it was really none of their business."

"To anyone growing up in any large city, the immediate neighborhood becomes the world. The street on which one lives provides a kid with local identification somewhat similar to being branded by national origin. Streets have a status. They grow, get old and change in character. In large coastal cities, immigration has an effect on the profile of a street altering it as each new group enters, stays a while, assimilates and then moves away. Streets seem to have a discernible life. Some start out ostentatiously and gradually descend into slums while others begin as poor the disreputable neighborhoods and rise to ostentation through what city planners call gentrification."

"My early work in newspaper comics and comic books allowed me to entertain millions of readers weekly, but I always felt there was more to say. I pioneered the use of comics for instructional manuals for American soldiers, covering three major wars, and later used comics to educate grade school children. Both were heady responsibilities that I took very seriously. But I yearned to do still more with the medium. At an age when I could have "retired," I chose instead to create literary comics, than a decidedly oxymoronic term. Acceptance has not always been easy, but I have seen it arrive in my lifetime. It has been most gratifying to see the graphic novel and many of its exceptional creators gradually become an accepted part of the book world. I couldn't find a major publisher to take A Contract With God only a quarter century ago, and now graphic novels represent the book industry's fastest growing genre."

"The most extraordinary aspect of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is not so much the history of its inception as that of its reception. That this fake was produced by a number of secret services and police of at least three countries, assembled from a collage of different texts, is by now a well-known fact-and Will Eisner tells it in full, taking into account the most recent research. In one of my essays I identify other sources that scholars had not taken into account: for example, the Protocols “Jewish plan” for conquering the world follows, almost literally at times, the Jesuit plan as told by Eugene Sue first in Le juif errant, (1844-45) and later in Les myst’eres du people (1849-57)-the similarities are so great that one is tempted to conclude that Maurice Joly himself (the French satirist whose pamphlet Dialogues in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, published in 1864, is considered to be the direct predecessor of the Protocols, and who is a figure in Eisner’s The Plot) had been inspired by Sue’s novels."

"This patchwork of largely fictional works makes the Protocols an incoherent text that easily reveals its fabricated origins. It is hardly credible, if not in a roman feuilleton or in a grand opera, that the “bad guys” should express their evil plans in such a frank and unashamed manner, that they should declare, as the Elders of Zion do, that they have “boundless ambition, a ravenous greed, a merciless desire for revenge and an intended hatred.” If at first the Protocols was taken seriously, it is because it was presented as a shocking revelation, and by sources all in all trustworthy. But what seems incredible is how this fake arose from its own ashes each time someone proved that it was, beyond all doubt, a fake. This is when the “novel of the Protocols” truly starts to sound like fiction. Following the article that appeared in 1921 in the Times of London revealing that the Protocols was plagiarized, as well as every other time some authoritative source confirmed the spurious nature of the Protocols, there was someone else who published it again claiming its authenticity. And the story continues unabated on the Internet today. It is as if, after Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler, one were to continue publishing textbooks claiming that the sun travels around the earth. How can one explain resilience against all evidence, and the perverse appeal that this book continues to exercise? The answer can be found in the works of Nesta Webster, an antisemetic author who spent her life supporting this account of the Jewish plot. In her Secret Societies and Subversive Movements, she seems well informed and knows the whole story as Eisner narrates it here, but this is her conclusion: The only opinion I have committed myself is that, whether genuine or not, the Protocols represent the programme of a world revolution, and that in view of their prophetic nature and of their extraordinary resemblance to the protocols of certain secret societies of the past, they were either the work of some such society or of someone profoundly versed in the lore of secret society who was able to reproduce their ideas and phraseology. Her reasoning is flawless: “since the Protocols say what I said in my story, they confirm it,” or: “the Protocols confirm the story that I derived from them, and are therefore authentic.” Better still: “the Protocols could be fake, but they say exactly what the Jews think, and must therefore be considered authentic.” In other words, it is not the Protocols that produce antisemetism, it is people’s profound need to single out an Enemy that leads them to believe in the Protocols. I believe that-in spite of this courageous, not comic but tragic book by Will Eisner- the story is hardly over. Yet is is a story very much worth telling, for one must fight the Big Lie and the hatred it spawns."

"In 1848, driven by a revolution in Paris, King Louis Philippe abdicated and Louis Napoleon (a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte) was elected president of France. Four years later, after a coup d’etat, Louis Napoleon styled himself Napoleon II, emperor of France. Napoleon III’s first act as emperor was to imprison his political opponents. He was a crafty monarch, and his ambition during his reign was to seek glory through military adventurism while the great mass of French peasants remained ina state of poverty and despair. Initially, Napoleon III achieved a short-lived public popularity by trying to “modernize” France and liberalize its economy, but his legacy remains that of a dictator and conniving politician. In 1870, fearful that Germany was expanding too fast, Napoleon III declared war against this neighbor. The French were quickly defeated, and Napoleon III became a prisoner of war. Upon release in 1871, he was exiled to England, where he lived until his death in 1873. Maurice Joly was mindful of this growing tension between Germany and France. He had been born in 1821 of French parents. He was admitted to the Paris bar as an attorney and was a one-time member of the General Assembly. Joly devoted most of time to writing caustic essays on French politics. He joined many other severe critics of Napoleon III, who regarded him as a ruthless despot. In 1864, Joly wrote a book called “The Dialogue in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu.”…It intended to liken Napoleon III to the infamous Machiavelli, author of “The Prince,” a treatise on the acquisition of power. Holy intended to reveal the French dictator’s dark and evil plans."

"Maurice Joly: In “Caesar” I bluntly accused our emperor of evil offenses…in ‘’’this’’’ book I expose the nature of the man’s mind, how he thinks, y’see!"

"Maurice Joly: Your honor, I have not written a lampoon here…this book’s delineations are applicable to all governments!"

"When Nicholas II was crowned tsar of Russia in 1894, the country was seething with unrest. Brought up by private tutors, he had little training in the affairs of state. He was dull, reactionary, and an ineffective ruler who was easily influenced. Although revolution was slowly brewing, Russia on the surface remained a prisoner of its feudal past. In order to maintain the appearance of stability, Nicholas II engaged ina policy of suppreission and later on supported pogroms against Jews. Such anti-Semitic views were not new. Even before the assassination in 1881 of Alexander II (Nicholas II’s grandfather) the Romanov family had been convinced of p-lots against the tsar. During his own reign, Nicholas II was easily swayed by strong opinions. He veered from one plan to another depending on the advice of the most articulate in his council. His most trusted adviser was Sergei Yulievich Witte, a clever but sometimes unpopular councilor who was known to have liberal modernistic views regarded as controversial by conservatives, who dominated the court. Witte had two very resentful enemies…Gorymikine and Rachkobsky, who were associated with the secret police."

"Gorymikine: Surely, he must be aware that Russia is facing a revolt!"

"Rachikovsky: What if there appeared a document proving that modernization was a part of a Jewish plot?"

"Mathieu Golovinski was born in the Simbirsk region of Russia in 1865 during the reign of the Romanov dynasty. His family, a part of the fading Russian aristocracy, provided him with a fragile social standing. He grew up in a leisured environment typical of families of that class. His father, Basil Golobinski, died,however, when Mathieu was 10 years old."

"Classmate 1: Count Dashkov is close to the tsar…a minister at the court no less…"

"Count Dashkov: Ah, Mathieu Golovinski, I hear good things about you…I have need for a young man with your talents!"

"Pobedonostev: Aha! You are very well recommended Golivinski. You are just what we need here! Russia’s bureaucracy and its state apparatus have been infiltrated by Jews. Believe me. I’ve been studying the Jewish threat. As guardians of Christina Russia we must deal with them… but it will not be easy…they’re more intelligent and smarter than the average Russian. So how?? How??"

"Golovinski: What is the meaning of this? Why am I arrested?"

"Rachkovsky: The tsar must have unquestionable’’’ evidence of a threat against the monarchy!"

"Golovinski: Mr. Rachkovsky, a Zionist congress met last year. I can simply fabricate a manifesto!"

"Rachkovsky: That is Sergius Nilus!"

"Nilus: This is a program of Jewish world conquest…proof of who is behind this revolution!"

"1905 Tsar Nicholas II made inept efforts to mollify his angry people by granting basic liberties and allowing a parliament (Duma), which he kept dissolving. Meanwhile he ruthlessly suppressed the people’s rising. Royal troops fired ona peaceful march of workers in St. Petersburg on January 9, known as Bloody Sunday. Anti-Jewish pogroms were rampant. The Russian edition, published by Dr. Nilus, of the “Protocols of Zion” was widely circulated. Monarchists frequently read it aloud to illiterate peasants. 1914 The start of World War I led to Russian military defeats. A failing economy brought about terrible civilian suffering. Loyalists openly spoke about a “Jewish plot”. Food riots, strikes, and the tsar’s panicky dissolution of the Fourth Duma exploded into revolution. By November, the Bolsheviks (the revolutionary faction of the former Social Democratic workers’ party) had seized control of the government. Royalist Russians began a civil warand were defeated. Tsar Nicholas II abdicated and was executed, along with his family, by Bolsheviks in 1918. Russian aristocrats fled Russia and dispersed throughout Europe, the Far East, and the Middle East. There they settled as expatriates. Most had little work experience.In order to earn money, they frequently sold valuables. Some of these items provided information on the Russian use of anti-Semitic literature."

"1920 The Times London, Saturday, May 8, 1920. “The Jewish peril.” A disturbing pamphlet Call for inquiry. (From a correspondent.) The Times has not as yet noticed this singular little book. Its diffusion is, however, increasing, and its reading is likely to perturb the thinking public. Never before have a race and a creed been accused of a more sinister conspiracy. We in this country, who live in good fellowship with numerous representatives of Jewry, may well ask that some authoritative criticism should deal with it., and either destroy the ugly “Semitic” body or assign their proper place to the insidious allegations of this kind of literature. In spite of the urgency of impartial and exhaustive criticism, the pamphlet has been allowed, so far, to pass almost unchallenged. The Jewish Press announced, it is true, that the anti-semitism of the “Jewish Peril” was going to be exposed. But save for an unsatisfactory article in the March 5 issue of the ‘’Jewish Guardian’’ and for an almost equally unsatisfactory article in the March 5 issue of contribution to the ‘’Nation’’ of March 27, this exposure is yet to come. The article of the ‘’Jewish Guardian’’ is unsatisfactory, because it deals mainly with the personality of the author of the book in which the pamphlet is embodied, with Russian reactionary propaganda, and the Russian secret police. It does not touch the substance of the “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.” The purely Russian side of the book and its fervid “Orthodoxy.” Is not its most interesting feature. Its author-Professor S. Nilus-who was a minor official in the Department of Foreign Religions at Moscow, had, in all likelihood, opportunities of access to many archives and unpublished documents. On the other hand, the world-wide issue raised by the “Protocols” which he incorporated in his book and are now translated into English as “The Jewish Peril,” cannot fail not only to interest, but to preoccupy. What are the these of the “Protocols” with which, in the absence of public criticism, British readers have to grapple alone and unaided?"

"Have we, by straining every fiber of our national body, escaped a “Pax Germanica” only to fall into a “Pax Judaica”? The “Elders of Zion,” as represented in their “Protocols” are by no means kinder taskmasters than William II. And his henchmen would have been. All these questions, which are likely to obtrude themselves on the reader of the “Jewish Peril” cannot be dismissed by a shrug of the shoulders unless one wants to strengthen the hand of the typical anti-Semite and call forth his favourite accusation of the “conspiracy of silence.” An impartial investigation of these would-be documents and of their history is most desirable. That history is by no means clear from the English translation. They would appear, from internal evidence, to have been written by Jews for Jews, or to be cast in the form of lectures, and notes for lectures, by Jews to Jews. If so, in what circumstances were they produced and to cope with what inter-Jewish emergency? Or are we to dismiss the whole matter without inquiry and to let the influence of such a book as this work unchecked?"

"Zionist Aspirations Dr. Weizmann on Future of Palestine. Dr. Weizmann; the Zionist leader, who had just returned from the Conference at San Remo, in the course of a statement yesterday on the future of Palestine expressed his appreciation, and that of his fellow Zionists for the assistance rendered to their cause by The Times. The Balfour declaration, by being incorporated in the Treat with Turkey, had received international sanction. Dealing with the mandate conferred on Great Britain, he said:- There are still important details outstanding, such as the actual terms of the mandate and the question of boundaries in Palestine. There is the delimitation of the boundary between French Syria and Palestine, which will constitute the northern frontier and the eastern line of demarcation, adjoining Arab Syria."

"Graves: Quite a lot of attention has been given to this “Protocol” matter in England! An English edition of it, “The Jewish Peril,” appeared last January…and the “Illustrated Sunday Herald” carried a big article on it February 8, 1920"

"International Jews. In violent opposition to all this sphere of Jewish effort rise the schemes of the International Jews. The adherents of this sinister confederacy are mostly men reared up among the unhappy populations of countries where Jews are persecuted on account of their race. Most, if not all, of them have forsaken the faith of their forefathers, and divorced from their minds all spiritual hopes of the next world. This movement among the Jews is not new. From the days of Spartacus-Weishaupt to those of Karl Marx, and down to Trotsky (Russia) Bela Kun (Hungary), Rosa Luxemborg (Germany) and Emma Goldman (United States), this world-wide conspiracy for the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence, and impossible equality, has been steadily growing. It played, as a modern writer, Mrs. Webster, has so ably shown, a definitely recognizable part in the tragedy of the French Revolution. It has been the mainspring of every subversive movement during the Nineteenth Century; and now at last this band of extraordinary personalities from the underworld of the great cities of Europe and America have gripped the Russian people by the hair of their heads and have become practically the undisputed masters of that enormous empire."

"Dialogue in Hell: First Dialogue"

"Dialogue in Hell: First Dialogue States, once constituted, have two kinds of enemies: the enemies within and the enemies without. What arms shall they employ in war against the foreigners? Will the two enemy generals communicate to one another their campaign plans in order that each shall be able to defend himself? Will they forbid themselves night attacks, snares, ambuscades, battles in which the number of troops are unequal? Without doubt, they will not. And such fighters would make one laugh. And these snares, these artifices, all this strategy indispensable to warfare, you don’t want them to be employed against the enemies with ink, against the disturbers of peace?... Is it possible to conduct by pure reason violent masses which are moved only by sentiment, passion, and prejudice?"

"Protocols: Number 1, paras. 9,10 If every State has two foes, and if in regard to the external foe it is allowed and not considered immoral to use every manner and art of conflict, as for example to keep the enemy in ignorance of plans of attack and defense, to attack him by night or in superior numbers, then in what way can the same means in regard to a worse foe, the destroyer of the structure of society and the commonweal, be called immoral and not permissible? Is it possible for any sound logical mind to hope with any success to guide crowds by the aid of reasonable counsels and arguments,, when any objection or contradiction, senseless though it may be, can be made and when such objection may find more favor with the people, whose powers of reasoning are superficial?"

"Protocols: Number 1, paras. 11,12,13,14 The political has nothing in common with the moral. The word “right is an abstract thought and proved by nothing. Where does right begin? Where does it end? In any State in which there is a bad organization of authority, an impersonality of laws and of the rights over multiplying out of liberalism, I find a new right to attack by the right of the strong, and to scatter to the winds all existing forces of order and regulation, to reconstruct all institutions and to become sovereign lord of those who have left to us the rights of their power by laying them down voluntarily in their liberalism."

"Raslovlev: The “protocols” written in 1897 states that the elders decreed the expulsion of all non-Jewish secret societies."

"Protocols: Number 1, paras. 16, 18, and 20 Let us, however, in our plans, direct our attention not so much to what is good and moral as to what is necessary and useful. In order to elaborate satisfactory forms of action it is necessary to have regard to the rascalist, the slackness, the instability of the mob, its lack of capacity to understand and respect the conditions of its own life, or its own welfare. It must be understood that the might of a mob is a blind, senseless and unreasoning force ever the mercy of a suggestion from any side…. A people left to itself, i.e., to starts from its midst, bring itself ro ruin by party dissensions excited by the pursuit of power and honors and the disorders arising therefrom. Is it possible for the masses of the people calmly and without petty jealousies to form judgement, to deal with the affairs of the country which cannot be mixed up with personal interest? Can they defend themselves from an external foe?"

"Dialogue in Hell: Fourth Dialogue There are tremendous populations riveted to labor by poverty, as they were in other times by slavery. What difference, I ask you, do your fictions make to their happiness? Your great political movement has after all only ended in the triumph of a minority privileged by chance as the ancient nobility was by birth. What difference does it make to the proletariat bent over in its labor, weighted down by the heaviness of its destiny, that some orators have the right to speak, that some journalists have the right to write? You have created rights which will be purely academic for the mass of the people, since it cannot make use of them. These rights, of which the law permits him the ideal enjoyment and necessity refuses him the actual exercise, are the people only a bitter irony of defeat."

"Protocols: Number 3, para. 5 All people are chained to heavy toil by poverty more firmly than ever they were chained by slavery and serfdom; from these, one way and another, they might free themselves, these could be settled with, but from want they will never get away. We have included in the constitution such rights as to the masses appear fictitious and not actual rights. All these so-called “People’s Rights” can exist only in idea, an idea which can never be realized in practical life. What is it to the proletariat laborer, bowed double over his heavy toil, crushed by his lot in life, if talkers get the right to babble, if journalists get the right to scribble nonsense side by side with good stuff, once the proletariat has no other profit out of the constitution save only those pitiful crumbs which we fling them from out table in return for their voting in favor of what we dictate, in favor of the men we place in power, the servants of our agenteur…. Republican Rights for a poor man are no more than a bitter piece of irony."

"Dialogue in Hell: Fourth Dialogue"

"Protocols: Number 3, para. 16 It is the bottomless rascality of the goyim peoples, who crawl on their bellies to force, but are merciless toward weakness, unsparing to faults, and indulgent to crimes, unwilling to bear the contradictions of a free social system but patient unto martyrdom under the violence of a bold despotism. It is those qualities which are aiding us to independence. From the premier-dictators of the present day the goyim peoples suffer patiently and bear such abuse as for the least of them they would have beheaded twenty kings."

"Dialogue in Hell: Ninth Dialogue"

"Protocols: Number 10, paras. 6,7 A scheme of government should come ready made from one brain, because it will never be clinched firmly if it is allowed to split into fractional parts in the minds of many. It is allowable, therefore, for us to have cognizance of the scheme of action but not to discuss it lest we disturb its artfulness, and interdependence of its component parts, the practical force of the secret meaning of each clause. To discuss and make alteration in a labor of this kind by means of numerous votings is to impress upon it the stamp of all ratiocinations and misunderstandings which have failed to penetrate the depth and nexus of its plottings…. These schemes will not turn existing institutions upside down just yet, They will only effect changes in their economy and consequently in the whole combined movement of their progress, which will thus be directed along the paths laid down in our schemes."

"Graves: Here, we can clearly see how an idea is copied!"

"Dialogue in Hell: Tenth Dialogue"

"Protocols: Number 11, paras. 1,2 The state Council has been, as it were, the emphatic expression of the ruler; it will be, as the “show” part of the Legislative Corps what may be called the editorial committee of the alws and decrees of the ruler. Br> This, then, is the program of the new constitution. We shall make Law, Right, and Justice (1) in the guide of proposals to the Legislative Corps, (2) by the decrees of the president under the guise of general regulations, of orders of the Senate and of resolutions of the State Council in the guise of ministerial orders, (3) and in case a suitable occasion should arise, in the form of a revolution in the State."

"Graves: When copying the “Dialogues”…why would the :Protocols” alter “coups d'etat: to “revolution”?"

"Dialogue in Hell: Thirteenth Dialogue"

"Protocols: Number 15, para. 6 You cannot imagine to what extent the wisest of the goyim can be brought to a state of unconscious naivete in the presence of this condition of high conceit of themselves, and at the same time how easy it is to take the heart out of them…. These tigers in appearance have the souls of sheep and the wind blows freely through their heads. We have set them on the hobby-horse of an idea about the absorbtion of individuality by the symbolic unit of Collectivism…."

"Graves: “…Tigers with the souls of sheep and heads full of wind…” A CLEVER METAPHOR…NO WONDER THE “PROTOCOLS” COPIES IT!"

"Dialogue in Hell: Seventeenth Dialogue"

"Protocols: Number 17, paras. 7,8 Our kingdom will be an apologia of the divinity Vishnu, in whom is found its personification – in our hundred hands will be, one in each, the springs of the machinery of social life. We shall see everything without the aid of official police…. In our programs one-third of our subjects will keep the rest under observation…. Our agents will be taken from the higher as well as the lower raniks of society, from among the administrative class who spend their time in amusements, editors, printers, and publishers, booksellers, clerks, and salesmen, workmen, coachmen, lackeys, et cetera…."

"Graves: Now, why on earth would the Elders of Zion have their kingdom be an apologia for Vishnu, a Hindu God?"

"Dialogue in Hell: Twentieth Dialogue"

"Protocols Number 20, paras. 26-32 The budgets of income and expenditure will be carried out side by side that they may not be obscured by distance one to another. …The first irregularity, as we shall point out, consists in their beginning with drawing up a single budget which year after year grows owing to the following cause: this budget is dragged out to half the year, ten they demand a"

"Dialogue in Hell: finally comes the liquidation which adds 15, 20, or 30 millions. In short, in the general reckoning, the total of the unforeseen expenses forms one-third of the estimated expenditures. It is upon this last figure that the legislative vote of the Chambers falls as a form of confirmation. In this way, at the end of ten years the budget can be doubles and even tripled…."

"Protocols: supplementary budget, and all this ends up in accordance with the sum of the total addition, the annual departure from the normal reaches up as much as 50 percent in a year, and so the annual budget is trebled in ten years…. Every kind of loan proves infirmity in the State and a want of understanding of the rights of the State. Loans hang like a sword of Damocles over the heads of rulers, who, instead of taking from their subjects by a temporary tax, come begging with outstretched palm of our bankers…the Goy states go on in persisting in putting more on to themselves to that they must inevitably perish, drained by voluntary blood-letting."

"Dialogue in Hell: probable resources. How are loans made? By the issue of bonds containing an obligation on the part of the government to pay a yearly interest proportionate to the capital which has been depleted. If the loan is at 5 percent, for instance, the state, at the end of twenty years, has paid a sum equal to the capital borrowed; at the end of forty years, a double amount; at the end of sixty years, a triple amount, and yet it always remains debtor for the total of the same capital. The modern states wished to put a necessary"

"Protocols: What also indeed is, in substance, a loan, especially a foreign loan? A loan is an issue of government bills of exchange containing a percentage obligation commensurate to the sum of the loan capital. If the loan bears a charge of 5 percent, then in twenty years the State vainly pays away in interest a sum equal to the loan borrowed, in forty years it is paying a double sum, in sixty treble and all the while the debt remains an unpaid debt. from this calculation it is obvious that with any form of taxation per head the State is bailing out the last coppers of the poor taxpayers in order to settle accounts…;instead of collecting"

"Dialogue in Hell: limitation to the increase of taxes. So they conceived a scheme truly admirable for its simplicity…. A special fund was created, the capitalized resources of which are meant to be a permanent redemption of the public debt by successive fractions; so that every time the state borrows, it must endow the sinking fund with a certain capital for the purpose of liquidating the new debt at a given time…. Our system of accounting, fruit of long experience, is distinguished by the clarity and the certitude of its procedures. It obstructs abuses and gives to no one, from the smallest official to the chief of state himself, the means of diverting the least sum from its original purpose, or of making irregular use of it."

"Protocols: these coppers for its own need without additional interest. So long as loans were internal the Goyim only shuffled their money from the pockets of the poor to those of the rich, but when we brought up the necessary person in order to transfer the loans into the external sphere, all the wealth of States flowed into out cash boxes…. We shall so hedge about our system of accounting that neither the ruler nor the most insignificant public servant will be in a position to divery even the smallest sum from its destination without detection or to direct it in another direction except that which will be once fixed in a definite plan of action."

"Graves: Now…why would the elders of Zion in their protocols of world domination devote so much time to the ‘’’mundane’’’ details of financial management??"

"Dialogue in Hell: Twenty-First Dialogue"

"Protocols Number 21, paras 1, 11 To what I reported to you at the last meeting I shall say nothing more, because they have fed us with national moneys opf the Goyim…. We have taken advantage of the venality of administrators and slackness of rulers to get our moneys twice,thrice, and more times over, by lending to Goy governments moneys which were not."

"Graves:…unless, of course, this was not written by the elders at all…as we suspect!"

"Dialogue in Hell: Twenty-third through twenty-fifth dialogues"

"Protocols: Number 24, paras. 3-15 Certain members of the sneed of David will prepare the kings and their heirs inducting them into the most secret mysteries of the political, into schemes of government, but providing always that none may come to knowledge of the secrets…. The king’s plan of action for the current moment, and all the more so for the future, will be unknown, even to those who are called his closest counselors. <br? Only the king and the three who stood sponsor for him will know what is coming. In the person of the king who with unbending will is master."

"Graves: An obvious adaptation! Where the “Dialogue” uses ‘’’prince’’’, the “Protocols” uses ‘’’king.’’’"

"Dialogue in Hell: inscrutable…They never know if some enterprise already prepared will not descend on them from one day to the other. A Prince whose power is founded upon a democratic base, must speak carefully, albeit popularly. If necessary he must not fear to speak like a demagogue, for after all he is the people, and he must have its passions... You asked me a moment ago if I knew self-denial, if I would sacrifice myself for my people, relinquish the throne if necessary; now you have my answer, I can relinquish it as a martyr."

"Protocols: of himself and of humanity all will discern as it were fate with its mysterious ways. None will know what the king wishes to attain by his dispositions, and therefore none will dare to stand across an unknown path…. That the people may know and love their king, it is indispensable for him to converse in the market-places with his people. This ensures the necessary clinching of two forces which are now divided one from another by us by the terror. The prop of humanity in the person of the supreme lord of all the world of the holy seed of David must sacrifice to his people all personal inclinations."

"”Jewish Peril” exposed. Historic “Fake.” Details of the forgery. More parallels. We published yesterday an article from our Constantinople Correspondent, which showed that the notorious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” – one of the mysteries of politics since 1905 – were a clumsy forgery, the text being based on a book published in French in 1865. The book, without title page, was obtained by our correspondent from a Russian source, and we were able to identify it with a complete copy in the British Museum. The disclosure, which naturally aroused the greatest interest among those familiar with Jewish questions, finally disposes of the “Protocols” as credible evidence of a Jewish plot against civilization. We publish below a second article, which gives further close parallels between the language of the Protocols and that attributed to Machiavelli and Montesquieu in the volume dated from Geneva. Plagiarism at Work. (From our Constantinople Correspondent.) While the Geneva Dialogue open with an exchange of compliments between Monsequieu and Machiavelli, which covers seven pages, the author of the Protocols plunges at once in medias res. One can imagine him hastily turning over those first seven pages of the book which he has been ordered to paraphrase against time, and angrily ejaculating, “Nothing here.” But on page 8 of the Dialogues he finds what he wants."

"1921 Germany"

"1923 Germany"

"Adolf Hitler, while spending three years in jail for the Beer Hall Putsch, writes his famous book “Mein Kampf.”"

"Hitler: To what extend the whole existence of his [Jewish] people is based on a continuous lie is shown incomparably by THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION."

"1934 Bern, Switzerland The Trial"

"Reporter: Ha! Ha! Ha!"

"April 1935"

"Reporter: The “Protocols” trial is on today. I’ve been assigned to report on it for my paper."

"1945 As the Allies rummages through documents in the wreckage of defeated Germany, evidence of the influence of the “Protocols” was found by American Intelligence."

"1993 California Los Angeles Times November 28, 1993 “In what observers called an historic ruling, a Russian court has pronounced the infamous Protocols of Zion an anti-semitic forgery…[It is] the first such verdict in the land where the fraud originated 90 years ago. ‘Up to now, every country has disengaged itself from this shameful book except Russia where it was concocted,’ Tancred Golenpolsky, the publisher of the Moscow Jewish newspaper that won the ruling, said Saturday. The court cast arose 10 months after Golenpolsky’s Jewish Gazette accused the radical nationalist Group Pamyat (Memory) of printing anti-Semitic sentiments…Fostering ethnic conflict is punishable under Russian law.”"

"Research desk: Despite the Russian court’s condemnation and the Dodd Keating congressional report in 1964, the world wide use and publication of the “Protocols” has continued. Not only did the Ku Klux Klan continue to distribute the book in America.. but in 1968, in Beiruit, the Islamic institute there published 300,000 copies in French, Italian, Spanish, and Arabic."

"Researcher: In almost every country there are people trying to seize political power! What is the easy way?"

"Research desk: In 1930, a Spanish edition of the “Protocols” appeared. And in 1972 another edition was published there and used to explain certain Vatican reforms by the Catholic Church! It Italy in 1930 the neo-fascist group Ordino Nuovo circulated a new edition of the “Protocols”! And also in 1930 the neo-facist group ordino nuovo circulated a new edition of the “Protocols”! And also in 1930 in Argentina “Los Protocols De Los Savios De Sion Y La Subversion Mundial” appeared. It was supposed to predict a plot to found a Jewish state by Zionists in Argentina."

"Research desk: In 1972, an edition of the “Protocols of Zion” was published in Egypt! In 1974 an edition of the “Protocols” was published in Bombay, India, entitled “International Conspiracy Against Indians.” In 1972, the USSR embassy in Paris released an anti-Israel paper that contained passages from the “Protocols of Zion.' In 1977, in America, a national states’ rights party published three editions of the “protocols”…in English! In 1978, this book appeared in shops around England!"

"Research desk: In 1987 a Japanese language edition of the “Protocols” appeared in Japan! In 1988 the Palestinian activist group Hamaas published the “Protocols” to denounce Zionists. And in 1990 this appeared in Damascus"

"Research desk: In 1992, a Mexican edition of the “Protocols"’’’ was listed in a few Catholic schools as required reading! And that same year in Turkey, a newspaper carried a 40-page insert that linked Freemasonry to Jewish world power headed by 70 elders! Again in 1992 a Russian edition of the “Protocols of Zion” appeared. Well, that’s the whole story, sir."

"Audience member: At last we have an unquestionable disclosure that erases any claim to legitimacy of the “protocols of the Elders of Zion”!"

"2000 Louisiana, U.S.A."

"2001 San Diego, U.S.A."

"Graphic novelist: Excuse me…you’ve got a copy of the “Protocols of Zion” there! …Why?"

"Graphic novelist: Don’t you feel foolish accepting that lie?"

"Publisher: But the good news is….the U.S. state department called on Egypt to stop it…and the intellectual community of Egypt helped to prevent its broadcast. And recently the Russian government appointed a group of independent experts who examined and certified that the “protocols of Zion” is a fraud!"

"2004 The Protocols of Zion is still sold in bookstores around the world"

"It’s mythic New York. And that’s what Will drew. He and I really did share two profound loves: One was for New York, and the other was for beautiful women."

"But... you can’t be Miyazaki, you can only be the second Miyazaki, and that isn’t something to aim for."

"Your Names success told me movies still have the power to connect with society. As a medium, it still has a power that resonates."

"I think animation can tell more than live action."

"If I had been born 10 years earlier, I don’t think I would be an animator."

"I think that science fiction can, by creating extreme situations and settings, draw out the essence of human relationships."

"You don’t want to be imitating his [Miyazaki] style. You’ve got to create something different, something that he hasn’t done."

"But I do want to trigger emotions like his [Miyazaki] movies triggered our emotions."

"I consider my anime as if they were children who, once grown up, are free to take their own path and personally I do not want to intrude in their lives. No father should snoop in the affairs of their children."

"It is a part of puberty that we just want to go somewhere far away. We only have a vague image, like behind that mountain or a place more beautiful..."

"But the thing about getting rejected is that you reflect and think and analyze about why you got turned down. You learn a lot more from stories about getting rejected than stories about becoming happy."

"I think most directors and people who make anime would agree that their latest film is probably the one they feel the most confident in, that they have done their best and put everything into."

"It’s the situations that these distant relationships create that interest me more than the distance itself."

"It's funny, I grew up in a happy family with loving parents, but I've killed off a lot of parents in these books. The orphan in children's literature, allows the child protagonist to move the story forward themselves. I think that, however happy a family, every intelligent child thinks: 'How did I come to be born to these parents?' – it is about finding your place in the world."

"I don’t really feel like the gender of character is what causes someone to identify with them. It’s the situation they’re in, it’s the way they deal with danger, the way that they deal with fears. And so I feel like it’s a slightly larger question in terms of what makes us identify with someone."

"I could never imagine a movie being made from the way I had structured the book, it still feels miraculous that we made it this way without compromising the story, but everything has felt miraculous since I got that first phone call saying Martin Scorsese wants to make a movie out of 'Hugo.' I recognize how lucky I am."

"If they want to be illustrators, there's no substitute for a very intensive training in art, and also the use of computers. There are adjunct jobs that are available in publishing that get your foot in the door, and there isn't a designer that doesn't have to use the computer these days. But they have to learn how to draw as well. I'm old-fashioned. I think there's no substitute for basic skills."

"I never thought of that, really, when I was younger, but when I started doing some of the autobiographical picture books, I realized that my family was a great treasure trove. We were pretty ordinary — we weren't really exceptional. I don't think my life growing up was really too much different from the average kid in Meriden, Connecticut at that time. But it's very different from young people today, so I like it that older people my age feel that it's helping them to remember their childhood. Little kids think it's like life on a different planet."

"I'm often called the father of Mega Man, but actually, his design was already created when I joined Capcom.My mentor [Capcom senior member Akira Kitamura], who was the designer of the original Mega Man, had a basic concept of what Mega Man was supposed to look like. So I only did half of the job in creating him."

"You know, I want to word this in a way to explain some of the issues that come with trying to make a game of this size on multiple platforms."

"Personally when I looked around [at] all the different games at the TGS floor, I said "Man, Japan is over. We're done. Our game industry is finished.""

"I look around Tokyo Games Show, and everyone’s making awful games; Japan is at least five years behind."

"It's very severe, but very honest. Unless Japanese people feel embarrassed from the experience of getting harsh comments, saying [new games] could have been better is not an opinion they would take seriously. When they're embarrassed and they feel obliged to change, it would make a difference."

"Back in the day Japanese games were used to winning and were used to success. We celebrated all sorts of victories. However at some point these winners became losers. Not accepting that fact has led to the tragic state of Japanese games today."

"I want to end comments that Capcom games made in Europe aren't really Capcom games ... basically saying that whether games are created in America or Japan or anywhere in the world, I will be the one overlooking it and so it will have that Capcom flavor that fans know and love."

"how do i get cowboy paint off a dog ."

"im little jesica. im dying because of obamas help care bill. im on my death bed and the doctor is ignoring me because my dady works hard"

"Welcome to the citadel of eternal wisdom. Behold, this crystal contains the sum of all human knowledge -- Except Rap And Country"

"icant come to work today.. on account of JERRY DUTY *SHoves every seinfeld disk into dvd player at once*"

"'im not owned! im not owned!!', i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob"

"fuck "jokes". everything i tweet is real. raw insight without the horse shit. no, i will NOT follow trolls. twitter dot com. i live for this"

""Is Wario A Libertarian" - the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate,"

"see this watch? i got it by Crying. my car? crying. my beautiful wife? Crying. My perfect teeth? Crying. now get the fuck out of my office"

"another day volunteering at the betsy ross museum. everyone keeps asking me if they can fuck the flag. buddy, they wont even let me fuck it"

"how come a baby born with a foot in its brain is considered a "Miracle Baby" but when I get my dick stuck in a drawer im just some asshole"

""jail isnt real," i assure myself as i close my eyes and ram the hallmark gift shop with my shitty bronco"

"THE COP GROWLS "TAKE OFF TH OSE JEANS, CITIZEN." I COMPLY, REVEALING THE FULL LENGTH DENIM TATTOOS ON BOTH LEGS. THE COP SCREAMS; DEFEATED"

"the doctor reveals my blood pressure is 420 over 69. i hoot & holler outta the building while a bunch of losers try to tell me that im dying"

"strongest blade in the world, however, it is so fragile as to shatter when handled by any force other than the delicate touch of a lesbian ."

"IF THE ZOO BANS ME FOR HOLLERING AT THE ANIMALS I WILL FACE GOD AND WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL"

"who the fuck is scraeming 'LOG OFF' at my house. show yourself, coward. i will never log off"

"oh nothin, i was just buying some ear medication for my sick uncle... *LOWERS SHADES TO LOOK YOU DEAD IN THE EYE* who's a Model by the way,"

""This Whole Thing Smacks Of Gender," i holler as i overturn my uncle's barbeque grill and turn the 4th of July into the 4th of Shit"

"my disrespectful teen son somehow got hold of a gluten product and now he wants to become a cat girl"

"here's a list of touhou girls i want to have as a Mom someday & here is a copy of that list in case you accidentally throw it in the gabarge"

"Food $200 Data $150 Rent $800 Candles $3,600 Utility $150 someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this. my family is dying"

"if your grave doesnt say "rest in peace" on it you are automatically drafted into the skeleton war"

"big bird was obviously just a man in a suit. but the other ones were too small to contain men. so what the fuck"

"its the weekend baby. youknow what that means. its time to drink precisely one beer and call 911"

"it is with a heavy heart that i must announce that the celebs are at it again"

"the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between good & bad things. you imbecile. you fucking moron""

"blocked. blocked. blocked. youre all blocked. none of you are free of sin"

"awfully bold of you to fly the Good Year blimp on a year that has been extremely bad thus far"

"[man leans into doorway of WTC bathroom] "Hey, you gotta finish up in there. 9/11 is happening." "Alright. Just a sec.""

"drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,"

"THERAPIST: your problem is, that youre perfect, and everyone is jealous of your good posts, and that makes you rightfully upset. ME: I agree"

"joke's on you; i actually love being body slammed by one dozen perfect wrestlers. and my mouth isn't filled with bloodm, it's victory wine"

"the numa numa man just bougt a $70million house and im here at the library trying to photocopy a fruit roll up"

"koko the talking ape.. has been living high on the hog, wasting our tax dollars on high capacity diapers. No more. i will suplex that beast,"

"and another thing: im not mad. please dont put in the newspaper that i got mad."

"do not be afraid to talk to that lonely boy on the train ... with the rosy red cheeks, sun glasses & big cigar... he just mmight be... angel"

"ah, So u persecute just because he has different beliefs? Do Tell. (girls get mad at me) Sorry. Im sorry. Im trying to remove it"

"the jduge orders me to take off my anonymous v mask & im wearing the joker makeup underneath it. everyone in the courtroom groans at my shit"

"its fucked up how there are like 1000 christmas songs but only 1 song aboutr the boys being back in town"

"Politic's is back baby. It's good again. Awoouu (wolf Howl)"

"donlad trump reportedly says that normal type pokemon are a waste of time. they're just dirty birds & rats who have no right being a pokemon"

"DOCTOR: you cant keep doing this to yourself. being The Last True Good Boy online will destroy you. you must stop posting with honor ME: No,"

"so long suckers! i rev up my motorcylce and create a huge cloud of smoke. when the cloud dissipates im lying completely dead on the pavement"

"user named " beavis_sinatra " has been terrorizing me since 2004, by sending me pictures of cups that are too close to the edge of the table"

"ME: there is a new type of beer called "Wine" shirtless guy witht 104 followers: Shut the fuck up ME: Yes sir"

"girls always love to telling people not to" Mansplain" but they do not care of, "Man's Pain""

"1st grade: Mastered. 2nd Grade: MAstered. 3rd Grade: Mastered. 4th Grade: Heres when they start trying to trick you 5th Grade:This ones hard"

"using the toilet when i hear Our national anthem start to play. i do what i must. i stand tall in complete agony; as shit runs down my leg,"

"im afraid you do not grasp the enormity of who it is you are dealing with. (removes diaper,. revealing two sub-diapers ) Shall we continue.."

"if you ask me this election could end about 100 different ways: 1) trump gets 0% of the vote 2) trump gets 1% of the vote 3) trump gets 2% o"

"i refuse to consume any product that has been created by, or is claimed to have been created by, the (((Keebler Elves)))"

"trying to heal..... please donate to my go fund me... $10 will make me less racist... $100 will make me extremely less racist...thank you..."

"the human mind... perhaps the most powerful weapon. second only to the "GUN""

"issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the terror group ISIL. you do not, under any circumstances, "gotta hand it to them""

"look, im not saying that martin luther king jr was a gamer. that would be ludicrous. im simply saying that if games had existed at the time,"

"reading a 900 page book on Dry Rubs and immediately forgetting all of it and just dumping a shit load of cocoa pebbles on my ribs"

"i lvoe and cherish all of the girls of this site, and other websites. you all become my wife more and more with each passing day. Thank you"

"people come up to me and say, "I will never use the bathroom. I will never shit" and i gotta tell them pal, sooner or later youre gonna shit"

"turning a big dial taht says "Racism" on it and constantly looking back at the audience for approval like a contestant on the price is right"

"revealing the gender of my baby by eating a whole bunch of food dye and taking a huge pink shit in front of my relatives. ah!! its a girl !!"

"DUMBASS: SHut the fuck up THE WISE MAN: No you shut the fuck up"

"im stupider then dog shit, i dont give a shit, and i dont give a fuck, and i will never shut the fuck up, and i'll always Respect my enemys."

"my favorite feature of this site is absolutely no consequences for my opinions sucking ffucking ass and me being 100% wrong about everything"

"i often disagree with DigimonOtis, but his efforts to keep Sharia Law out of the donkey kong 64 wiki are much needed in this wolrd of danger"

"im afraid i must say that i do not find the mysteries featured on "scooby-doo" challenging enough ."

"getting pissed off at the idea of someone going on to wiki pedia and changing the name of the japanese suicide forest to "Warios Woods""

"i hate i t when girls think im proposing whenever i take the knee at them in protest"

"VERIFY!! VERIFIY THIS ACCOUNT! THE TROLLS ARE BREAKING IN THROUGH THE WINDOWS!! I NEED THE CHECK MARK !! NOW!! NOW!! NOW!!"

"my friend the only crypto currency you wanna get your hands on is this: bird seed. There is a lot of birds and they all gotta eat"

"love when i lose aobut 100 followers immediately after making a beautiful post. the weak shriveling up into dust. Thats called darwin"

"i regret to inform you, that by resorting to Swear language, you have forfeit this debate. Farewell my bitch"

"i just need to say, to anyone reading this.. You are Important, You are loved, and You belong in this world, if you have over 5000 followers"

"go ahead. keep screaming "Shut The Fuck Up " at me. it only makes my opinions Worse"

"the worst part of nationalism is having to pretend the flag is really good, like "yeah the country looks exactly like that. they nailed it""

"i would take so many bribes if i was a judge. half my shit would be bribes. take bribes from the criminals until theyre too poor to do crime"

"a man asks God, how am i supposed to live, without George H.W. Bush God simply said "That is why I made 2 george bushs" The man just smiled."

"im not going to post about taking shits or shitting anymore . i Condemn all of my previous posts about shitting and asses"

"shitting on a Towel"

""The Godfather: Part Iraq" (2004) In this 4th installment of the Godfather series, the godfathers head to iraq to settle the score, of 9/11."

"just found out about Object Permanence... why didnt any one tell me about this shit"

"Im the only man here who injects himself with a CIA Grade Truth Serum before each and every post i make. Remember only that"

"i think it would be fucking stupid to be a fat ass caterpillar and have your entire body be made out of weak points"

"who cares. pick up a foot ball"

"the entire time youre watching the movie 101 Dalmatians, youre just thinking, This is so many more dalmations than usual. It is just fucked"

"theres a popular nursery rhyme in which the singer claims to be a teapot. this, for many children, is their first experience with "Trolling""

"playing the worlds most normal sized violin"

"Buffalo wild wing gets $0 tip for serving "Bones" to me in chicken, if i had wanted to eat bones i would take my Ass to the grave yard"

"the coolest thing the police ever did was invent their own flag thats just a desecrated version of the american flag"

"they are going to start calling the damn gas prices "Gasp prices" because thats what i do when i see then"

"i deserve th e most mentally ill president imaginable. 99 year old babbling doofus. Send us into the volcano sir"

"ive flattened the curve over 100 times. what have you pricks been doing"

"every generation deserves at least 5 movies named "Spider Man 2""

"guys who get off on being humiliated used to expose themselves at the grocery store or something. now they pretend to be journalists on here"

"if you ask me many of Americans have been wearing the mask even before from covid 19. the mask i refer to is of course the clown's mask."

"one thing the gamer world is certainly agreeing of, is that halo infinite is sure to be the highest numbered halo game yet"

"epic ; supreme court rules nabisco is legally allowed to label their products as "Homemade" after forcing the employees to live at the factory"

"i would rather go fuck my self than read one more post on the bird websitw"

"thinking about a "Cock Ring" for the neck that strangles all the blood into your brain and gives you what is essentially a mental erection"

"(hearing about a guy who died) wow thats like 0.0003 9/11s"

"should i learn Letters first? or choose the path of Numbers? a queston every baby must ask it self"

"everyone less mentally ill than me is Privileged, everyone more mentally ill than me is Toxic, everyone equally mentally ill to me is Cool"

"how about instead of drop the ball on new years we drop the damn gas prices for onve"

"for like 8 months i thought covid was one of those joke diseases where you ask "what's covid" and the other guy tells tou to suck his nuts"

"society is so much fucking Bitched ....."

"no heaven or hell when you die, everyone is just herded into a room with a big scoreboard saying which person blasted the most Cum"

"ive generated over 100,000 wordles in my head and completed them easily. what more can i say of it"

"marijuana did columbine"

"my biggest fear is that theres an earth quake while im jacking off and little pieces of cum start flyiyng into my mouth and all over my dog"

"you call this shit rotisserie chicken? I bet this shit hasnt even rotated 1 time in its entire life."

"(suddenly becoming very somber) no Woman should have to pay over $10 for a Brassiere."

"I am Donald "Penis" Trump, known & hated for my Inflammatory rhetoric, as well as my old mafia-style Racism. Looking forward to posting here"

"just clicking my mouse a bit. having a look at my files"

"i really dont care what Yankee Doodle did when he went to town. His toxic fanbase tells me everything I need to know about him ."

"Bad news folks! i waited in line for 16 hours to see the queen. But by the time i got there she was fuckin DEAD!!!!!!"

"now that elon has disposed of the left wing woke brigade I can finally post pictures of my COCK!!!"

"ripleys suck my dick or not"

"you just paid $8 to eat my ass stupid #BlockTheBlue"

"Having a bad one; First my Lockheed Martin investment tanks after the ceo posts his penis. Now Cold stone Creamery just called me the N-Word"

"HELP ELON!!ELON!! HELP! HELP! POST "DOG COIN""

"CHIEF: dracula is in our sights. Take the shot! SNIPER: I can't, Sir. I'm Woke! ME (watching through binoculars): He's woke! He wont do it!"

"if you drop a chicken cutlet on the floor it absorbs all kinds of dirt & particles that make it undesirable. Thats sort of how AI works"

"many claim to have seen me walking around the Las Vegas strip with a Device attached to my penis. This is untrue #NoDevice"

"is it true that if 3 adult men are jacking off in a bunk bed their hand movements will eventually Synchronize ?"

"" You know Gru been Fucking those minions " No , i don't know that. But thanks for showing your ignorance."

"born to be bull shit"

"the last time i stopped jacking off for 1 week I went insane and wrote the movie The God Father"

"my thoughts on the post "Georg Jetson Sucked Me" . First off you spelled his name wrong. Second off youre an idiot even thinking that"

"Twitter, as I understand it, is a sort of "Hell" that I was banished to upon death in my previous life. In this abstract realm, the only thing I am certain of is that my cries are awarded "Favs" or "RTs" when they are particularly miserable or profane. These ethereal merits do nothing to ease my suffering, but I have deliriously convinced myself that gathering enough of them will impress my unseen superiors and grant me a promotion to a higher plane of existence. This is my sole motivation."

"it is absolutely a full time job, dealing with this Shit. i'm talking True full time, 24 hours. Listening to the perverts scream at me in the instant dm box while I'm trying to cobble together a coherent post. Standing on thje median strip at a busy intersection, next to the guy with a 20% off mattress sign, failing to shill copies of my Horrible book. Waking up screaming from Night terrors involving complete strangers accusing me of "Selling OUt." There is no clocking out. The clock is a part of me, it's always inside of me, and I'm fucked."

"My posts are the bible. My brain is the bible. The books I'm releasing are bibles. It's all bible, baby"

"You may have heard of a character from the batman movies, called the Joker. The joker just lives a normal life like you or me, going to the grocery store, and the office or what have you. But WHen the joker puts his mask on, he becomes the joker, and he mercilessly goes out there and gets Paid. Thats what I try to do in my life and the way I live life, and I do do it every day, and it is the essence of understanding my pain."

"I knew the railroad was coming—I saw men already swarming into the land. I knew the derby hat, the smoking chimneys, the cord binder, and the 30-day note were upon us in a restless surge. I knew the wild riders and the vacant land were about to vanish forever... and the more I considered the subject, the bigger the forever loomed. Without knowing how to do it, I began to record some facts around me, and the more I looked the more the panorama unfolded."

"Art is a she-devil of a mistress, and if at times in earlier days she would not even stoop to my way of thinking, I have preserved and so will continue."

"The Indians are most enlightened, for they have at least one distinct impression regarding government. They know that it never keeps it word. Any old chief will tell you that white men are all liars, and if you press him regarding it, he will prove it, and the only exception he will make is the white soldier."

"After two centuries of civil administration, with its agents, its treachery, its inefficiency, and at time its horrible corruption, where are the Indians? Such as survived the flood of white immigration are living in poverty and ignorance."

"The Northwest is dotted over with soldiers sleeping out in the snows of this winter because of this mismanagement of the Indian Bureau. With an instance of this incompetency before their eyes nearly half of the time, people in the East ought to understand, and every man who in the West come near enough to get the stench cannot but know it rottenness. It’s unchristian, it’s inhuman, it’s vile. It is the constantly recurring old story—a gross cause of mismanagement. And then the army is called in to be responsible—to protect the lives of the settlers, and in these days to shoot down a people who have the entire sympathy of every soldier in the ranks."

"The Saxon race is not in a habit of dividing the spoils with a conquered one."

"The northern Cheyennes, after they surrendered to General Miles, irrigated and raised crops at the mouth of the Tongue River for two years, and almost immediately sank into poverty and sloth when given Interior Department rations, for which they did not have to work in order to procure."

"In Arizona nature allures with her gorgeous color and then repells with the cruelty of her formation—waterless, barren, and desolate."

"Cuba is not a new-born country, peopled by wood-cutting, bear-righting, agricultural folks, who must be fresh and virtuous in order to exist. It is an old country, time worn, decayed, and debauched by thieving officials and fire and sword."

"Physically, one is immediately impressed with the underdeveloped state of Havana and Cuba generally, and of the illimitable possibilities. The Spanish officials taxed thrift right out of the island; they took industry by the neck and throttled it. The Church charged a poor man so much to get married that they, for the most part, were compelled to forego that ceremony, and when they were dead they taxed their bones."

"It is not their first rodeo, one can see, but I should wish they were with mamma and the buckboard, instead of out here in the brush, charging wild bulls."

"He is, of course, one of the most typical American artists we have ever had, and he has portrayed a most characteristic and yet vanishing type of American life. The soldier, the cowboy and rancher, the Indian, the horses and the cattle of the plains, will live in his pictures and bronzes, I verily believe, for all time."

"I found myself in Twilight Land. How I ever got there I cannot tell, but there I was in Twilight Land. What is Twilight Land? It is a wonderful, wonderful place where no sun shines to scorch your back as you jog along the way, where no rain falls to make the road muddy and hard to travel, where no wind blows the dust into your eyes or the chill into your marrow. Where all is sweet and quiet and ready to go to bed. Where is Twilight Land? Ah! that I cannot tell you. You will either have to ask your mother or find it for yourself."

"Once upon a time there came a soldier marching along the road, kicking up a little cloud of dust at each step—as strapping and merry and bright-eyed a fellow as you would wish to see in a summer day. Tramp! tramp! tramp! he marched, whistling as he jogged along, though he carried a heavy musket over his shoulder and though the sun shone hot and strong and there was never a tree in sight to give him a bit of shelter."

"There was once upon a time a man whom other men called Aben Hassen the Wise. He had read a thousand books of magic, and knew all that the ancients or moderns had to tell of the hidden arts."

"“Rest content,” said the Talisman of Solomon, “with knowing that which concerns thine own self, and seek not to find an answer that will be to thine own undoing. Be thou also further advised: do not question the Demon Zadok.”"

"“You look as hale and strong as ever,” says St. Nicholas. “Ah, yes,” says Ill-Luck, “I find plenty to do in this world of woe.”"

"In the old, old days when men were wiser than they are in these times, there lived a great philosopher and magician, by name Nicholas Flamel. Not only did he know all the actual sciences, but the black arts as well, and magic, and what not."

"Give a fool heaven and earth, and all the stars, and he will make ducks and drakes of them."

"When man’s strength fails, woman’s wit prevails."

"My son," said he, "if every one in your case should shed tears as abundantly as you have done, the world would have been drowned in salt water by this time. As for your friend, think not ill of him; no man loveth another who is always giving."

"Many and many a man has come to trouble—so he will say—by following his wife’s advice."

"Spanish story hours were held outside the libraries wherever they were requested...Howard Pyle was a favorite author, and The Wonder Clock (1904) was the collection of stories they liked best."

"The Sanskrit word ‘maya’ refers to all things that can be measured. Human understanding of the world is limited, hence measurable, hence maya. To believe this maya is truth is delusion. Beyond maya, beyond human values and human judgements, beyond the current understanding of the world, is a limitless reality which makes room for everyone and everything. That reality is God."

"The Goddess is Maya, embodiment of all delusions. She is Shakti, personification of energy. She is Adi, primal, as ancient and boundless as the soul...The embodiment of Adi- Maya-Shakti – Durga is the invincible one. She is at once bride and warrior. The one establishes home, provides pleasure, produces children and offers food."

"The Tantrik approach to self-realization is different from the Vedic approach. The former looks upon the Goddess as Shakti, energy, to be experienced while the latter looks upon the Goddess as Maya, delusion, to be transcended. The former is more sensory, the latter less so."

"Though in Bengal and Orissa, some say, Alakshmi is visualized as an owl seated beside Lakshmi, Alakshmi is a secret goddess, invisible to all. The only way to see her is to have Saraswati, goddess of knowledge and good sense by your side. But Lakshmi will never let Saraswati stay in the same house as her. She will go wherever there is Saraswati and kick her out, making room for Alakshmi. Why does she do that, one wonders. But then one is told that Lakshmi is a whimsical goddess, she does not like to stay in one place too long. By kicking Saraswati out and by getting Alakshmi in, she ensures there is a fight in the house and when there is a fight, wealth invariably moves out of a house."

"The standard trope in modern historical studies seems to be that Hindu temples were destroyed not only by Muslim rulers but also by Hindu rulers as part of establishing their authority. It disregards all Hindu memory and Islamic writing that shows motivation of Muslim rulers at its core was religious, designed to replace the Hindu faith with Islam. This is aligned with Western academic anxiety at being seen as Islamophobic – no points lost if one is Hinduphobic."

"Despite their deep knowledge of Hinduism, neither Elst nor Frawley, neither Doniger nor Pollock, believe in letting go and moving on, which is the hallmark of Hindu thought, often deemed as a feminine trait. Instead, Elst and Frawley keep drawing attention to injustice done by colonisers, goading Indians to rise up and fight, a violent tendency that is the hallmark of Western thought, often deemed as a masculine trait... Elst and Frawley follow the Abrahamic mythic pattern that establishes them as ‘prophets’ leading the enslaved – colonised – Indians back to the ‘Vedic Promised Land’."

"Ram's calm repose in the face of all adversity, so evident in the Ramayan, has made him worthy of veneration, adoration and worship. Ram's story has reached the masses not through erudite Sanskrit texts but through theatre song and dance performed in local languages. All of these retellings of Ramayan have their own turns and twists, their own symbolic outpouring, each one valid in their respective contexts."

"The Ramayan, one of the most revered texts in Hinduism, tells the story of a prince called Ram. Dashrath, king of Ayodhya, had three wives but no children. So he conducted a yagna and invoked the gods who gave him a magic potion that was divided among his three queens. In time the queens gave birth to four sons. Ram was the eldest, born of the chief queen, Kaushalya, Bharat was the second born to Dasharath’s favourite queen Kaikeyi. Lakshman and Shatrughna were the twin sons of the third queen Sumitra."

"The twentieth century saw Ram on celluloid with films like Bharat Milap (1942), Ram Rajya (1943 film) andSati Sulochana (1961). Ramanand Sagar's television serial Ramayan, with Arun Govil starring as Ram, made history in the late 1980s."

"The Ramayan also happens to be part of the Mahabharata, dated between 300 BCE and 300 CE, where it is called the Ramopakhyan. When the Pandavas bemoaned their thirteen years of forest exile, Rishi Markandeya retorted by telling them how Ram suffered for fourteen years and while the Pandavas deserved their punishment for gambling away their kingdom, Ram did not deserve his fate – he was simply obesing his father."

"Gott zieht an einer Hand, der Teufel an beiden Beinen."

"December 2. MockingBird yet with us feeding on Smilax berries"

"Should I say, that the river (in this place) from shore to shore, and perhaps near half a mile above and below me, appeared to be one solid bank of fish, of various kinds, pushing through this narrow pass of San Juan's into the little lake, on their return down the river, and that the alligators were in such incredible numbers, and so close from shore to shore, that it would have easy to have walked across on their heads, had the animals been harmless? What expressions can sufficiently declare the shocking scene that for some minutes continued, whilst this mighty army of fish were forcing the pass? During this attempt, thousands, I may say hundreds of thousands, of them were caught and swallowed by the devouring alligators. I have seen an alligator take up out of the water several great fish at a time, and just squeeze them betwixt his jaws, while the tails of the great trout flapped about his eyes and lips, ere he had swallowed them. The horrid noise of their closing jaws, their plunging amidst the broken banks of fish, and rising with their prey some feet upright above the water, the floods of water and blood rushing out of their mouths, and the clouds of vapor issuing from their wide nostrils, were truly frightful."

"When in my residence in Carolina and Florida, I have seen vast flights of the house swallow (hirundo pelasgia) and bank martin (hirundo riparia) passing onward northward toward Pennsylvania, where they breed in the spring, about the middle of March, and likewise in the autumn in September or October, and large flights on their return southward. And it is observable that they always avail themselves of the advantage of high and favouralbe winds, which likewise do all birds of passage."

"The subjectivity that developed through print culture required that persons give up private identities for public identity. ... The aim of representative men like Benjamin Franklin was to produce themselves as exemplary citizen-­subjects who existed primarily in print and in relation to others who also circulated in print. ... Bartram offers a good test case through which we can trace the emergence of a mode of agency that is not equivalent to subjectivity and that developed outside the metropolitan centers associated with print culture."

"His observations of animal behavior are numerous and detailed, and his interpretations merge into a coherent system of thought. The basis of the system is the belief that nature is an emanation of a benevolent God, and that since the animal creation is a part of nature, it therefore, too, is benevolent. Consequently he becomes a champion of the right of animals to be treated humanely."

"When they talk about “The men ruined this, the men did that,” it is a person, and their sex comes after what they’ve done. I believe that we say too much “We the women” and “We the men,” but should say “We the human beings.” There are really two types of human being -- the ones who care about environment, who want a more just society; and the other ones who care about greed and war. So it’s not a question of East and West, and American and Iranian, and women and men."

"The words are not the same and the feeling is not the same. You know, they say in France that translation is like a woman. She is either beautiful or faithful. So it’s better when she’s beautiful because when she’s too faithful it might be very ugly. This is French people. This translation, though, is very well made. This is my American editor, who knows me very well who has made the translation. But in any translation you lose a little bit."

"If the majority of people were right, we'd be living in paradise. But we are not living in paradise, we are living in hell. What does it mean? That means the majority of people are wrong. So I never believed what people told me."

"This is past, and it really comes from a very dark moment of my life. Dying is...When people say there is no alternative, there is always an alternative - to die, for example. It's a choice. You always have this choice."

"Well depressive, I don't know. If you have a little sensibility or a heart you have all the reason to be depressed once in a while. But the depression is like a motor for creation. I need a little bit of depression, a bit of acid in my stomach, to be able to create. When I'm happy I just want to dance.""

"My parents did not trust me there was a lot of mistrust…There was this skepticism about white people because of what they had gone through. And I didn't associate with any white people except when I got to junior high."

"In the end, you know, this whole thing about the feminist movement and the feminist art movement, in the end, when it comes down to it, as a Chicana artist, I know what my father has gone through, I know what my husband and my brothers have gone through, and I know what my nephews are going to go through with discrimination and racism. You know, I have to support them. They are my family. And I've seen it now more and more where white women are turning their back against men of color. You know, so their support isn't there as much as they vowed to do. You know, even though they're a minority…"

"I wanted to have these kinds of images because other Chicano artists were doing imagery that was very political, sending messages about oppression and discrimination, honoring the great muralists in Mexico, and protesting the Vietnam war because a lot of Chicanos had been drafted into the army. There were a lot of protests against the war and the draft. I just wanted to focus on the every day life that we’re all very familiar with. We needed to re-celebrate that: the beautiful things that we have always known and grown up with…"

"I grew up with a lot of discrimination and racism though we were in South Texas it was still very prevalent and I had to deal with a lot of it in the public school system. In the elementary school we were punished for speaking Spanish, physically punished for speaking Spanish. So you’re made to feel ashamed. When the farm workers came through Kingsville on their march to Austin, the capital of Texas, we were very excited. The most obvious issues that were being discussed were the violence against the Mexicans and the farm workers, anybody who wasn’t the right color was subject to being arrested, to being beat up by the Texas Rangers. It was at that point that I made the decision that no matter what it took from me I was going to be a Chicana artist, no matter what! Because here was this whole population of my people who were being unfairly treated and if I could use my artwork as a vehicle towards bringing a greater understanding as who were as a people: our culture, our language, out customs, our mannerisms. Everything about our lives needed to be brought out in a fine art format…"

"Freedom of speech is very important because it is a fundamental part of our rights. Everyone must be allowed to say what they mean."

"Everyone can draw, and a drawing doesn't have any mistakes."

"Religious people are looking everywhere for blasphemy, but we cartoonists are just trying to make people laugh."

"Never give up hope, try with confidence; you will be successful."

"I wrote this book for my teenage self, so it’s all about themes that were important to my young self: questioning your identity and gender, but also your creative aspirations and the person you want to be."

"Frances and Sebastian accept each other right from the get go, and the world the characters live in is one that is willing to change. I think you buy it because it’s wrapped in this fairy tale theme and playing off these Disney Princess movie tropes. It would be a lot harder if I went for a strict historical theme."

"I come up with a concept and might doodle a little bit to get some ideas flowing, but I mostly write and take notes. I write an outline. In a way, I feel like I can make the art fit the story that needs to be told, so I start with the story first."

"By the time I get to coloring it’s usually the last step and I’m a little creatively tapped out. So I don’t spend a ton of time building a concept for the coloring, but I do love seeing things take final form. A lot of it is thinking about the scene, what the mood is, and how to light it. By that point I’ve spent enough time with the book I already know what I want to achieve when I get to it."

"The only good artist is a dead artist."

"Death is more interesting from a distance."

"The womb is the first portal to the hereafter."

"The rumors of my death are only a pending reality."

"Even if you live to one hundred, you’ll still be dead forever."

"Death is nature’s way of staying in charge."

"Everyone is dead in heaven."

"I can no more imagine my demise than remember my birth."

"There is much to accomplish before I become fertilizer for the foliage."

"Live life like you're writing your own obituary."

"No evil comes from the fear of hell, no good comes from the promise of heaven."

"In the future everyone will be dead for 15 minutes."

"My reflections always get it backwards."

"Evolution is the myth that keeps on morphing."

"Narcissism makes me feel better about myself."

"Fame always finds the village idiot."

"Art is the canary in the goldmine."

"Sell a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will put you out of a job."

"Last place is first place in the very next race."

"You can’t judge a book while it’s on fire."

"You don’t protest air pollution by holding your breath."

"There’s nothing to dream about in heaven."

"Criminals are the product of arrested development."

"Familiarity is the enemy of admiration."

"There’s nothing more dangerous than a good idea."

"You can lead a horse to Harvard but you can’t make him think."

"The only ass I follow is my own."

"If you believe, it doesn’t have to be true."

"Footprints go unnoticed on a well-worn path."

"You can’t part the waters without making some waves."

"The end of the world goes on forever."

"My heart is in the right place… between my lungs."

"I’ve built my house with the stones you’ve thrown."

"Life is hardest on the headstrong."

"The fastest way to the future is to bypass the past."

"Every silver lining obscures a cloud."

"If I wanted your opinion, I wouldn’t bother having one of my own."

"The best things in life have fleas."

"A ripe apple never toppled the tree."

"Patience is wasted on the lazy."

"Every river is looking for an ocean."

"My thoughts hold my mind together."

"Holding contradictory ideas balances the brain."

"The human heart beats itself to death."

"Nothing is normal until you get used to it."

"You’re only young forever."

"It’s not the journey that weighs you down; it’s the baggage."

"Talent is the enemy of taste. Taste is the enemy of talent."

"The longest journey ends where apathy begins."

"You can’t have your cake and your waistline, too."

"I’ll stay awake while reason sleeps."

"Memories forever remake the past."

"He who laughs last may be the joke."

"He who laughs last didn’t get the joke."

"Question, believe, or lose your mind."

"Two wrongs don’t make a right, but three lefts do."

"You may know you’re going to die, but you won’t know you’re dead."

"You are not a clone."

"We are the new they."

"The lesser of two evils is not the greater good."

"Evolution’s the gift that keeps on giving."

"I may be shallow, but my thoughts are deep."

"Pacifists lose the war; aggressors lose the peace."

"Fall is the season the leaves do dread, because gravity loves the color red."

"Last place gets to stay in the race longer."

"When all else fails, start a band."

"In heaven, no one can hear you dream."

"Behind every great man is a pickpocket."

"Education prepares the next generation for life and debt."

"I pray my obituary is a hoax."

"No brain, no pain."

"You can’t have your kitsch and your good taste, too."

"Madness is the genius’ substitute for stupidity."

"Nothing is true until someone believes."

"No one should possess more than they can hold in their heart."

"If questioning something endangers its existence, extinction is probably in its future."

"The trivial travels faster than the profound."

"Some days you can’t see the forest for the fire."

"You’re guaranteed a past, but not a future."

"It’s always tomorrow on the other side of the world."

"I believe my own imagination."

"Memories forever remake themselves."

"Myths are the unbelievable truth."

"Evolution is a two-way street."

"It’s not the size of the brush; it’s the expanse of the imagination."

"Absinthe makes the mind go wander."

"I’m complicated, not confused."

"Adversity is the mother of contention."

"A stream of consciousness leads to an ocean of revelations."

"Evolution doesn’t work on creationists."

"Holding something sacred stunts its evolution."

"Only the evaporated ascend."

"The rich don’t start revolutions."

"Every teardrop returns to a cloud."

"It’s not God I fear but the woman who bore him."

"You are the dreams of your ancestors."

"The water I breathe would drown the more evolved."

"You can’t remember what you never forgot."

"Some people play hard to get; I play hard to want."

"I don’t love myself; I have other people do that for me."

"Jesus never walked on water, but he was always on thin ice."

"What you believe is without a clue. What I believe is always true."

"There is no outfit that can make me fit in."

"The rules always seem to be in the service of someone else."

"Being a big fish in a small pond is great until you have to poop."

"We are the offspring of extinct imagination."

"Dreaming is easy; I can do it in my sleep."

"Tomorrow’s the future’s yesterday"

"A man with a bomb has never to beg."

"Everyone matters more than you except to yourself."

"Her beauty is best experienced in the dark."

"He who has not sinned lacks a stone."

"Dodge the draft or dodge the bullets."

"Happiness isn’t having something for yourself but wanting it for everyone."

"Good things come to those with bait."

"Don't let your actions betray your intentions."

"Doing is thinking in the third dimension."

"A full house beats one of a kind."

"A gun in the hand is worth a corpse in the Promised Land."

"Death would be better if it weren’t forever."

"The irreplaceable get stuck where they are."

"Most aliens are expressionists."

"It’s better to be happy than in pursuit of it."

"I believe my best guesses."

"A skeleton in the closet saves on a grave."

"Animals are never naked."

"An army of one answers to none."

"If someone’s face lacks a smile, offer them yours."

"I’m in love with your pretense like you’re in love with mine."

"If it’s good enough for the cosmos, it’s good enough for humankind."

"Anything worth doing can be done by someone else."

"Sometimes you have to do something dangerous to get death's attention."

"Increasing your odds gets you closer to your goal."

"In heaven you get the hang-over before the intoxication."

"I only speak to drown out my thoughts."

"Life is fair. Everyone gets more than they deserve."

"I would talk to myself but I’m not a good listener."

"The few think for the many."

"I was reincarnated as my former self."

"I have an undeveloped photographic memory."

"I could kill two birds if I wasn't so stoned."

"It’s better to get the last laugh than the joke."

"It’s easier to solve problems if you don’t have to live with the solutions."

"In a land of plenty it is better to consume than create."

"In fraud we trust."

"Mad to the marrow."

"If you want to get hit by a car, stand in the road."

"If you got everything you wanted there would be nothing left for anyone else."

"If God had meant man to fly he would have gone a little easier on the gravity."

"I hope my journey to death lasts at least ninety years."

"Those who cannot create consume."

"They wouldn’t criticize you if they didn’t feel threatened.."

"Thinking is not doing."

"Heaven is a Christian-free eternity."

"There is nothing more exhilarating than understanding."

"There is no right I would not gladly forgo to expand your power."

"The low road leads to da feet."

"The indoctrinated's different drummer is a metronome."

"The impossible has no past."

"The inevitable only exists through lack of intervention."

"The heart’s desire is expressed in blood."

"The first thing on my to-do list is to make a to-do list."

"The only thing I would do different is more of the same."

"A shadow never sees the sun."

"It takes a different kind of courage to be a coward."

"Our existence is nearly a biological impossibility."

"If the folks back home could see me now, they’d know the surveillance system works."

"Oncoming traffic appears closer in the rearview mirror."

"Only the dead find peace, only the living desire it."

"Memories have their own way with the past."

"Money is the root of all motivation."

"Nothing’s a mistake until you make it."

"One percent intention, ninety nine percent desire."

"The road to hell is littered with ads."

"Out of the clear blue nowhere."

"The opinions of others are articulated by my inner voice."

"My failure is a window for your success."

"Patience grows old."

"The revolution will go unnoticed."

"I only appear selfish to a saint."

"Nobody understands a prostitute better than a politician."

"Being misunderstood is the measure of an artist, being understood is the measure of a man."

"Mirrors reverse life, memories reverse time."

"No is a bigger word than I."

"My parents saved me from nonexistence."

"If listening was as important as speaking, you would have twice as many ears as mouths."

"Mistakes clear the path for success."

"Memories remake the past, dreams remake the future."

"The more adept one becomes at line work, the more harmonic the composition becomes, the flow and sense of time is arrested by the simple act of truncation, by the edge of the paper or the introduction of a retaining frame. This does not curtail the anticipation of more movement beyond the barrier, that is implicit, but rather causes the eye / cognitive senses to pause and consider the proffered fragment. Time frozen. There is a time in the image making process when the image speaks back to you, and it is always important that you respond to these calls, if you wish to avoid a still-born, airless image."

"My Mother worked for one of the leading theatrical costumiers in London during the early part of the fifties, so I was from the outset caught up, so to speak, in the most intimate workings of the Illusion Machine. Not many young boys knew about the inflatable bra of a particular Hollywood star and the problem of its wayward valves in the fitting room. My toy chests overflowed with the cast offs and oddments from a score of film and theatre productions. And all these years on I often wonder what happened to those chests. Maybe the unsolicited kiss that old crone gave me on the long seat of the red bus in Whalley Range has something to do with it? I was mesmerized by the sheer flurry of it all and receptive to everything that was weird and wonderful. Fact and Fiction were very much in contention and strange worlds could still be reached through the backs of cupboards, if you knew where to look. Bubble gum was made from everglades swamp water and that was a fact."

"For me, the edges of a picture are the most important areas. I like to think of the image as a small segment of a much larger scene, so that you feel that, if you could see behind the edges of the "snapshot" there would be something equally, or more, interesting going on. It's a window into another world, but you don't necessarily have to see the window frame. You might even see more clearly without it."

"I’m not free to do whatever I like stylistically, since my work is going to be wedded to the words. The responsibility is to help to tell the story, without interfering with the readers’ imagination. In a way it is a bit more akin to a sets designer or to providing music for a film. You are serving the text and you are serving the story. So that’s what I do. I’m an illustrator. But I think you have to be an artist to be able to do that as effectively I can."

"I think of the art of illustration as essentially one of collaboration. It’s a wonderful thing to work with a writer and to discuss ideas and make sure the writer is completely in harmony with and happy with the things I’ve added to the mix."

"I was destined from early childhood. I drew anything and everything. Later when I developed my abilities in high school, I was inspired by storybook illustrations, traditional landscape paintings, surrealism, science fiction art and automotive advertising art. I wanted to use my talents for something along those lines, rather than 'fine art' per se."

"I don’t really the count hours I put into my paintings, to be quite honest. I suspect I might be surprised at how many it takes for an average artwork, because before I even begin painting I’ll tend to ‘lose myself’ in making the drawings and corrections and variations involved in the preliminary stage."

"I admire much of what I’ve seen in digital painting and drawing, and understand its importance as a new medium with limitless potential, but like synthesized sounds in music, it is telling that it seeks to imitate established art-styles and looks. That’s a practical issue, since it means its traditional-looking artwork can also be transmitted over the internet, and has a life of its own in the cyber realm."

"I’ve realized that as long as I trust in my instincts and love of his work, there is room for much variation in interpretation of even detailed descriptions. Which is a reason to love many other artists’ versions of the scenes, too."

"As with any classic novel, each subsequent reading teaches me a bit more about myself, about the greater world, and about the nature of life and mystery; because at each reading, I approach the texts as a different person."

"Tolkien takes the stance that I believe all of us should take; that is, of decent, though fallible, people struggling against evil. He does not wallow in horrible scenes and images, though horrible events are certainly depicted in his writings. Rather, he dwells on hope, on perseverance, on faith, on honour, and on love. As a result of Tolkien’s own stance, I have rarely painted or sketched a scene from Middle-earth that was deliberately ugly, or dark, or that I intended should in any way glorify or honour the power or the triumph of evil. I wish to follow Tolkien in highlighting light, and life, and the deeply-felt longing we all have for the good, the true, and the beautiful."

"There is no greater pleasure for me than to have someone see a painting or a sketch of mine and say to me “yes, that’s exactly how I always pictured it!."

"I really tried very hard to not repeat color schemes, every one of the Goosebumps covers had its own set of colors. Different variations. I’m using the same six ingredients, but I’m mixing them up in a different way and hopefully it tastes different when you get it."

"I put in hours and hours, and weeks, to create something that people are going to react to in three seconds, and they’re either going to like it, or they’re not going to like it, they won’t warm up to it, they won’t do anything, they’re going to have an immediate visceral response."

"I am best known for painting scary pictures, but I’m not into scary that much, yeah, that’s completely ironic."

"People know my work, they know specifics about it, a lot of them know the history about it, as an artist that’s the coolest thing ever."

"I’ll do good work, and I’ll get it done on time. Getting work done on time in the book business is as important as doing good art."

"The way to draw characters is always in constant evolution: the more you draw and improve your technique, the more you see yourself able to find different aspects to represent all kinds of psychological behaviors and expressions. At the same time, trying different techniques allows you to discover that some of these techniques let you do easily textures that you can use to create atmospheres and different kinds of shadows and illuminations. As it’s important to mature in your personal life, it is equally important for your language when you create an illustration as well. One insignificant situation can be a beautiful visual poem depending on how you represent it."

"Veganism is the direct response of my activism with animal rights. For me, to defend and protect animals means not to eat them, use them as clothes, use products tasted on them, pay people that want to show them in cages, all this. It is like someone that works for an ONG that protects children in poor countries: he would never buy products made by children under slavery conditions, wouldn’t he? It is a matter of being coherent with oneself, you cannot separate the two things."

"You can stump yourself if you try too hard or something, but everybody has a gift for something, and, people who do what I do, they can envision things so it’s not difficult. Once you get to a point as an artist — the type of artist I am — where you can envision it and then you can draw what you see in your mind, then you’re pretty much unleashed."

"Obsession with The Hobbit turns into career as fantasy illustrator (May 4, 2012)"

"A true graphic novel can be very satisfying and it really is a form of story telling that is not a book and not a movie."

"Seeing both my parents work on their own projects and my dad create book after book made me realize early on how exciting and gratifying the art and bookmaking process could be."

"Art with layers inspires me – not only physical paint layers, but layered conceptual meanings."

"I like my creations to be thought-provoking and not have a narrative. Creating mystery and questions are key elements in my work."

"Draw from your imagination and read whatever gets you excited."

"It seemed my covers sold the magazines, and other publishers started to call. What it did was start me off in this direction of action, complexity, and telling a story. If you look at everything throughout my career, you’ll see that it’s all based on this early training. That’s what prepared me to do all sorts of genres later. The constant through my career is that I have enjoyed every minute of it."

"If it's a good project and I feel I have something to add, it's really rewarding."

"The experienced illustrator subscribes to the principle of the application of the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Should inspiration whisk down your chimney, be at your table. The first ten thousand drawings are the hardest. Put another way, you have ten thousand bad drawings within and should expel them as quickly as possible."

"Illustrators are word people who happen to draw. We work with one foot in a book, the other stuck in a paint pot. Our shoes are a disgrace."

"Genius is rare as turtle fangs, but talent is common enough."

"As someone who puts books together using words and pictures, I try to remember how special that was to me as a child and balance the pictures and the words in such a way that each of them tells part of the story, but not the whole story and they leave each other plenty of space for the reader to become involved and make connections between the words and the pictures as he or she examines them, both the pictures and the reacts to the music of the words. Going with the musical analogy, A well-illustrated book is like a beautiful duet where you have two voices that are making music together, but they each have their own sound, their own tone and they're each dealing with their own piece of the music. Where the two parts come together, they create a new whole that soars above the sum of its parts and creates something that is more beautiful and more meaningful, more compelling than either voice was by itself."

"A lot of people called and were actually crying. I feel very emotional. People saw themselves and were able to see their skin."

"Cartoons are a great medium for demonstrating just how absurd something is, without ever having to say it directly."

"My goal with 'Slowpoke' is to present a solidly-written piece of humor that usually entails some form of social or political commentary exposing distinctly ludicrous aspects of American life."

"Anyone who thinks there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans is a dingdong, Lots of people generalize that they're the same because they both pander to corporate interests. It's true: we live in a plutocracy condoned by a totally ignorant public...I'm not saying Democrats are perfect, but I think there are a lot of good, well-meaning people trapped in the system"

"A lot of my comics are informed by my background in cultural anthropology. That's what I majored in during college. I thought I was going to go to grad school and become a professor. There's a fair amount of overlap between cultural anthropology and cartooning, in that both are about observing culture and deconstructing all these things that we think are normal and set in stone. I've always found it fascinating to look at how we live and question why we do what we do. In college I started reading underground comics by Robert Crumb and Peter Bagge, and I was exposed to Matt Groening's Life in Hell and Roz Chast and Tom Tomorrow for the first time. I actually wrote my senior thesis about a womens' underground comics collective called the Twisted Sisters. One of my favorite cartoonists from this group was the awesomely funky Leslie Sternbergh, who I had the pleasure of befriending years later. Eventually, I got tired of writing papers and burned out on academia. I started to think that maybe I wasn't going to go to grad school, I was just going to draw cartoons."

"At first, my strip wasn't very political. But after the 2000 election and then 9/11, the news was so intense that it felt weird to not talk about it. That's when my comic started taking a more political turn. I wish I could do more cultural strips just commenting on everyday life, like facial hair and clothing. But nowadays, with everything so apocalyptic, I feel like I'm being frivolous when I do observational humor, although I still try to slip it in now and then. Politics for me is not so much about individual political figures. It is about these larger cultural phenomena. I feel conflicted about using Trump in cartoons. At first, I didn't even want to draw him. I don't want to normalize him. But then I developed this Trump caricature that people really seem to like... But I think he's more of a symptom of a larger process. I don't want to isolate him as the problem because he's just the tip of the iceberg."

"I know there have been some encouraging signs. I think people have come a long way even since I started cartooning-I mean, gay marriage wasn't legal when I started. I think our collective vocabulary for social justice issues has improved over time. So on a cultural level, we've made some progress. That keeps me going. I've had people tell me that I've radicalized their teenage daughters. But a lot of what I'm doing shouldn't even be considered radical."

"With all this talk of immigrants assimilating (or not assimilating) into "our culture," it's often implied that said culture is white and Christian. But if you consider that America is, in fact, a highly diverse nation of immigrants, the true outliers seem to be those who view the nation as a monolithic body resembling themselves. If anything, it is these folks who have not fully integrated, and who reject American values."

"Trump (and Bannon and other right-wing authoritarian leaders around the world) is often referred to as a "populist" because he displays faux concern for the working class and a resentment of science and education, but his policies are in fact grotesquely elitist. If by "populist" we mean whipping up resentment against immigrants and people of color, then we should say that. Otherwise, "populism" is just a lazy euphemism for racism."

"Very Serious Thinkers are still churning out hacky columns using this dumb binary of "big" vs. "small" government. I saw an ad for The Economist bemoaning the unfortunate necessity of "big government" during the coronavirus crisis. As though the specifics of context and what that government is doing and who it benefits is secondary to some abstract notion of "size. The more relevant divide is "good government vs. bad," or "smart vs. stupid/sadistic.""

"I’ve always been interested in politics, but when I first got out of college I just wanted to have fun and do non-political work. What happened was the Bush vs Gore election and the Supreme Court [decision]. That was the event that really shocked me into starting to do political cartoons. It was just so outrageous at the time. Then 9/11 and the Iraq War. I prefer doing a mix of straightforward political cartoons and more cultural cartoons about trends and facial hair and things like that. Now I feel silly doing a strip about beards. [laughs] Maybe things will calm down and I can go back to doing cartoons about facial hair. As time went on and politics became more and more dire, that’s what really sent me down that path. Also I started picking up more and more clients that are explicitly political, like dailkos and The Progressive Magazine and once in a while The Nation will run a cartoon. That pushed me in a more political direction as well."

"I’m doing a lot of worrying about humanity destroying itself these days. I think it is an important role of a political cartoonist. I think sometimes it’s probably more acute than others. It’s something that’s hard to deal with sometimes. Right now I find that these aren’t really funny times. There are ludicrous characters and you can make fun of Trump and these ridiculous nominees, but at the same time I don’t want to normalize him. I find myself not even wanting to draw him. I mean, I do and I will, but I don’t want to treat him like any other President. I’ve been struggling with that. How to be humorous at a time when things are just very serious. I guess what I wind up doing is somewhat darker humor, darker cartoons, and more informative cartoons that say, this is what’s happening, can you believe it? With the Bush administration things were terrible and there were definitely some dark times, but I felt like you could make fun of Bush for being a buffoon and the implications just weren’t quite as grave. It’s a different time now."

"When I first started out I wasn’t even really political. I just wanted to do surreal R. Crumb-ish comics. In the early days, I wanted to be as weird as possible. In the late nineties, in alt-weeklies, it seemed like we lived in times that allowed for absurdist humor. That would feel a little more frivolous now. Over time I feel like I have a greater sense of urgency to make a point and to tell the truth. Hopefully in an amusing way. I’m not trying to be as weird as I possibly can. I think I’m trying to make things a little simpler now, and more accessible."

"Print media started collapsing in the mid-2000s. When I first started out, it seemed like alternative news weeklies were the future of newspapers. It was a booming industry. It was a product of the nineties and that nineties mentality. At the time, I had a day job at the University of Virginia and I was sending my strip out and picked up one paper here and another paper there very gradually. I was building up a client list and then that fateful day where Village Voice Media dropped comics across the entire chain. I was actually spared the worst of that. I think I was just in the Village Voice at the time, but that was a big loss. Not that the pay was all that great, but it had been my goal to get into that paper. At the time I really wasn’t sure whether I would be able to continue, but then dailykos came along and picked up a bunch of alt weekly cartoonists and breathed some life into our industry online. They did really well on dailykos they were shared a lot and got good traffic and I think it set a precedent. Not that it was the first home for political cartoons online, but something about dailykos at that moment turned the tide a bit. A few more websites started running political cartoons – and paying fairly for them. People started realizing that they were highly shareable and that they could do well online. I’ll add that print has stabilized. At least it had stabilized under the second Obama administration. I actually added papers during that time. I wouldn’t say this is a growth industry. I think it would be very hard to break into now, but I did get the sense that print media had stabilized and some papers were doing okay. For me it’s really a hybrid now between print and digital. Certainly the digital side of things has grown the most in the past few years."

"[Editing has] been a real learning experience. I think it makes you a better writer. Suddenly viewing things from that editor’s perspective it makes you aware of so much. I guess I like it. I feel like years of doing comic strips and constantly having to simplify them to fit everything into four little panels has given me tools to look at a piece and cut out excessive verbiage and to get things as concise as possible. It has been really interesting suddenly wearing the editor’s hat and realizing how involved an editor’s job is and how many details they have to keep track of. It’s certainly made me more sympathetic to editors. We cartoonists like to complain about them, but it is a tough job."

"I, for one, think good political cartoons retain their value for decades. You can learn a lot from those old "Doonesbury" books. I might add that we cartoonists who lambasted the Bush administration from the beginning have been proven more accurate than most of the highly-paid gasbags you see on television. Historians and television producers, please take note."

"Many cartoons in this book are not overtly political. One can only write so many strips about torture before one needs to lighten up with a riff on Gucci flipflops. Lots of people seem to think we cartoonists will be struggling for material when Bush leaves office, but I will personally be relieved to get off this spiraling Swift Boat to hell."

"I'm also tired of being called a "radical," a word that even many otherwise-astute progressives apply to themselves. Since when is it radical to not want mercury in my tuna salad? Or to have an aversion to killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians unnecessarily? I'm the normal person here. The people running the country are the off-the-meter nutballs."

"I would like to propose a moratorium on the terms "values voters" and "moral issues." These are nothing more than Big, Fat Right-wing Euphemisms, and the media seem perfectly happy to deploy them uncritically. Such language falsely implies that progressives don't have values and don't care about morality, and that morality itself is pretty much limited to the circumstances under which people can bump nasties. As opposed to, say, dooming thousands of people to premature death every month from air pollution."

"one of my biggest pet peeves is the term "political correctness," a destructive, right-wing phrase that is parroted even by many socially-conscious types. It is a label loaded with bias, frequently applied with a broad brush to anything progressives stand for. In reality, right-wingers are masters of "political correctness": ridiculous euphemisms and denunciations of anyone who does not parrot their insane ideas. I find this political correctness, with its insistence on blind patriotism, to be far more pernicious."

"It's appalling how the puritanically correct in this country fixate on homosexuality to the exclusion of grave moral issues like the suffering of innocents in Iraq."

"Once upon a time, the U.S. government was distinct from the private sector. It seems almost quaint now, but elected officials actually tried to protect the public good and maintain a degree of ethics in the marketplace. Now, corruption is de riguer for even well-meaning politicians. If you ask me, the only way out of our current system of legalized bribery is with 100% publicly-financed elections. Compared to the Iraq War, this reform would cost nothing. And it might help us avoid such wars in the future."

"It must be nice to live in a world where the truth is whatever you want it to be. In addition to the former oil lobbyist's edits shown in the first panel, the Bush administration also watered down a 2005 G8 statement on global warming. One of the changes was the deletion of the opening statement, "Our world is warming." Global warming is a perfect example of something often treated as a "liberal" issue, one side of a two-sided argument. But it's not, unless you're pro-drowning the people of Tuvalu."

"Not too long after the Iraq War began, I read an article that quoted a Hummer "patriotic." I guess that's what counts as sacrifice for the war effort these days: driving an overpriced, gas-sucking monstrosity that resembles a military vehicle. I'm sure the troops appreciated this show of solidarity."

"I'm not sure how Bush's "ownership society"-that fun-sounding euphemism for paying for everything from your healthcare to your retirement out of your own savings-is supposed to work if people don't earn enough to own anything."

"Understanding Comics author Scott McCloud says we identify with stylized characters like Charlie Brown more than with photorealistic ones. I agree, especially when it comes to CGI animation and video games. Give me Mario and Luigi in the chunky, two-dimensional mushroom kingdom any day."

"This basic misconception is at the root of so many problems with our political discourse. I can't tell you how many times I've heard from people who think I'm an "America hater" because I criticize the Bush administration. These same people, I'm sure, hardly perceived criticism of Bill Clinton's presidency as an attack on the country itself. I guess mocking the guv'ment is acceptable only when Democrats are in the White House."

"This strip refers to the "War on Christmas," the rabble-rousing myth Fox News perpetuates every year, condemning those who dare to wish someone "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." Interpreting a small effort to be inclusive of, say, Jews celebrating Hanukkah as a declaration of war on Christianity is simply the height of chutzpah."

"There's often a "freedom from" that is the flip side of "freedom to." Isaiah Berlin wrote about this in his famous essay, "Two Concepts of Liberty." In an age when the word "freedom" is so abused, its double-edged nature is important to remember."

"I know it's my job to find humor in the gradual destruction of America as we know it, but I sometimes reach a point where I am so repulsed by the Bushies, and so exasperated by the Democrats, that I can hardly stand to draw cartoons about them. So I drew a cartoon about being sick of politics. Yes, even we cartoonists get discouraged."

"This is how politics works in the age of right-wing media domination: invoke a powerful stereotype, preferably in the form of a carefully-crafted sound bite, and people forget to think."

"It's a classic Republican maneuver: redefining massive global conglomerates as YOU."

"being opposed to poisoning humanity does not make one an elitist. Many progressives swallow the "liberal elite" narrative themselves, reproducing the right-wing frame. I call this participating in your own disempowerment."

"In my opinion, the EPA's lie to New Yorkers that the air was safe to breathe after 9/11 it was not was one of the worst when its own scientists suggested it was not was one of the worst crimes of the entire Bush era."

"Every so often, something happens that reminds you viscerally of the supremely unfair, amoral nature of the universe. For me, the death of Molly Ivins was one of those things. A genuinely funny woman with whom I agreed more consistently than perhaps any other pundit, Molly was often a source of inspiration to me. Her columns planted the seed for more than one Slowpoke cartoon."

"People are suckers for plausible narratives that confirm stereotypes, no matter how untrue they may be."

"Writers create so much value in the entertainment industry, it is criminal what a small percentage of the profits they get."

"As I mention in the strip, I'm not saying Iraq isn't important. It's pretty damn egregious if I say so myself. But as John Edwards has said, "It's time for us to be patriotic about something besides war." The news media tend to elevate the importance of military matters above domestic concerns (that is, whenever they aren't talking about coked-up celebrity bimbos). Issues that affect millions of Americans, like the bankruptcy bill, receive comparatively scant coverage."

"That so many people get their knickers in a bunch about other people's purported "laziness" while being grossly misinformed themselves has always struck me as a tremendous double-standard. Personally, I prefer the thought of my taxes going to some poverty-stricken place in rural America (where a majority of welfare dollars are spent) than to crooked contractors in Baghdad. But that's just me."

"the excesses of the credit card industry illustrate why we need consumer protections."

"overzealous worship of the 'magic of the market' becomes a religious belief system"

"One of the worst Bush administration acts you haven't heard about is their giving the green light to mountaintop removal mining."

"I'm ethically conflicted about eating something smarter than my dog"

"There have been exceptions, but most of the time the effort to reclaim a regressive epithet fails as a political strategy. Among the worst is "tree hugger." Not wanting climatic catastrophe has little to do with the quasi-spiritual groping of conifers, yet that is how those of us concerned about the environment have been stereotyped. I mean, I like trees as much as anyone, but the term "tree hugger" is dripping with connotations of hippie-dippy hysteria. Using it ironically to reclaim it from the anti-science crowd may make us chuckle, but it's still letting them define us on their terms."

"The GOP spends a lot of time trying to paint progressives as out-of-touch, ivory tower elites. But if anything, that distinction goes to the so-called "neocon intellectuals" like Norman Podhoretz, the inspiration for Dr. Plonk. In a 2007 Wall Street Journal editorial, Podhoretz said he prays "with all his heart" that we will bomb Iran, making the usual facile comparisons to World War II"

"Democrats remain consistently cowed by the threat of Republicans calling them "weak on terror." They're going to be smeared no matter what, so they may as well go on the offensive."

"The Bush administration flatly denies plans for "permanent military bases," which according to the Opposite Rule that applies to everything the Bushies say, means we are building permanent military bases."

"The presidential primaries are not for the thinking person. All the nonstop chatter about the candidates' temperaments makes me wonder why I even bother to learn about things like, you know, issues...In this precarious time of war, global warming, a health care crisis, and economic woes, this is how we decide the leader of the most powerful nation on earth?"

"When the most privileged and powerful members of society can escape the hassles and declines in service the rest of us must put up with, there's that much less impetus for change. Some might say, "They're paying for it. Get over it." While I understand that reasoning, it seems limited in scope, failing to question the larger system that created the neo-aristocracy in the first place."

"We cartoonists have a term for the instances when multiple cartoonists inadvertently draw the same thing: a Yahtzee."

"Art and nature shall always be wrestling until they eventually conquer one another so that the victory is the stroke and line."

"I’ve been drawing since childhood but I studied economics instead of art, I was really interested in political news and geopolitics. My favourite topic is political drawing/cartoon. It is a perfect way to combine my 2 passions: my interest for the news and my drawing skills."

"I work in political/editorial cartoon but also in children’s book illustration. They are 2 different genres, but I like changing from time to time what kind of topics I’m working on. According to my mood I will spend more time in one or another genre.I like to denounce with my cartoons, but sometimes it is also good to put some poetry in this complicated world and the children illustrations help me to focus in something more positive."

"In the political-cartoons genre I like Ares and (Angel) Boligan´s work for their graphic style. I also admire the work of Quino…In children´s illustration, I could give a lot of names also but if I had to choose only one I can say I really admire the work of Rebecca Dautremer. I’m fascinated by her work."

"I work a lot on environmental issues, ecology, justice, peace, equality ... because it seems important to show through caricature and humor, the imbalance that humans generate our actions.Cartoonists not fix the planet, but we propose starting points for other views."

"Cartoon is the fun way to express opinions and communicate, that's why I like it. When I illustrate textbooks I also try to make them have humor."

"I've been publishing professionally since the early 90's, I was lucky enough to get to work in a newspaper and that was a great school, like a second university."

"My main motivation is to communicate an idea and generate a personal dialogue or with the reader around each image. I think we draw to "rethink"."

"I try by means of synthesis to tell as many things as possible, to reflect our inconsistencies and those of our society or simply to play with the absurd. It's a job that I really enjoy."

"I value the political awakening of society and I hope that these protests are not in vain and bring changes. This is something unprecedented in our country, never before were there massive marches that lasted more than a month and also in the middle of a pandemic. There is a very complex crisis and a government that does not listen, closes in on dialogue and its only option is force. I am very concerned about the violation of Human Rights by the forces of the State… It is very serious, inadmissible in a democracy."

"I read a lot of newspapers, magazines, books. The news are the fundamental resource to find ideas for the satirical cartoons but also for generic themes, for gag cartoons. Now all the media can give us a big number of inspirations."

"In these years there are a great number of debates about similar cartoons. Many ideas are similar, of course, because the themes are recurring: war, peace, pollution, society, etc. Condemning all artists isn’t right. Many of them have in fact similar ideas, at the same time even if in opposite sides of the World. It’s although important for all the authors to truly check if the idea is truly an original one… Even if checking the whole web, catalogues and magazines could be a hard task indeed."

"plagiarism must be stigmatized, but it’s increasingly becoming some sort of “Witch Hunt” nowadays."

"I love the art of Kambiz Derambakhsh, for his graphic synthesis and his original ideas."

"I don’t think it would be possible to consider an author the absolute best, because each one among the best artists in the World are to remember for their own particular skills. I think that two of them, at the moment, are Vladimir Kazanewsky and Angel Boligan."

"I remember a simple, poetic, but wonderful cartoon of the great Cheval: a turtle walking slowly carrying on its shell a slug with a happy face, with the antennas folded back by the wind. It can be considered a good example of how drawings can be simple but give a precise idea of the relativity of things."

"I make my art on drawing paper, with Indian ink, watercolours and pastels. Nib and brush are my best friends."

"I think it’s important that this job doesn’t lose the old handcrafted tradition, and that artists try not to rely only on a computer. The risk that can be taken is some sort of similarity among all different styles."

"In the art world I love René Magritte, for his dreamlike and surreal view of life and the world around us. I also really do like pre-Raphaelite artists such as Dante Gabriele Rossetti."

"(My favorite artist that uses dark humor is) the French humorist Claude Serre, with a fine graphic style and a very hard black humor can be found in his series of cartoons, like “Humour Noir & Hommes en Blanc”. Another good example that can be easily found is the book “Idées Noires”, by Franquin. Very different from his usual style, but still a little gem that is not very known to the public."

"Psychiatry and comics have a lot in common, because they are related to the thinking of people I care about very much."

"Doctors cure diseases for humans, and cartoonists cure diseases for society. Humor can promote people's understanding of the complex conditions in contemporary society."

"People often confuse jokes with humor, but my humor is very serious. I not only make people laugh, but also make people reflect and analyze."

"I decided to do this because of a personal interest, and because I was totally convinced of what I had to do. The position of a professional here doesn’t greatly differ in economic status from that of any other productive activity, so it wasn’t something that would have a great effect on me. It is true that I won’t have the same degree of stability, but that’s the risk you take to do what you really want."

"the essential thing for a cartoonist is information. The more information you have “laid down” in your head, the more options you will have to create cartoons that are not trite or repetitive, and the better your ideas will be. This also presupposes a work ethic that requires you to rediscover yourself every day, and allows you to avoid “easy” solutions."

"The initial influences on my work are in the work that was developed in Cuba in the humor magazine Dedeté [DDT], which avoids “pamphletizing” [crude propagandizing] and looks for new forms of communication … for non-traditional esthetic solutions. That’s where my style starts out."

"Participation in international humor events has brought me many other influences. My work style includes a large dose of “esthetic vampirism,” in that I’ve absorbed a lot from a lot of different people. But I have a central axis, my major cartoon characters, who have been changing in their own right along with the changes in the type of humor that I happen to be doing."

"It’s impossible that in any society everyone will be in favor of the government. This happens here also. These folks are in the minority, as far as I can see, and, anyway, it has to be that way – if it were not so, this Revolution would not have lasted more than 40 years, 90 miles from the U.S."

"My cartoons are published in various media outlets, not only in Latin America but also in Europe, Asia and the U.S. In some cases, I’ve gotten paid for them, in others not. In most cases, what they pay me is truly miserable, but I persist, with the happiness of seeing my work reproduced and accepted by many people."

"The role of political art in Cuba is a big one. The newspaper where I have worked for years makes major use of editorial cartoons, and on not a few occasions the front page is a full-page cartoon."

"you will find Cuban heavy metal musicians, or rappers, along with those who play salsa – all outside influences are accepted without problems."

"This isn’t a perfect country; we have lots of difficulties and many things that need to be improved, and many things that need to change. But we also have many things that are worthy of admiration, things that just about no other country of the so-called third world has achieved, or will achieve for a long time."

"What does bother me as a Cuban and an intellectual worker is that from the United States they’re trying to tell us Cubans what to do. President Bush recently called for democracy in Cuba; but I can’t explain to myself what moral standing he has, to give democracy lessons to my country, he being a president who got to the White House after fraudulent elections."

"To top it off, he wants to bomb any country that he pleases, using a slogan that a country is “antidemocratic” – which simply means that anyone who is not for him is against him, and thus a potential target of attack. According to Bush, here you can see the “socialist hell.” Well, in that case, rather than prohibiting U. S. citizens from traveling to Cuba, they should do as the writer Eduardo Galeano suggested: organize tourist excursions so people could see these “horrors.”"

"I fell in love with making art because of the images in children’s books."

"As a community arts advocate and gallerist, I always encouraged artists to take every opportunity to “show your work.” If no one sees it, it is not doing an important job. Some artists balked at the idea of showing in restaurants or cafes. But I contend that art directors eat, museum curators eat and collectors eat. To that end, I was “showing my work” at a local ice cream store. Someone from Candlewick Press came in with their daughter for an ice cream cone and saw the work."

"if I had to explain it I would say that my work is about my life and community. Therefore it is seated on a foundation of Black Art traditions. Through a colored lens that may include quilt making, gardening, cooking, interior design, fashion, the healing arts, and spirituality."

"I work primarily in collage and mixed media using lost and found papers, objects, and stories. Lately, I’ve been inspired by the profound and timeless writings of James Baldwin, Frederick Douglass, Toni Morrison, and Nina Simone."

"I think the story is the most important thing. Kids (and adults) love stories. The art – its colors, characters, form, and style serve the story. To the extent that we can imagine ourselves in the story, we can embody and explore its values and lessons."

"I would encourage displays of books about artists (not just Black artists) and making available tools and activities that encourage choice and creativity. The library is a place for browsing and learning what we are visually attracted to – what we are curious about. Great librarians are always paying attention and help us with our interests. Artists’ visits and presentations add a dimensionality to reading about a particular topic."

"Absolutely not. If I saw a brown face it was because I colored it in myself. Even at my church, in our bible stories, not one face was tan, brown or black. In college there were two or three Black artists included in my courses. However a black professor opened up my world by helping to arrange a trip to the National Conference of Artists – A Black artists organization that had as members, Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, Samella Lewis and a host of other from around the country. It was like water to a thirsty child."

"I can only remember what was NOT my favorite – Canterbury Tales!! But I was in love with Greek and Roman Mythology…"

"Like the history of Black Americans, once we shine a light on the story, we see its great complexity, depth, detail, and beauty."

"My Aunt, Ms. Barbara Clarke Elam was a librarian. In her time, as a Black librarian, she was a rare creature. A Simmons graduate in Library Science, she went on to train School Librarians in Boston. Many express their indebtedness to her for opening up the world of literature and education to them. She taught by her actions that reading was fundamental to a rich inner life. It was her love for sharing books and innumerable trips with her and my cousins to the Egleston Branch of the Boston Public library in Roxbury that introduced me to art, found on the pages of books like “Curious George,” “Make Way for Ducklings” and “Madeline and the Bad Hat.” The images in those books intrigued me as a child and set my feet on the path to becoming a visual artist."

"Reading and rereading the manuscript. Reading it out loud. Recently I’ve begun taping myself and listening to myself reading the manuscript. Makes for a great before bed activity with a nice cup of tea. Next, I think about colors and the mood I want to set for the book. Then on research: Google and the Public Library."

"Illustrated books for children can be extraordinary and powerful vehicles for young people to explore the world. For many, children’s books also provide the first introduction to art. Contemporary children’s book publishing is broadening and transforming at a rapid pace and responding to the longstanding need for children’s literature to be reflect the lives and experiences of all readers. Holmes’ distinctive artistic vision is at the forefront of this positive change. Her richly detailed visual narratives captivate and challenge audiences of all ages, inviting all to see the world anew."

"When I was about five or six, I got in big trouble at school for illustrating an age-inappropriate poem about the Queen. To my detriment, the art was so carefully and lovingly drawn that my teacher could see exactly who was depicted, and what was going on. I grew up in England where that sort of thing was frowned upon—unlike corporal punishment, which was actively employed—and it all ended very badly. But I definitely learned an early lesson in the breathtaking power of art."

"(Being able to draw) means that I have both an escape, and a voice."

"I spend a majority of my time thinking, and reading: Trying to find the angle that no one else would think to depict. I am always fearful of producing obvious things. While all art is at least tangentially political (the second you publicly place a mark on a piece of paper you will piss SOMEONE off), mine is deliberately overtly political. I take issues and events and try desperately to make sense of them. Like a columnist, I practice opinion journalism except I actually draw my conclusions, so to speak."

"My sketchbooks are a mess. I use them as sounding boards so there's a mixture of writing, word associations, and incomprehensible squiggles. Except when I am trying to perfect a caricature, the art in them is blisteringly rudimentary."

"I find that I can say so much more through humor. People are far more likely to absorb a message or opinion if it is wrapped in wit."

"Comics was the thing that I always wanted to be able to do."

"I'm hard-pressed to think of a thing that happened in politics that is purely just comedy, because people's lives are at stake. I think the worst kind of political cartoon is just, like, "Look at this thing that happened." Like, "Here's a drawing of a news event with nothing to say about it." No point of view, nothing to say. That's not funny to me. What is funny to me is a point of view. It's something to say that is interesting or surprising about the subjects. Like, what is bad about Trump? 'Cause there's a million things, right? I think what's bad about Trump is the system that produced him. I try to think much more about the root causes of things and less about the aesthetic differences that I have with a politician. The jokes that are just like, "Oh, Trump's hands are small" are less funny to me. It's a little easy to poke fun at a person; it's harder and more interesting to poke fun at a structure. Because when you see Trump do something, it's not just him; it's hundreds of thousands of people enabling his policy-it's a whole support system there. For me, it was really clarifying when Trump was elected. A lot of the reaction, especially the more center-left, was like, "Oh no, Trump has dropped out of space, like from a meteorite. He's this rogue figure!" That's distorting everything he is. You can draw an extremely straight line from where the Republican Party was at with Reagan to Trump. I think it's more interesting to talk about that stuff."

"My style is very self-taught. I sort of taught myself drawing from watching The Simpsons and reading The Far Side. I think you can see those two things come out in my comics. I really like drawing gross stuff. I really like drawing gooey shit. I like to draw Ted Cruz, because he's really melty. I love to draw someone melting, or with extra eyeballs. I love a skull. Fire is really fun. So there's all these things that I just like to draw, and they'll end up in my comics."

"The reality of how America functions is it's hard to be an artist, period. It's really undervalued work. You have to convince so many people to like what you are doing before you can do it all the time. That's a real barrier, and it's scary and seems impossible. For a long time, I had, like, three strips a week running on various websites and I wasn't getting paid for any of it. The Nib was the first paid work ever got. It's important, I think, to step back and think, "Oh man, I managed to do this." Now I'm doing it full time. And it is unserious and unprofitable, but at least I'm happy with it."

"A big city is always partially a Babylon, sometimes an eclectic mixture, juxtaposing contrasts, dialogue and conflict all at once. It is a Unity achieved thanks to our differences. It contains both old and new things. A city without development is dull. A city deprived of its historical context is uninteresting. Moreover, a city without clear urban planning ideas is a toneless backwater."

"Megalopolises. Plans. Building plans. Yellow. Street lineature. Labyrinths of yards. Pigeon flocks. Green. The geometry of squares. Dead zones. Subway burrows. Red. Meaning signs. Dim light. Noise. Voids. Black. The work transformed itself in the process of manifestation. The pictograms appeared almost by accident — naturally. Text: Parking / Diner / Bird / Airport / Disabled / Attention / Parking / Motel / Bar / Attention / Cat / Bird / Diner ... Recoded, literally: art, like all modern culture, lost its clear value criteria, meaning and purpose of movement long ago. City. One of the main problems of modern society is the almost complete loss of the ability to self-cognition and self-identification. City. Civilization is degrading. The agony still continues, maintaining the illusion of life, but it does not change the merits of the question. City."

"Another important direction in contemporary Russian artists’ books, with many precedents set by the Futurists, is the fusion of poetic and artistic talent of artist-authors blessed with Doppelbegabung. The intimate relationships between text and image is enhanced when author and artist are one and the same person and engage in an inter-art discourse that leads to creations that are truly unified works of art. An artist who achieved equal mastery in more than one medium and made different arts merge in his personality was no doubt Alexey Parygin. His poetic collections <...> represent an attempt to synthesize text and plastic figurative form in books where literary and visual languages are calculated to have a simultaneous effect on the reader/viewer. The work of Alexey Parygin have common features that are not accidental as the books were created at more or less the same time."

"...from my point of view, a very serious, worthy and professional exhibition. It's nice that there is a solid culture of color, ...there is a persistent desire to express their feelings of life, their artistic vision."

"His works show high culture, erudition and taste, it is hard to favor any particular piece. Moreover, the artist prefers options on a particular plastic theme, as he himself puts it. He uses various in techniques, and revisits it in different periods of creativity. He believes his plastic theme conveys the plastic state. The state arises and manifests in very different ways, yet retaining its basic sign. Perhaps this art form blends both the sign and its notion."

"The works create new poetry, which involuntarily rivals with habitual esthetic stereotypes. For instance, we accept as a common notion to worship joyously the classic beauty of St. Petersburg, its harmony and stately grandeur. This exposition does have variations of that sort. But observe “Night Nevsky” by Parygin. Rough to the touch texture, dark abyss. In the darkness urgent lights explode. They bring forth immediate spiritual angst. One does not regard the regal magnificence of the urban landscape-it is neither cast aside, nor left behind the curtains, as dramatism of modern perception takes over. One regards not a city museum for curious crowds, but one beholds the habitat of our days where we seek, love, fight, suffer. That art defines perception."

"A white sheet of time, on which the sunlit city appears as a relief imprint. Thick golden air with poplar fluff. Time has stood still. House number 29a. Yellow square of the wall. Small square of the window, which is cramped. You are flying away beyond the fence of the Childhood House on the wings of a memory bird. Grass-blade days are woven into a tangle of years that rolls along the road of memory. A unique, vivid image of the home town from the distant childhood, the Home from which you flew away forever. The town of my childhood."

"The music I play is not really the music I would like to play”, my favorite saxophonist Art Pepper once said. The lithograph, which I began to do for the "City" project, was completely different in my idea, but for technical reasons beyond my control, I had to make a compromise, leaving the original scheme, having decorated it with a rainbow of night city advertisements giving hope that everything will be mighty fine in the future, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night will be Saturday night. In "Edichka" Limonov wrote literally the following (I am quoting from memory): The money that old dotards like Dali, Shagal, Miro have from selling their pictures is not enough, to make even more money they put their lithograph masterpieces on sale in thousands of copies. Bearing in mind the financial aspect, I would object to Kharkiv native. You might clench eggs between your legs failing to fry them on a hot stone. Lithography is not just a multiplying technique; the final product has a flavor that can not be achieved with a conventional frying pan. I demonstrated this together with the printer, although I deviated from the original conception."

"Sheet from the album “Forms of the Future”, based on the texts of Russian self-taught scientist and visionary Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who recreated a project of an ideal society and city of the future in his books. The left side of the sheet is devoted to selection of ideal city residents for dormitories, the right side is a description of a high-tech house equipped with an autonomous life support system. Rewriting the scientist’s texts by hand, the artist as if reincarnates into him, trying to grasp and hear the cosmic flows that controlled Tsiolkovsky."

"Сity is a fertile theme for any artist. And the city I live in is especially good. Here you can find plots to suit any taste: if you want you can paint and draw its grand views of beautiful architecture, rivers, canals, bridges ... Or well courtyards, firewalls, which I have not seen in other cities and towns. And a variety of subjects — on the streets, in cafes, bars. In the title of my graphic sheet I used a quote from an interview with a famous poet, friend of Joseph Brodsky, former Leningrader Yevgeny Rein: “What is a glass of vodka? It liberates the soul ...."

"I see City as a Spider that moves with us on the web... Spider is one of the oldest symbols between life and death as a "continuous sacrifice", as Schneider well noted. Its threads symbolize the duality of our world, in which Spider is a demiurge that connects the eternal and the finite. In the Upanishads, web thread symbolizes the sacred sound Om. In one of Akutagawa's stories, Buddha throws a thread into Hell to a criminal who didn't kill a Spider. Spider is both a God and Executioner, and this makes it similar to City."

"I’m entering the hall staircase, going up the stairs. Graffiti on the walls, windows with remnants of Art Nouveau stained-glass. The elevator cab door slammed and a shadow of a man standing on the landing dashed upstairs. He is wearing a trench coat with his collar turned up and a hat drawn over his eyes to hide his facial features. Spying, obviously an agent. I’m going to the poet Viktor K., I’ve brought him a banned book published abroad. Viktor has long been under suspicion of the "authorities" for underground press. I see: the door of a communal apartment is swinging open half a flight above and two dwellers, who have grappled in a fight, are tumbling out of it screaming and swearing. The agent is not reacting to what is happening, he’s got a different task. He is standing motionless, one hand in his pocket, with a bright yellow glove on the other one. These impressions from fifty years ago gave an impetus to create a lithograph. For half a century, the interior of the hall staircase and the stairs have not changed, but now the surveillance over the house and its inhabitants is carried out by video cameras instead of agents. Warning, video surveillance, the signs on the house walls say obligingly."

"Artist in big city / City is a huge anthill, in which the artist, overcoming obstacles and dangers, resists temptations and rushes towards his success against time. My subjective city is a punk quest in the format of a classic board game. Having thrown the dice, you can try your fate: reach the finish line or get stuck in the labyrinth of the octopus city forever."

"Order and randomness arise under the influence of the creative act in the context of a certain approach to forming and are the fundamental principles of creation that have an ontological basis in art. The metaphor of letter — Littera, architectural integration and synergy of metaphors — columns of a chaotic set of a ghost city, a carrier of randomness information code. Typographic metropolis — Babylonian Chaos of letters spontaneous arrangement like a thesis and antithesis of harmony and order of newspaper columns in the form of eternal city. Randomness is divine, because it is not made by hands, it is not subject to man, unlike order. There is something mystical about the randomness code. The idea of the involvement of ontological “order” and “randomness” in forming is a universal approach to creative act. Thus, the "effect of randomness" is created in the process of creative experiment with printed form and printing. The categories of "order" and "randomness", being the basis of the beautiful, manifest themselves as aesthetic paradigms of the unique author's printing and visual art."

"In London, the red route is road marking used to indicate bus priority area. I found myself In East London at the turn of the 2000s. The East End was lively and diverse back then, and I enjoyed wandering there. I was particularly impressed by the railway bridges over the streets - a piece of iron crossed residential quarters whimsically. Car repair shops, pubs, warehouses and shops were built into space under a flyover. Another artery cutting off the East End from the rest of the city was the Regent Canal. I photographed two- and three-story residential blocks, bridges, parked red cars and roaring double-deckers. There was much red: buses, hydrants, telephone booths, bridge trusses and road markings."

"The plasticity idea «form draws form», expressed by Vladimir Sterligov in the late 60s of the last century, is being honed in lithographs. This is an attempt to find inseparable plastic penetrations of depicted forms. An attempt to ensure that one detail of a drawing becomes part of another. Flowing into each other, they should make a strong visual composition. The main task is to create a single graphic organism, when a drawn object gives life to another one. In this case, there is an interpenetration of silhouettes, where the foreground, middle ground, and background become a single whole. Light, transparent drawing, on the one hand, and a found plastic construction, on the other hand, the way I see it, complement each other, making a graphic sheet both airy and convincing."

"Near the Egyptian Sphinxes’s steps on the Neva River banks, you feel presence of the mankind thousand-year history, which these creatures brought with them. The space of the city was filled with new meaning and life, new myths and legends. Artists found new images, began to learn speaking and expressing themselves in a new way through the classical city. The city of huge squares, wide streets. dark backstreets and well courtyards; black shadows fantasy; white nights that distort reality. When I realized it all, I began creating my Mythology of the city. And I hope that it will be a worldwide language for all those who love and appreciate the city of St. Petersburg."

"An avant-garde artist of Leningrad, Mendagaliev’s style is naïve. Vibrant colors and thick, heavy strokes form simple scenes that feel more symbolic than real.In each painting, there are repeated motifs: a table, a chimera, women, a bird, a fish. There appears to be a story begging to be told about the city he has lived in for so long, and, perhaps, a painful one. In the paintings, faces of people look in different directions, they pull from each other, guiding the viewer’s eyes into a chaos as the sphinx overlooks it all with a sense of doom. Then, there are portraits of chimeras and demons stalking individuals on the metro, women tormented next to a table or underwater beneath a fish in flight. They have a sinister tone to them. Fantastical, but simple, Mendagaliev’s works linger in the mind and resurface in the memory of St. Petersburg as a city."

"If men be fighting over there [across the channel] for their possessions and their bodies against the Corsican robber [Napoleon], they are fighting here to be first in Ackermann's shop and see Gillray's latest caricatures. The enthusiasm is indescribable when the next drawing appears; it is a veritable madness. You have to make your way in through the crowd with your fists."

"To the task of political caricature, Gillray brought excellent working qualities. He had a plain straight-forward practical understanding, which never rose above the comprehension of the crowd—he never desired to veil his satire in subtleties, nor hide it in thoughts far-fetched and profound. The venom of his shafts was visible—nor did he seek to conceal his poisonous draughts in a gilded cup. All was plain and clear—and all was bitter and biting. The measures of the tories, and the plans of the whigs, were to him a daily source of subsistence and satire. He lived like a caterpillar on the green-leaf of reputation; and loved to crawl over those whom Fame had marked out as her own. He never desisted from either shame or remorse—public distress was his gain—private misery brought him bread, and out of the bickerings of men for place and power he had his per-centage. Our ridiculous expeditions, our modes of raising money, our fears, our courage, our love of liberty, and our hatred of France, were to him so many sources of emolument. He lifted a tax off all public—and even made Napoleon contribute."

"The golden age of English caricature, from 1780 to 1830, was dominated by an artist of genius, James Gillray, who lifted the art of political caricature to a higher plain."

"There's something special about Gillray. I feel an affinity with him, because he was the first to have an obsession with politics and to do characters as intense as Fox and Pitt. My favourite Gillray is The Apotheosis of Hoche, a mock-elegy for a French revolutionary general. We don't remember now who Hoche was, but the print is so strong that it leaps out at you, including millions of decapitated heads singing the general's praises."

"Gillray was ballsier than Hogarth. He was so successful that he affected the Government's standing and kept the Jacobins at bay. Nobody could do that now. The nearest we get to it is Spitting Image or Rory Bremner. But it's essential to keep on trying, and in Gillray the savagery of the attack is what counts. I love his obsession with vulgar bodily functions. Everyone thought he was strange – he never justified himself. I find that interesting. My choice is the Toadstall upon a Dung-hill, where Pitt grows out of royalty. It's a good double swipe, at a politician and a monarch."

"Gillray too frequently lent his powerful talents to attack private character in a manner not justifiable."

"A powerful draughtsman, a master of the art of engraving, and possessing a vigorous imagination, he had but little to fear from Sayer. He was really an excellent engraver in line, dot, and aquatint, but these talents are all merged in his fame as a caricaturist, in which walk of art he still remains unrivalled."

"James Gillray was a patriotic Englishman and a commercial artist. Which took precedence hardly matters, for once the Terror began in France, and English life, liberty and property were threatened, his patriotic feelings and commercial instincts went hand-in-hand. The educated and monied customers of Mrs Humphrey's shop could be sure that their political views and prejudices would be reflected and reinforced. The excesses of the revolution were pilloried mercilessly, as were those Englishmen rash enough to express sympathetic views. The advent of Napoleon Bonaparte raised the stakes, heightened the danger. The true sensitivity of Gillray as an artist is seen in his response to Bonaparte, without in the least reducing his impact as a satirist."

"James Gillray...stands without dispute at the head of the English caricature tradition, and his boldly drawn prints are not merely masterpieces of caricature but also highly original examples of the etcher's art."

"You appear not to know that he was a reluctant ally of the tory faction, and that his heart was always on the side of whiggism and liberty. He did not "desert to the tories," but was pressed into their service, by an unfortunate concurrence of circumstances. He had unluckily got himself into the Ecclesiastical Court for producing a politico-scriptural caricature, which he had entitled "The Wise Men's Offspring:" and while threatened on the one hand with pains and penalties, he was bribed by the Pitt party on the other with the offer of a pension, to be accompanied by absolution and remission of sins both political and religious, and by the cessation of the pending prosecution. Thus situated, he found, or fancied himself obliged to capitulate."

"He never appeared to me to be that lover of low society and gross mirth which you describe; but silent and reserved he was, till he discovered that his companions upon any given occasion were frank and liberal. His own patriotism and free principles then began to peer forth, and occasionally rose to enthusiastic fervour. I remember being assembled with him and a few other artists, most of whom are since dead, at the Prince of Wales coffee-house (then newly opened): the purpose of the meeting was to form a fund and institute a Society for the relief of decayed artists, &c., where Gillray discovered no deficiency either of good sense, benevolent feeling, or gentlemanly propriety of conduct; yet there was an eccentricity about him, which being no unusual concomitant of genius, was felt to be agreeable. After business and supper were concluded, we drank toasts; and when it came to his turn to name a public character, the Juvenal of caricature surprised those who knew him but superficially, by proposing that we should drink David! (the French painter). He was by this time a little elated, having become pleased with his associates, and having drowned his reserve in the flow of soul, and, kneeling reverentially upon his chair as he pronounced the name of the (supposed) first painter and patriot in Europe, he expressed a wish that the rest of the company would do the same. This was after our artist had transferred his nominal allegiance to the Pitt party;—before David had been guilty of the worst of those revolutionary atrocities which stain his character, and while his artistical reputation in this country stood much higher than since we have had ocular opportunity of appreciation his professional merit."

"There have been artists before you who dabbled in caricature. There have also been caricaturists who dabbled in art. But you, sir, are the first considerable artist who made caricature his full-time occupation... You were the first to realise that the principles of art, selection and emphasis, could be adjusted to a new balance in a new type of draughtsmanship, neither the representation of reality nor mere grotesque invention, but the discriminating exaggeration of what is true... If Hogarth was the grandfather of the modern cartoon, YOU were its father."

"I cannot think of anyone with whom I should have had more rows—crusted old reactionary that he was... Gillray was a supreme caricaturist of personalities, with a clear sense of the cartoonist's function, which was, of course, to disturb complacency."

"The main objection [of the Victorians] to Georgian caricaturists was their indulgence in personality: their bitter attacks; scurrility; impugning of individual character; and ruthless exploitation of private vices to damn public figures. James Gillray was the main culprit. Even the Prince of Wales (later George IV) and Napoleon did not deserve the derision which Gillray regularly visited upon them. In 1851, the Morning Chronicle carefully distinguished between modern cartoons, which were satires, and Gillray's caricatures, which had been "libels" on the subject; they were unfair, damaging, and destructive."

"I first came across Gillray at about the age of eight. My sister brought home an Illustrated History of Britain, and I nicked it. The book was full of images by Gillray and other artists, and it became my primer in cartooning. I love Gillray's 'F*** you' attitude... I love Gillray's hearty contempt, especially when he shows Pitt as Midas shitting money on the Commons. Gillray really goes for it – he's full of scatological exuberance, and here he punches the solar plexus by saying money is shit."

"He attacked powerful people in a most ferocious way, with brilliant draughtsmanship. Gillray opened the whole thing up. I share his scatological humour and obsession with movements of the body. Gillray also seemed to notice every wrinkle and crease – he's equally good at extremes of girth and thinness. I love Pitt as Death on a Pale Horse in Presages of the Millenium, galloping over the "swinish" advocates of peace with France, because it's so wild. I once drew Mrs Thatcher as the top bitch at Cruft's, with Heath as a tiny turd on the ground beside her."

"Hogarth's honesty of purpose was as conspicuous in an earlier time, and we fancy that Gillray would have been far more successful and more powerful but for that unhappy bribe, which tuned the whole course of his humour into an unnatural channel."

"It was, indeed, Gillray who excelled all others, at this period, in the production of this sort of thing. Savage in temperament, and at times extremely coarse, he had extraordinary vigour."

"Gillray was morose and angry, a sort of savagely perverted moralist, to whom mankind was hateful."

"Certainly, the private life of James Gillray was disastrous; yet so clear-sighted was he, so ruthless in his regard for truth as he saw it (even in himself), that his drawings have a bitter verity almost unknown elsewhere in British art: a cruel rigour that makes him seem, in spirit, closer to the satirists of the Continent, where his art was, in fact, much admired. However remote the politics of Gillray's day may seem, to look at his caricatures is to be caught up, almost in spit of oneself, in the frenzies of this patriotic radical."

"Gillray tells us more about the eighteenth century than most written histories."

"[A]t the outrageous height of his career, he had been rightly regarded as the greatest exponent of lacerating caricature anywhere in Europe. Gillray revolutionised the art of satire, pushing himself to such extremes of savage, unfettered inventiveness that his admirers, and even his enemies, became addicted... [H]e is now increasingly seen as one of the finest British artists of his time. Cartoonists across the world are indebted to his brilliantly visual spleen. They include British practitioners Steve Bell, Peter Brookes, Martin Rowson, Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman... They recognise that Gillray's work, far from succumbing to the ephemerality of most topical cartoons, contains some of the most enduring and astonishing images from a turbulent period in European history."

"It is the intention of this book to offer as complete an insight into the works and times of James Gillray as may be consistent with the limits of one volume...and...not losing sight of the responsibility of rejecting such subjects and matters as, after consideration, seem either too ephemeral and uninteresting to deserve preservation, or too boldly coloured with the coarseness of an age which did not hesitate, in its most polished circles, to treat of subjects that modern refinement has decided to pass over in silence."

"I believe that the image I create must contain within it everything man concerns himself with: his hopes, his fears, his tears. And I find that a great deal of the imagery in use today precludes most of these concerns."

"There is a cliché that the artist is the person who best reflects his time. I am not ready to accept that definition of the artist, nor the idea that the art is best which best reflects its time. The function of the artist is a little more than to reflect; he has to refract, to set things off in another direction."

"Every artist would like to communicate, but often he fails to ask himself with whom he is trying to do it."

"I think the term "self-expression" ought to be forbidden. It's finished. A person, if he has a gram of honesty, naturally does nothing but express himself. Self-expression is as much part of the artist as teeth are to the dentist; it is part of his life, his work."

"I look upon my work as a craftsman. I am one of many who practice a craft. I am one of many who have beliefs and fears and hopes, and I want to incorporate those, with all the tools I have learned to use over many years, into what I will call a piece of work. But not a masterpiece-I'd be terrified of that. There is a tendency for the artist to take himself seriously. But if I ever sat down before a canvas with the feeling that I was now creating a masterpiece, I'd lay an egg."

"I am a painter; I am not a lecturer about art nor a scholar of art. It is my chosen role to paint pictures, not to talk about them."

"I would not ordinarily undertake a discussion of form in art, nor would I undertake a discussion of content. To me, they are inseparable. Form is formulation-the turning of content into a material entity, rendering a content accessible to others, giving it permanence, willing it to the race. Form is as varied as are the accidental meetings of nature. Form in art is as varied as idea itself. It is the visible shape of all man's growth; it is the living picture of his tribe at its most primitive, and of his civilization at its most sophisticated state. Form is the many faces of the legend-bardic, epic, sculptural, musical, pictorial, architectural; it is the infinite images of religion; it is the expression and the remnant of self. Form is the very shape of content."

"I think that it can be said with certainty that the form which does emerge cannot be greater than the content which went into it. For form is only the manifestation, the shape of content."

"However glorious the history of art, the history of artists is quite another matter. And in any well-ordered household the very thought that one of the young may turn out to be an artist can be a cause for general alarm. It may be a point of great pride to have a Van Gogh on the living room wall, but the prospect of having Van Gogh himself in the living room would put a good many devoted art lovers to rout."

"Whoever would know his day or would capture its essential character must maintain such a degree of detachment."

"The artist occupies a unique position vis-à-vis the society in which he lives. However dependent upon it he may be for his livelihood, he is still somewhat removed from its immediate struggles for social status or for economic supremacy. He has no really vested interest in the status quo. The only vested interest-or one might say, professional concern-which he does have in the present way of things rests in his ability to observe them, to assimilate the multifarious details of reality, to form some intelligent opinion about the society or at least an opinion consistent with his temperament. That being the case, he must maintain an attitude at once detached and deeply involved."

"In art, the conservative is the vigorous custodian of the artistic treasures of a civilization, of its established values and its tastes-those of the past and even those present ones which have become accepted. Without the conservative we would know little of the circumstances of past art; we would have lost much of its meaning; in fact, we would probably have lost most of the art itself. However greatly the creative artist may chafe at entrenched conservatism, it is still quite true that his own work is both sustained and enriched by it."

"each of them [artists] stands out as an island of civilized feeling in an ocean of corruption. Civilization has freely vindicated them in everything but their nonconformity."

"I have always held a notion of a healthy society as one in which the two opposing elements, the conservative and the creative (or radical, or visionary, or whatever term is best applied to the dissident), exist in a mutual balance. The conservative, with its vested interest in things as they are, holds onto the present, gives stability, and preserves established values (and keeps the banks open). The visionary, always able to see the configuration of the future in present things, presses for change, experiment, the venture into new ways. A truly creative artist is inevitably of this part of the society."

"Nonconformity is the basic pre-condition of art, as it is the pre-condition of good thinking and therefore of growth and greatness in a people. The degree of nonconformity present-and tolerated-in a society might be looked upon as a symptom of its state of health."

"Conformity is a mood and an atmosphere, a failure of hope or belief or rebellion."

"Today's conformity is, more than anything else, the retreat from controversiality. Tomorrow's art, if it is to be at all stirring, will no doubt be performed upon today's forbidden territory."

"it is always in the future that the course of art lies"

"What is it about us, the public, and what is it about conformity itself that causes us all to require it of our neighbors and of our artists and then, with consummate fickleness, to forget those who fall into line and eternally celebrate those who do not?"

"One's education naturally begins at the cradle. But it may perfectly well begin at a later time too. Be born poor... or be born rich... it really doesn't matter. Art is only amplified by such diversity."

"I believe that there is no kind of experience which has not its potential visual dimension or its latent meanings for literary or other expression. Know all you can mathematics, physics, economies, and particularly history. As part of the whole education, the teaching of the university is therefore of profoundest value."

"freedom itself is a disciplined thing. Craft is that discipline which frees the spirit; and style is the result."

"It [art] communicates directly without asking approval of any authority. Its values are not those of set virtues, but are of the essential nature of man, good or bad. Art is one of the few media of expression which still remains unedited, unprocessed, and undictated. If its hazards are great, so are its potentialities magnificent."

"I think that one of the great virtues of the university lies in its being a community in the fullest sense of the word, a place of residence, and at the same time one of personal affirmation and intellectual rapport."

"There are, roughly, about three conditions that seem to be basic in the artist's equipment: to be cultured, to be educated, and to be integrated."

"The book is the clearest, most forceful statement on art by an artist of our time that I have read."

"The character of his art, in which a very varied and lively inventiveness predominates, reflects the very otherwise ingenious taste of E. Delacroix, with whom he shares the dynamic and excited research, the chiaroscuro contrasts and the traits of environmental realism, without attempting to compete with him in creative richness and originality. (Valerio Mariani)"

"The orientalist vision of the Holy Scriptures even becomes popular with the illustrated editions of the Bible, from that of Gustave Doré of 1866, imaginative but with precise oriental references, to the very widespread one edited by James Tissot, who he inserts views of the cities, maps, architectural reconstructions and topographical surveys of the sacred stations with the aim of making biblical archeology reliable, otherwise distorted, as the curator claims, by the fervent imagination of the artists. In one sense or another, the drive to seek the living testimonies of the Holy Scriptures in the Eastern reality of the moment, and to permeate a disenchanted West, was relaunched in the second half of the nineteenth century by the neo-spiritualist attempt to reaffirm the primacy of faith in the era of scientific materialism . (Attilio Brilli)"

"It seems we make sitcoms work by luck rather than design. [The American method] They fund a sitcom expensively right up front because they know if they get it right it'll make everybody's fortune."

"[On pitching ideas to programme commissioners] When I am turned down, my first thought may be that the person concerned is an idiot. But perhaps he isn't. Perhaps what I am offering has simply got to be better."

"I feel there is terrible prejudice [...] I think it's to do with laziness and preconceptions principally laziness and fear on the part of the establishment. I have a reasonably wide knowledge of the black talent available on paper and on stage and am constantly amazed by it. I have a feeling that people in the seats of power in television entertainment don't know about it because they haven't bothered to explore it."

"Humphrey can't be left to do it on his own. It's not enough for the industry to say: "Of course, we're doing out bit for racial equality — we've got Humphrey Barclay, haven't we?""

"Everything in my life is an art project...to me it is all art."

"when I am in my studio, I constantly remind myself that steady work will give me the results I want."

"My books are a combination of my culture growing up, but also my entering a new culture as an immigrant and having to learn—to re-learn—everything so that I’d actually be able to survive in a new country."

"(about Frida Kahlo) I had just come to the United States, a place where I didn’t know how I felt about my identity as a Mexican woman, and it was her pride that had an impact on me and made me realize that I had things to be proud of too."

"Any story that can weave more than one language into a story is based in real life, because we, la gente, when we communicate, we always use many different ways of saying things. My book not only uses words, and images, but they also communicate stories with colors, forms, embroidery, and even silence. I love telling stories where English and Espanol work together to enrich the narratives, and I love it when children can play with all the languages that are part of their lives."

"I didn't have children's books when I was growing up in Mexico, but my relative's fantastic stories of little people called chaneques, and the stories of hearing la Llorona at night, filled my imagination with a world that was both unbelievable and fascinating."

"(What advice would you give to young writers?) We all have our very own ways to tell stories, and you will find yours. Honor your heart and your instincts; let your story come out first, and then revise it to make it sing! More than anything else, do what gives you joy."

"Libraries are a world where you can be safe and comfortable finding in books the things that you like the most, or things that you are curious about, or you can learn something you didn't know before. That already seems to me a path for a more beautiful world."

"I was working on a graphic novel when Donald Trump was elected president. My heart sunk. I could not believe that the man who had accused Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists had been elected to lead the United States. I felt unable to work, and that my stories made no sense anymore. I also felt afraid of what would come next for immigrant families like mine, like those of my friends and like those that my books had been written for and about."

"Animals and the natural world play a huge role in my artwork as I’ve learned so much from them."

"I remember loving Chato’s Kitchen by Gary Soto and Susan Guevara; I couldn’t believe that there was a book in the library about people from el barrio (actually cats, mice, and dogs), dressed, speaking, cooking, and having a family life that resembled mine. These books—and countless others—are the reason why I started making my own books (handmade at first, to emulate the books I loved)"

"Like many, I admire the multiple talents of Yuyi Morales—author, illustrator, videographer, moving speaker. I also admire Yuyi’s creative spirit."

"I feel like political engagement is something that people, if they’re so inclined, all people should do...It’s not something that’s just for special, branded activists. It’s in part being a citizen."

"The Jewish heritage that resonates the most with me is our history as rebels and rootless cosmopolitans. Our history as the first white Freedom Riders who were murdered. Our history as dissident intellectuals like Hannah Arendt. Our skepticism, our nonalignment, all the things that made authoritarians throughout the world hate us so much."

"Look at this vast, beautiful, crazy, fucked-up, gorgeous, horrifying world. How could you not be inspired by it?"

"I think one of the problems that Americans often have when we're thinking about the Middle East is that Americans often only see images of the Middle East that come from war. So Americans might not realize that there are actually hundreds of thousands of people living in Raqqa, just like normal people, and if you take that awareness away, then it becomes very easy "Oh, bomb them all.""

"I think that school just isn't for everyone. A lot of people don't learn well when they have to sit in a place for eight hours. A lot of people learn best lying in their own beds, teaching themselves from books. And I was a bad student, I was a brat — if I was a teacher, I would not have liked myself — but this hammering kids to fit into this system is horrific. It leads to a lot of kids being either medicalized or criminalized, and I think the message I would have to kids is just like, survive it. And then, once you're out of childhood, I mean, you're just so much freer."

"I started drawing when I was four. It fast became a way to relate to a world where classmates wrote death threats on my book bag. In grade school, I'd draw kids so they wouldn't hit me. Artists are courtiers more often than rebels. Painters survived the gulags by drawing criminals' kids. Being small and skilled, you learn to create little portals of escapism-to which the strong are as susceptible as anyone else."

"Women are looked at. But as an artist, I had permission to look back. Where the respectable avert their gaze, artists stare."

"Drawing is disruptive. You're producing when you're expected to consume."

"You take photos. Drawings you make. Cameras steal life force. Paintings, like The Picture of Dorian Gray, give you more."

"a brilliant illustrator, writer, and filmmaker"

"My days are engraved in my poems like years in the rings of a tree like the years of my life in the furrows of my brow"

"death. Its weight is not great. How lightly and with what casual grace we carry it with us everywhere we go."

"A young poet suddenly falls silent for fear of telling the truth. An old poet falls silent for fear the best in a poem is its lie."

"The years have made up my face with memories of loves and have adorned my hair with light silver threads making me most beautiful. In my eyes are reflected the landscapes. And paths I have trod have straightened my stride – tired and lovely steps. If you should see me now you would not recognize your yesterdays – I am walking toward myself with a face you searched for in vain when I was walking toward you."

"How the passing of Time tries me, its double reckoning my duty and my right: Every day it constructs and ruins me completing thus my life and my death."

"The world is heavy on our eyelids"

"preeminent, versatile, and prolific writer of modern Hebrew letters"

"Leah Goldberg, as well as Anda Pinkerfeld-Amir, wrote verse for children, but she is best known for her modernist poetry. In line with contemporary European modernist poetry, she often expressed the poet's inner struggle during the act of writing, and the difficulties in overcoming this inherently artificial medium. Leah Goldberg was active in the field of literary criticism and translation, especially from Russian, and was in search of revolutionary techniques. She experimented with prose as well as drama. Her play "Ba'alat Ha'armon' ('The Castle Owner') introduced the difficult theme of the Holocaust to women's writing."

"one of the most important women in contemporary Hebrew literature...At her peak, Goldberg wrote beautifully and sadly about thwarted love"

"Goldberg lived the bohemian life, debating for days on end with her poet friends in the Tel Aviv cafés."

"The poet, Tuvia Ribner, a close friend for dozens of years, and the executor of her literary estate said: "The memory of the father and her fear accompanied Leah to adulthood. This is the reason, I believe, that she chose the stricter poetic forms, such as a sonnet, which has 14 lines, meticulous rhyming scheme and fixed rhythm, and avoided loose rhythms. Her poetics emerge from a strong need for self-control, every single one of her poems having a rational basis, meant to guard the poem and herself."

"biographer Professor Leiblich: "...from an early stage, she felt herself old, heavy, too serious. She had a sense of guilt about all her loves, she perceived love as a nuisance, something to beware of.""

"She was always guarding her secrets behind walls, and her love poems were covered under seven veils of mystery; among her most beautiful is the sonnet sequence, 'The Love of Theresa De-Mon'"

"Professor Amiya Leiblich: " 'She suffered from emotional deficiency...She had a permanent guilt towards all the men she was in love with, as well as an inferiority complex. Even in poetry, where her value and superiority were unmistakable, she always thought she was lacking, and not as good as Ben-Yitzhak. As a feminist, I am indignant that a poet as great as Goldberg, erased herself, not just as a woman, but as an artist.'"

"'At times of lack of inspiration in writing, she turned to painting. She often made sketches of the literary protagonists who furnished her life, as she visualized them in her imagination', remembers her friend, the poet T. Carmi."

"'Leah Goldberg felt herself kin with Dante, Kafka, Beethoven, who also had imaginary loves, which were the muses that ignited their great works', concludes Professor Amiya Leiblich: "First and foremost, she was a poet, willing to let go of life for art's sake. The woman who experienced a miserable love life, succeeded in producing gentle love poems, and remains Israel's High Priestess of Love, who couples quote in moments of the most intense emotional harmony.""

"Jerusalem, adorned with the memories of the past, appealed to her more than the 'white cardboard boxes', which she associated with Tel Aviv."

"She was a fascinating university lecturer, who loved to stand on the pedestal, her eternal cigarette in her hand, and read poetry in her deep, rough, unpleasant voice, that nevertheless drew crowds into over-stuffed auditoriums."

"Although she became the Head of Comparative Literature Studies, she remained alien in the academic establishment. 'Being both an artist and a woman, the male colleagues belittled her academic achievements, and she had a hard struggle to be nominated as a professor', recalls Esther Tishbi, a friend."

"Leah Goldberg expanded the spectrum of lyricism, her poems speaking of a search for love, contact and attention, and she inspired hordes of young poets, mostly women. But she became an easy target for the new rebellious generation of poets and critics, who feared to attack the male figureheads like Shlonsky and Alterman. She complained to Tuvia Ribner, 'What do they want from me, I was never at the centre of the stage. Why do they pick on me?'"

"For me, the first years are lost."

"My dad’s friend’s cousin just got sent to America, and he sends back money every month. Everyone there is super rich!”"

"I remember this star, though. Maybe it’s not even a real memory, but this star makes me feel safe, like my mom and dad are nearby. I used to actually talk to the star, which seems really childish to me now. Still, feeling like my parents are close makes it easier to make big decisions."

"We may be refugees and orphans, but we are not alone. God has given us the gift of love."

"I thought back to what Jeri told me, years ago. None of us ask to be born where we are, or how we are. The challenge of life is to make the most out of what you’ve been given. And despite all of the things I don’t have…I have been given something very important. The love of others is a gift from God, and it shouldn’t be taken for granted."

"Those who are lost look to the stars to lead them home."

"Why do people need to have control over the lives of others? Why this fear of the other? This fear of difference — the fear of change — why this fear of our own bodies? Why this inability to accept our own death? What are the connections between those things?"

".. the way I work ... I'm really seized by the scruff of the neck each time. ... Something pounces. It's absolutely irresistible and often will pounce at three in the morning ... or at six in the morning ... And I will get up and start writing. ... I really count on novelty and synchronicity and dreams to direct me and to kind of release the energy."

"... it's not an accident that the creative imagination is the first thing that's punished when tyrannies take over …"

"“I was blown away by how people were creating digital art with all this software I’d never heard of, and communicating just using their art,”"

"“I came from a traditional art background, and seeing people use technology to tell stories really captivated me.”"

"“What we were learning was catered to more of a Western narrative, and we weren’t really seeing an African narrative being taught or explored, or even encouraged,”"

"“In the textbooks, there was traditional and primitive African art, nothing contemporary, or in the context of advertising or digitisation.”"

"“I didn’t think anyone that came from where I came from would be listened to.”"

"“In the beginning, I didn’t think my voice would be enough, or that anyone that came from where I came from would even be listened to.”"

"“That’s when the fire got lit underneath me, because it wasn’t being done, and I thought it was overdue.”"

"“It was the first time we saw black people create something so uniquely theirs, and so visually beautiful, that spoke of all the things we learn at home, in a way that was so proud and unashamed. It was so far away from us, but we could relate to everything we saw in the music, fashion and sitcoms – it still felt like home somehow.”"

"“It’s always been a part of my journey since I was little, so it felt like it came full circle, and confirmed what I’m doing. And now my parents believe that this is a real job!”"

"“I feel immense pressure because I really want to represent my identity correctly and authentically, make sure it’s being celebrated and not exploited for monetary gain or trendiness. But I take comfort in knowing that my community really supports me, and is really encouraging me to continue to do what I do. And I trust my own decisions.”"

"“When I started my (art) journey, I was really inspired by hip-hop, rap and basketball, and I’d always seen this theme of Nike Air Force 1s and Air Jordans,”"

"“I’d always associated that with Black people really creating groundbreaking, global, effective work and I really wanted to be a part of it.”"

"“Hair has been something that’s important for not only my family but a lot of African people as well; it’s really like the center of our identity in a way. So, when I started drawing, I’d draw people having really fresh haircuts or beautiful braids.”"

"“Within all of my work you’ll see nuggets of a zigzag and that represents cornrows that you see in beautiful patterns; you’ll see combs, you’ll see people that look familiar to myself and my narrative,”"

"“We need to see more female designers in the industry. There’s not enough,”"

"“I’m extremely proud to be a Black female African illustrator because this was a space, I’ll say 10 years ago, there weren’t a ton of us there,”"

"“There’s a certain way in which we tell stories that I think the world not only will enjoy, but I think the world needs.”"

""Shoebox collections like Poppy’s tower are a source of pride within sneaker culture, according to Wells. By having those boxes serve as her “vision board,”"

"The first time I learnt about Karabo Poppy Moletsane and her work was four years ago when she was unveiled as one of the African creatives, who collaborated with a major European brand."

"Among those creatives were the impeccable Manthe Ribane and Nonku Phiri, I knew there and then that she was a force; given the calibre of brilliant women she was featured alongside. Her work was impressive then and still is now; she has not looked back since."

"... In such strange homes as the and the , or the deserts of Utah and southern California, we find the oddest desert plants, forced to curious expedients in order to sustain life amidst almost perpetual heat and , but often displaying blossoms of such brilliance and delicacy that they might well be envied by their more fortunate sisters, flourishing beside shady waterfalls, in a "happy valley" like , or a splendid mountain garden, such as spreads in many-colored parterres of bloom around the feet of . On the wind-swept plains hundreds of flowers are to be found; many kinds of hardy plants brighten the salty margins of the sea cliffs, or bloom at the edge of the snow on rocky mountain peaks, while quantities of humble, everyday flowers border our country roadsides or tint the hills and meadows with lavish color."

"It was a time when fashion was permitted to walk hand in hand with piety. All the fashionable accomplishments were taught by experts at . Fanny's contralto voice was well trained. She acquired enough Italian to read ',' a little Latin, even a little . Her Parisian accent soon became the envy of the other English girls ..."

"... the months that followed 's must have been dreary enough. Fortunately, his new book—the one thing that had made the last year bearable—still provided some distraction for his thoughts. had just been published by . There were reviews to be read, copies must be sent to old friends. He had taken great pains with the looks of his "bantling" and was satisfied."

"The earliest flower drawings were for the most part made to assist the searcher after herbs and s. was desired and soon to a surprising degree achieved, for there can be little doubt, as we shall see, that the illustrations provided for herbals nearly two thousand years ago were highly naturalistic. Gradually, however, unintelligent copying led to a debased and stylised type of figure which was nothing more than a decorative embellishment to the text. With the Renaissance came a revival of naturalism, but the function of the botanical illustrator remained at first unchanged."

"... in the first century AD, the first known copies of ' ('On Medical Material') were produced, translated into both Latin and Arabic. These were written by a Roman physician of Greek origin called . In this illustrated book he covered 600 plants with around a further 1,000 medicines made from them. It was widely read for thousands of years and was regarded as a pharmaceutical 'bible' for those in practice, becoming the most influential work on medicinal plants in both Christian and Islamic cultures. Astonishingly, a copy of the illustrated manuscript, dating back to the sixth century, is still in existence, held in Istanbul, Turkey."

"Choosing the subject for a drawing or painting is an important part of the creative process. Selecting a good example of the plant you are going to paint is the first step towards a good illustration."

"The artist may not ask any questions about the species at all, but rather look at a flower as an individual of nature with its own unique features of colour, texture, form, size, and proportion. Their first question may be 'how do I capture the essence of the flower in my canvas?' Or perhaps 'how do I create a work of true beauty that may equal or surpass nature itself?'"

"The artist must decide whether the correct botanical information has been conveyed in the the drawing in the best way possible. When and flowers are huddled together they can be repositioned to give a more open design; and leaves lining up with stems can be moved slightly so that the drawing can be clearly understood. It is difficult to know whether to include insect damage and nibbled bits, as well as leaves that have been on the plant all year and look discoloured and weary. When you are illustrating a plant that retains its bare leaves all through the year, such as a , it would be unwise to tidy up the plant and remove the older leaves as this would destroy part of the plant's life history. Leaves with autumnal fruits will not appear as fresh as they would in the spring."

"During World War II, Violet Oakley crafted twenty-four portable intended for American battleships, military bases, and airfields. While they seem conventional at first glance, a closer inspection uncovers distinct elements, such as the spirit’s victory over matter, which promises triumph and tranquility. With Oakley, art created by Christian Scientists matured. She demonstrated that illustrating Christian Science books is not essential to conveying the principles and spirit of the religion within the evolving realm of modern art."

"I am a painter, author and singer-songwriter channeling my experiences and emotions through my creative disciplines. The love and commitment of my husband, creative partner and best friend inspires me to overcome my obstructions with grace and rationality."

"As a child model from the age of five, with a bipolar stage mother, I was exposed to the superficial and manipulative world of objectification, filled with competition and exploitation."

"After my Tween modeling years, I started filling out, and my mother became my biggest critic. She always put me on diets and was obsessed with my appearance. My reaction was to become anorexic and bulimic. Once I realized the risks associated with this destructive behavior, I began to honestly evaluate the source of my self-loathing and finally concluded that the damage I was doing was to myself. By blaming my parents, and rebelling against everything else in my life, I was accepting a victim mentality. I could not ignore this revelation. I stopped purging and threw it all into my artwork, which has emotionally carried me for the last 30 years."

"I have suffered from insecurity, depression, and low self-esteem. I believe these are the symptoms of being raised by a bi-polar mother and father who did not make the effort to protect me. Also, being thrust in the modeling world at a very young age put unrealistic emphasis on my physicality, resulting in a food disorder. I've worked tirelessly to reverse my negative programming, rearrange my values, and accept myself with all my imperfections."

"I have healed my deepest wounds by painting, writing music and singing. These activities have allowed me not only to express myself, but to sit with the painful issues, providing space, and enabling me to see with a broader perspective. Sometimes, I'm lucky enough to release the neurotic patterns and move through those tender areas. My twenty-six year relationship with my husband has been an anchor and has helped me grow. Marriage makes one accountable and reflects back whatever you're dishing out."

"I have developed a strong center through 30 years of yoga. I've grown aware of my weaknesses and strengths and regularly push myself to explore those boundaries. I am in touch with my fear and insecurity; while hearing those self-critical voices, I try not to act on these emotions any longer. Most of the time, I recognize these old reactions to pain and channel this self-knowledge into my art."

"I feel that creativity is a state of mind, and I try to bring that energy to everything I do. I love to paint, sing, play the piano, do yoga, take long walks with my husband, laugh daily and feed my friends. I've discovered that service to others is important, but not to the point of self-depletion, so balance and routine help to restore my energy."

"My creative process is a fluid and ongoing dance. Ideas come in a visual flash, and I often spend months manifesting that vision into a painting or sculpture. I allow my work to unfold naturally, without strict rules, often incorporating current events or addressing a subject I feel passionate about."

"My "Peoplescapes" (2D and 3D oil paintings, with sculpture, fabric, found objects on canvas) are detailed narratives addressing social, spiritual and political issues facing society. When I travel, I love to paint plein air and capture the beauty and light of the landscape."

"I've recently created a new technique I call "Plane- slashing" where I layer seemingly disparate paintings on stretched canvases, slash through them, and then work into the dimensions of canvas as a whole, sometimes adding sculpture and found objects. These are especially effective when I'm working through emotional upheavals."

"I have a new book entitled "Peoplescapes -- My Story From Purging To Painting" an illustrated memoir (Babu Books)."

"The pain in my life has pushed me to deep inspection of my inner workings, and steered me to create artwork with discipline. Once I discovered the transformative power of creativity, I realized that my contribution to the world is the body of work I've produced over my lifetime."

"I recommend that others learn to identify their intuitive voice, and follow their muse. Get fearlessly involved in your own creative process, learn to love it, and don't get distracted by public opinion."

"Allow your heart's desire to be revealed, test your resilience, prioritize your values, and commit to the process. The rewards come while you're busy paving the path.""

"I have come to realize that art is truly a universal language. For decades I’ve been creating “Peoplescapes,” oil, sculptured characters and applied objects on canvas, addressing cultural, political and spiritual issues facing society. By juxtaposing people in recognizable places and situations, each painting weaves together a story about contemporary life, filled with layers of detail, symbolism and humor."

"Process work doesn’t appeal to me. That’s why I like drypoint and not just an etching. I’ve done only twenty-five bitten etchings in my life because I don’t care for all that business that goes on that gets between you and the work. I love drypoint and I think that actually it gives you the same wonderful satisfaction that carving in stone must give to a person. You’re really making something with great effort. And I think that effort is very important in the production of any work of art. If it’s too easy, if you’re just gliding around on a wax surface and then biting it in acid, it doesn’t give you that sensation of making something … That wonderful feeling that you have for the material and the real strength that you have to employ to get the line the right depth and richness and to do the cross-hatching so that the metal doesn’t break down but still you get a rich black. It gives you, oh, a great sensation"

"Pin-head, parsimoniously covered with thin dark hair, on a short, dumpy body. Small features, prominent nose, chipmunk teeth and no chin, conveying the sharp, weak look of a little rodent. Absent-minded eyes with a half-glimmer of observation. Prim, critical mouth and faint coloring. Personality lifeless, retiring, snippy, quietly egotistical. Lacks vigor and sparkle."

"My biggest fear has always been that someone would be trapped back here and couldn't get help. No ambulance or police would be able to get through. It's good to know that after all of these years, my family will be safe. I've been stuck many times from the outside and couldn't get home and I've been stuck on the inside and couldn't get out."

"He's been in the Coast Guard his entire life, and one of the things he does and does well is what the Coast Guard motto is, be always prepared. He takes every new event and gets down and starts working and sees it to its end."

"Wellington, with its hills and fault lines and glittering sea, is like a perfect espresso cup of culture and energy. It’s also home to a lot of quiet minorities, like the Greek community I come from, who carry stories that might be less well known than others. I can’t wait to return"

"In the story of the Trojan Horse, after a ten-year siege, the Greeks pretend to sail away and leave a “gift” of a wooden horse on the doorstep of the city of Troy. The Trojans pull the horse into their city. But, under the cover of night, a select force of men creep out of it, torching the city, and thus winning the war for the Greeks."

"I am a Greek-New Zealand writer and I am building a horse like this — or, more accurately, I’m allowing it to build itself."

"But, in this story, the Trojan Horse is a non-fiction book that I’m writing about the media in Aotearoa — and the warriors are writers. Māori writers, Pasifika writers, French and Chinese and “other” writers. Any writers that haven’t been identified by the press as part of a Pākehā mainstream."

"And the city of Troy is Pākehā culture, which I envisage in this book as a walled fortress. In front of this fortress, the horse is taking shape. There are voices clamouring inside it, about to be let out."

"The voices belong to some of Aotearoa’s foremost writers: Tusiata Avia, Tina Makereti, Chris Tse, Paula Morris, and Karlo Mila, among many others, who I’ve interviewed for my upcoming book, The Outliers: Who do we want to be?"

"My interest in the way these writers are portrayed in the media began * when I started a PhD in creative writing at Victoria University, in 2009. I realised that even though some of them were challenging ethnic stereotypes with their work, they were often completely exoticised in the media around them."

"I discovered that — contrary to what I’d expected — in the 40 years since the publication of Witi Ihimaera’s first book, the mainstream media’s representation of these authors has not become more nuanced, or less racist. Instead, the racism has gone underground, coming out as a kind of simplistic “celebration”, and keeping all such authors firmly on the outside: nice, exotic additions to “New Zealand Literature."

"A real is never contented with maps of places and pictures of things, but always desires to see the places and things themselves."

"... the only way to become a connoisseur of honey is to keep s, for thus only may one learn to discriminate between honey made from and that gathered from ; or to distinguish, at first taste, the product of in bloom from that drawn from vagrant blossoms, which, changing day by day, mark the season's processional."

"Perhaps half the falsehood in the world is due to lack of power to detect the truth and to express it. aids both in discernment and in expression of things as they are."

"When Anna Botsford Comstock 1885 died in summer 1930 at the age of seventy-five, the pioneering naturalist left behind not only an ailing husband—famed entomologist , who was severely debilitated by a series of strokes and would pass away just half a year later—but a 760-page manuscript chronicling their decades of marriage, travel, teaching, and scientific study. It would be nearly a quarter-century until that memoir reached a wide readership, in the form of a book compiled by , Anna’s second cousin and the couple’s closest living relative. Published in 1953 by a division of , The Comstocks of Cornell was in fact just part of Anna’s original manuscript. It had been heavily edited by Herrick, also a professor of entomology on the Hill—not only to de-emphasize events and characters he considered irrelevant, but to streamline the language, remove any hint of controversy, and shift the focus toward John Henry’s august accomplishments, including his role as founder of Cornell’s entomology department."

"It’s not a story for people with thin skins and weak nerves, whom I would advise to replace this book on the pile at once and slink off to the children’s section. Shoo! Be gone, you cry-babies and quaffers of chamomile tea, you wimps and softies! This book tells of a place where reading is still a genuine adventure, and by adventure I mean the old-fashion definition of the word that appears in the Zamonian dictionary: ‘A daring enterprise undertaken in a spirit of curiosity or temerity, it is potentially life-threatening, harbours unforeseeable dangers and sometimes proves fatal.’ Yes, I speak of a place where reading can drive people insane. Where books may injure and poison them – indeed, even kill them. Only those who are thoroughly prepared to take such risks in order to read this book – only those willing to hazard their lives in so doing – should accompany me to the next paragraph. The remainder I congratulate on their wise but yellow-bellied decision to stay behind. Farewell, you cowards! I wish you a long and boring life, and, on that note, bid you goodbye!"

"In my profession it isn’t a question of telling good literature from bad. Really good literature is seldom appreciated in its own day. The best authors die poor, the bad ones make money – it’s always been like that. What do I, an agent, get out of a literary genius who won’t be discovered for another hundred years? I’ll be dead myself then. Successful incompetents are what I need."

"I now understood the secret of music and knew what makes it so infinitely superior to all the other arts: its incorporeality. Once it has left an instrument it becomes its own master, a free and independent creature of sound, weightless, incorporeal and perfectly in tune with the universe."

"In my position I simply can’t afford pangs of conscience. Fortunately, they fade the more power one acquires. It’s an entirely natural process."

"You probably suppose that what you heard last night was music. Allow me to correct you: it was acoustic alchemy, hypnosis by means of sound waves. Music is the least resistible of all the arts, so I simply had to make use of it. Try getting an audience to dance by reciting a poem! Try getting them to march! Impossible! Only music can do that."

"It symbolizes the three components of power: power, power and power."

"“How can the answer to today’s questions be in such an old book?” “The answers to almost all of today’s questions can be found in old books,” Smyke retorted. “If you want to find out, look them up. If not, forget it.”"

"In the end, because you become inured to anything you meet in vast numbers, I grew accustomed to the sight of these innumerable skeletons. I ceased to flinch whenever I rounded a bend in a tunnel and was confronted by a skeletal figure with its arm raised in salutation. There was even something comforting about this world of the dead, because the absence of life betokened the absence of danger. All that is evil stems from the living; the dead are a peaceable bunch."

"There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written, that’s all."

"Yes, yes, but why was it invisible, like everything you had to take on trust? Because it didn’t exist at all?"

"Reading is an intelligent way of not having to think."

"Writing is a desperate attempt to extract some dignity – and a modicum of money – from solitude."

"Curiosity is the most powerful incentive in the world. Why? Because it’s capable of overcoming the two most powerful disincentives in the world: common sense and fear."

"I chewed them as I looked round the room, feeling thoroughly restored. A drink of water and a handful of smoked maggots had sufficed to turn a despairing wreck into a cheerful optimist. It isn’t the brain that governs our state of mind, it’s in the stomach."

"But his illness never attained the merciful degree of severity that would have entitled him to a spell in a lunatic asylum and absolve him from further work. It wasn’t quite severe enough for a lunatic; only for a writer."

"The problem is this: in order to make money – lots of money – we don’t need flawless literary masterpieces. What we need is mediocre rubbish, trash suitable for mass consumption. More and more, bigger and bigger blockbusters of less and less significance. What counts is the paper we sell, not the words that are printed on it."

"“No, literature isn’t eternal,” he cried. “It’s a thing of the moment. Even if you made books with pages of steel and diamond letters, they would some day crash into the sun and melt, together with our planet. Nothing is eternal, least of all in art. It doesn’t matter how long an author’s work continues to glimmer after his death. What matters is how brightly it burns while he’s still alive.”"

"“Regenschein is dead, my friend. You’re delirious.” “No one who writes a good book is really dead.”"

"One’s memory functions like a spider’s web. Unimportant things – the wind, for example – a web lets through, whereas captured flies become lodged in it and are stored there until the spider needs and devours them."

"This was nonsense, of course, but he lectured so brilliantly and plausibly that I could only marvel at his inexhaustible ingenuity."

"His unorthodox didactic method of imparting his monumental store of knowledge was a curious mixture of megalomania and modesty, because he claimed to have picked it up from others. The truth was, he had invented it all himself and never tired, day after day and lesson after lesson, of devising new absurdities that would fire my imagination."

"I’m not much of an expert on entomology because most insects fill me with a revulsion in proportionate to the number of legs they possess."

"Many people may think it is insane of someone endowed with such a potential abundance of power to spend his life producing works of art which no one can see. Well, my own ideas of morality prescribe that only a lunatic would aspire to subordinate the fate of others to his own wishes. I leave it to a higher authority to decide which view is the right one."