Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Wendy Kaminer

Quote by Wendy Kaminer

“If all issues are personalized, we lose our capacity to entertain ideas, to generalize from our own or someone else's experiences, to think abstractly. We substitute sentimentality for thought.”

Quote by Wendy Kaminer

Create image

Author

Wendy Kaminer
Wendy Kaminer

Wendy Kaminer is an American lawyer and writer, born on December 28, 1949. She is known for her contributions to the fields of law and public affairs. more

You May Also Like

“My parents had come from Mexico, a short road in my imagination. I felt myself as coming from a caramelized planet, an upside-down planet, pineapple-cratered. Though I was born here, I came from the other side of the looking glass, as did Alice, though not alone like Alice. Downtown I saw lots of brown people. Old men on benches. Winks from Filipinos. Sikhs who worked in the fields were the most mysterious brown men, their heads wrapped in turbans. They were the rose men. They looked like roses.”

PeopleMenFeltParentSidesBornImaginationSawsFieldsPlanetsRoseGlassesMysteriousBrownOld ManMexicoMy ImaginationNot AloneBenchesUpside DownDowntownFilipinoPineapplesTurbans
Book:Brown: The Last Discovery of America
Create image

“The first book by an African American I read was Carl T. Rowan's memoir, Go South to Sorrow. I found it on the bookshelf at the back of my fifth-grade classroom, an adult book. I can remember the quality of the morning on which I read. It was a sunlit morning in January, a Saturday morning, cold, high, empty. I sat in a rectangle of sunlight, near the grate of the floor heater in the yellow bedroom. And as I read, I became aware of warmth and comfort and optimism. I was made aware of my comfort by the knowledge that others were not, are not, comforted. Carl Rowan at my age was not comforted.”

FirstsMadeI CanBookAgeRememberFoundQualityMorningColdSorrowComfortAdultsEmptyOptimismSouthMemoirAfrican AmericanSatGradesWarmthYellowClassroomSunlightBedroomSaturdayFifthJanuaryBookshelvesFifth GradeSaturday MorningGrateRectangles
Author:Richard Rodriguez
Create image

“Books should confuse. Literature abhors the typical. Literature flows to the particular, the mundane, the greasiness of paper, the taste of warm beer, the smell of onion or quince. Auden has a line: "Ports have names they call the sea." Just so will literature describe life familiarly, regionally, in terms life is accustomed to use -- high or low matters not. Literature cannot by this impulse betray the grandeur of its subject -- there is only one subject: What it feels like to be alive. Nothing is irrelevant. Nothing is typical.”

FeelsShouldBookMatterUseLife IsLiteratureNamesTermLinesAliveSeaSubjectsParticularTastePaperLowsFlowWarmSmellBeerImpulseBetrayTypicalIrrelevantAccustomedMundaneGrandeurPortOnionsAudenQuinceTerm Life
Book:Brown: The Last Discovery of America
Create image