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Quote by Anthony Horowitz

“But I’m not sure it actually matters what we read. Our lives continue along the straight lines that have been set out for us. Fiction merely allows us a glimpse of the alternative. Maybe that’s one of the reasons we enjoy it.”

Quote by Anthony Horowitz

Book:Magpie Murders
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Magpie Murders

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Author

Anthony Horowitz
Anthony Horowitz

Anthony Horowitz is a British novelist renowned for his suspense and crime novels. Born on April 5, 1955, he began his writing career in 1981. Horowitz's works span various styles, including historical novels, children's literature, and adult fiction. He has received numerous literary awards, including the Silver Dagger Award and the Edgar Award. more

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“Reading is a full contact sport; we crash up against the wave of words with all of our intellectual, imaginative, and emotional resources. What results can sometimes be as much our creation as the novelist's or playwright's.”

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Book:How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines
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“Any acceptable theory must offer an explanation for all the data. The paraphysical hypothesis meets this criterion. The extraterrestrial hypothesis does not. The UFO enthusiasts have solved this problem by selecting only those sightings and events that seem to fit the extraterrestrial thesis. They have rejected a major portion of the real evidence for this reason and, in many cases, have actually suppressed (by ignoring and not publishing) events that point to some other conclusion. Once this process of selection began, the problem became more confusing and the mystery more mysterious. The UFO publications were filled with selected sightings, and professional writers preparing books and magazine articles sifted out the best of those sightings, unaware that a major part of the real data was being deliberately ignored.”

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Book:Operation Trojan Horse
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“...we have thousands upon thousands of UFO sightings that force two unacceptable answers upon us: 1. All the witnesses were mistaken or lying. 2. Some tremendous unknown civilization is exerting an all-out effort to manufacture thousands of different types of UFOs and is sending all of them to our planet. The governments of the world have seized upon variations of the first explanation. The UFO enthusiasts accept the second. I do not accept either one. Instead, I propose a third alternative. I think that some “hard” objects definitely exist as Temporary Transmogrifications. They are disk-shaped and cigar-shaped. They leave indentations in the ground when they land. Witnesses have touched them and have even been inside of them. These hard objects are decoys, just as the dirigibles and ghost planes of yesteryear may have been decoys to cover the activities of the multitudinous soft objects. My real concern is with these soft objects. They hold one of the keys to the mystery. There are countless sightings of objects that changed size and shape in front of the viewers or split into several smaller objects, each going off in a different direction. In some cases, this process was reversed, with several small lights converging together to form a single large one, which then went dashing off. Over and over again, witnesses have told me in hushed tones, “You know, I don’t think that thing I saw was mechanical at all. I got the distinct impression that it was alive.”

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Book:Operation Trojan Horse
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“In the Forgotten Books of Eden, an apocryphal book allegedly translated from ancient Egyptian in the nineteenth century, we are told that Satan and his hosts were fallen angels who populated the earth before Adam was brought into being, and Satan used lights, fire, and water in his efforts to rid the planet of this troublesome creature. He even disguised himself as an angel from time to time and appeared as a beautiful young woman in his efforts to lead Adam to his doom. UFO-type lights were one of the Devil’s devices described in the Forgotten Books of Eden. Subtle variations on this same theme can be found in the Bible and in the numerous scriptures of the Oriental cultures. Religious man has always been so enthralled with the main (and probably allegorical) story line that the hidden point has been missed. That point is that the earth was occupied before man arrived or was created. The original occupants or forces were paraphysical and possessed the power of transmogrification. Man was the interloper, and the earth’s original occupants or owners were not very happy over the intrusion. The inevitable conflict arose between physical man and the paraphysical owners of the planet. Man accepted the interpretation that this conflict raged between his creator and the Devil. The religious viewpoint has always been that the Devil has been attacking man (trying to get rid of him) by foisting disasters, wars, and sundry evils upon him. There is historical and modern proof that this may be so. A major, but little-explored, aspect of the UFO phenomenon is therefore theological and philosophical rather than purely scientific. The UFO problem can never be untangled by physicists and scientists unless they are men who have also been schooled in liberal arts, theology, and philosophy. Unfortunately, most scientific disciplines are so demanding that their practitioners have little time or inclination to study complicated subjects outside their own immediate fields of interest. Satan and his demons are part of the folklore of all races, no matter how isolated they have been from one another. The Indians of North America have many legends and stories about a devil-like entity who appeared as a man and was known as the trickster because he pulled off so many vile stunts. Tribes in Africa, South America, and the remote Pacific islands have similar stories.”

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Book:Operation Trojan Horse
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“The belief in UFO contact, and the expectation of visitation by beings from space, is promoted by certain groups of people who are responsible for advertising UFO contacts, for circulating faked photographs (often in connection with genuine sightings), for interfering with witnesses and researchers, and for generating systematic “disinformation” about the phenomenon. We may find that they belong, or have access, to military, media, and government circles. In these games it is not clear exactly which side is infiltrating the other.”

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Book:Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults
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“The absurdity of many UFO stories and of many religious visions is not a superficial logical mistake. It may be the key to their function. According to Major Murphy, the confusion in the UFO mystery may have been put there deliberately to achieve certain results. One of these results has been to keep scientists away. The other is to create the conditions for a new form of social control, a change in Man’s perception of his place in the universe. Are his theories fantastic? Before we decide, let us review a few other facts. We need to examine more closely the political connections. Paris Flammonde, in his well-documented Age of Flying Saucers, remarked that “a great many of the contactees purvey philosophies which are tinged, if not tainted, with totalitarian overtones.”1 A catalogue of contactee themes, compiled from interviews I have conducted, includes the following. Intellectual abdication. The widespread belief that human beings are incapable of solving their own problems, and that extraterrestrial intervention is imperative to save us “in spite of ourselves.” The danger in such a philosophy is that it makes its believers dependent on outside forces and discourages personal responsibility: why should we worry about the problems around us, if the Gods from Outer Space are about to solve them? Racist philosophy. The pernicious suggestion that some of us on the Earth are of extraterrestrial descent and therefore constitute a “higher race.” The dangers inherent in this belief should be obvious to anybody who hasn’t forgotten the genocides of World War II, executed on the premise that some races were somehow “purer” or better than others. (Let us note in passing that Adamski’s Venusian, the Stranger of the Canigou seen by Bordas, and many other alleged extraterrestrials were all tall Aryan types with long blond hair.) Technical impotence. The statement that the birth of civilization on this planet resulted not from the genius and ability of mankind, but from repeated assistance by higher beings. Archaeologists and anthropologists are constantly aware of the marvelous skill with which the “Ancient Engineers” (to use L. Sprague de Camp’s phrase) developed the tools of civilization on all continents. No appeal to superior powers is necessary to explain the achievements of early culture. The belief expressed by the contactees reveals a tragic lack of trust on their part in human ability. Social utopia. Fantastic economic theories, including the belief that a “world economy” can be created overnight, and that democracy should be abolished in favor of Utopian systems, usually dictatorial in their outlook.”

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Book:Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults
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“A Universal Fact The problem before us now is this: if the reality behind the UFO phenomenon is both physical and psychic in nature, and if it manipulates space and time in ways our scientific concepts are inadequate to describe, is there any reason for its effects to be limited to our culture or to our generation? We have already established that no country has had the special privilege of these manifestations. Yet we must carry the argument further: if the UFO phenomenon is not tied to social conditions specific to our time, or to specific technological achievements, then it may represent a universal fact. It may have been with us, in one form or another, as long as the human race has existed on this planet. Something happened in classical times that is inadequately explained by historical theories. The suggestion that the same thing might be happening again should make us extremely interested in bringing every possible light to bear on this problem. Beginning in the second century B.C. and continuing until the fall of the Roman Empire, the intellectual elites of the Mediterranean world, raised in a spirit of scientific rationalism, were confronted and eventually defeated by irrational element similar to that contained in modern apparitions of unexplained phenomena, an element that is amplified by their summary rejection by our own science. It accompanied the collapse of ancient civilizations. Commenting on this parallel, French science writer Aime Michel proposes the following scene. Consider one of the Alexandrian thinkers, a man like Ptolemaeus, the second-century astronomer thoroughly schooled in the rational methods of Archimedes, Euclid, and Aristotle. And imagine him reading the Apocalypse, various writings about Armageddon. How would he react to such an experience? He would merely shrug, says Aime Michel: "It would never occur to him to place the slightest credence in such a compendium of what must regard as insanities. Such a scene must have taken place thousands of times at the end of classical antiquity. And we know that every time there was the same rejection, the same shrugging, because we have no record of any critical examination of the doctrines, ideas, and claims of the counterculture that expressed itself through the Apocalypse. This counterculture was too absurd to retain the attention of a reader of Plato. A short time – a very short time – elapsed, the counterculture triumphed, and Plato was forgotten for a thousand years. Could it happen again?" Only a thorough examination of the ancient records can save us from the effects of such cultural myopia.”

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Book:Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact
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