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I Quotes

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All I Quotes

“In a future that portends stronger and more-frequent hurricanes striking North America's Atlantic coast, ferocious winds will pummel tall, unsteady structures. Some will topple, knocking down others. Like a gap in the forest when a giant tree falls, new growth will rush in. Gradually, the asphalt jungle will give way to a real one.”

“In a game of chess you can make certain arbitrary concessions to your opponent, which stand to the ordinary rules of the game as miracles stand to the laws of nature. You can deprive yourself of a castle, or allow the other man sometimes to take back a move made inadvertently. But if you conceded everything that at any moment happened to suit him — if all his moves were revocable and if all your pieces disappeared whenever their position on the board was not to his liking — then you could not have a game at all. So it is with the life of souls in a world: fixed laws, consequences unfolding by causal necessity, the whole natural order, are at once limits within which their common life is confined and also the sole condition under which any such life is possible. Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself.”

“In a game there are winners and losers. But a business deal is always advantageous for both parties. If both the buyer and the seller were not to consider the transaction as the most advantageous action they could choose under the prevailing conditions, they would not enter into the deal.”

“In a game, there is a main character raised within American culture: he speaks in slang, lives for sex and pleasure, feels "successful" if the opposite sex chases after him, shows off by driving cars and motorcycles, obtains respect if he buys a yacht, worships money and wealth, has numerous tattoos and ornaments, spends his nights in clubs and casinos, feels "powerful" when he holds a gun, makes racist jokes, swears in every sentence, thinks and acts like he is at the center of the universe, and so on. Even if this game is produced in the United States, due to the fact that the whole world has now been made interconnected and interdependent, it easily spreads and influences other unconscious peoples. A child in Jakarta, Stockholm, or Prague begins to use the exact same sayings and do the exact same actions born of Brooklyn streets, Californian frat parties, and Los Angeles gambling centers. The result is that even the culture of a completely different country on the other side of the world ends up becoming American; the narrator in the game becomes the very thing children dream of, teenagers chase after, and adults turn into reality.”

“In a garden, food arises from partnership. If I don't pick rocks and pull weeds, I'm not fulfilling my end of the bargain. I can do these thing with my handy opposable thumb and capacity to use tools, to shovel manure. But I can no more create a tomato or embroider a trellis in beans than I can turn lead into gold. That is the plants' responsibility and their gift: animating the inanimate. Now there is a gift.”

“In a general view, there are few conquests that repay the charge of making them, and mankind are pretty well convinced that it can never be worth their while to go to war for profit's sake. If they are made war upon, their country invaded, or their existence at stake, it is their duty to defend and preserve themselves, but in every other light, and from every other cause, is war inglorious and detestable.”

“In a general way I am completely disgusted with the anthology racket. People who have given nothing to the world in the way of writing (and never will) presume to use other men's work at nominal, and by God I mean nominal, prices, for their own benefit and profit and to justify themselves as editors or critics or connoisseurs, in furtherance of which they write pukey little introductions and sit back with an indulgent smile and all nine pockets open.”

“In a general way, if one cannot attribute to the Jew the whole responsibility of the situation, economic, political, and social, by which Algeria is being strangled, it is no exaggeration to recognize him as morally guilty, for the great part of his rìle here, still more than elsewhere, has consisted in corrupting, degrading, and disintegrating.”

“In a general way, the literature of the twentieth century is essentially psychological; and psychology consists of describing states of the soul by displaying them all on the same plane, without any discrimination of value, as though good and evil were external to them, as though the effort toward the good could be absent at any moment from the thought of any man.”

“In a giddy tone I announced, “Operation Demon Days, Hexy Knights. Knight with a ‘K’.” Someone groaned. Matthias grimaced. “Absolutely not. It’s ridiculous.” “It’s perfect!” Blake picked me up for a quick twirl around. “I’m a Hexy Knight. I love having her in the group.” “No,” Matthias said. “She’s not—we’re not keeping her.” What am I, a stray?” Jayden shook his head. “‘Hexy’ isn’t even a word.” Tristan frowned. “It makes us sound like wizards casting spells.” “No, dude. It makes us sound sexy.” “It makes us sound stupid,” Matthias said. As Blake settled me back on the checkered blanket, I huffed, “Well, thank you Professor of the Dark Arts.” “Aren’t you the clever sheila. Really dug deep for that one.”

“In a given scene I may know nothing more than how it's supposed to end, most of the time not even that. Scenes are improvised. A character does or says something, and with as much spontaneity and schizophrenia as I can muster, another character responds. In this way, everything I write is spontaneous chain reaction and I'm running around playing leapfrog in my brain trying to "be" all my people.”

“In a global race, can we really justify the huge number of expensive peripheral European institutions? Can we justify a commission that gets ever larger? Can we carry on with an organisation that has a multibillion pound budget but not enough focus on controlling spending and shutting down programmes that haven't worked?”