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L Quotes

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All L Quotes

“Like prison, I'm never getting out of trouble. The only thing I can do is make my trouble your joy - because here's the thing about reading my memoir: it will make you feel good about yourself. You feel morally superior even as you identify with me. You slip into the supple skin of a cannibal for nearly three hundred pages, and enjoy it; then you can slough it off, go about your happy moral business, and feel like you are a better person.”

“Like propaganda generally, advertising must thus pervade the atmosphere; for it wants, paradoxically, to startle its beholders without really being noticed by them. Its aim is to jolt us, not "into thinking," as in a Brechtian formulation, but specifically away from thought, into quasiautomatic action: "To us," as an executive at Coca-Cola puts it, "communication is message assimilation--the respondent must be shown to behave in some way that proves they [sic] have come to accept the message, not merely to have received it.”

“Like Richard Ellmann on James Joyce, Arnold Rampersad on Ralph Ellison is in a class of its own. His masterful and magisterial book is the most powerful and profound treatment of Ellison's undeniable artistic genius, deep personal flaws, and controversial political evolution. And he reveals an Ellison unbeknownst to all of us. From now on, all serious scholarship on Ellison must begin with Rampersad's instant and inimitable classic in literary biography.”

“Like right, so crime, i.e. the struggle of the isolated individual against the prevailing conditions, is not the result of pure arbitrariness. On the contrary, it depends on the same conditions as that rule. The same visionaries who see in right and law the domination of some independently existing, general will can see in crime the mere violation of right and law.”

“Like running the hurdles. Work so hard, jump over every one, fast, high enough but no higher, because you can't afford to hang in the air. And then, when the race is over, you're dripping with sweat, either they beat you or you beat them ... and then a couple of guys come out and move the hurdles out of the way. Turns out they were nothing. All that work to jump over them, but now they're gone.”

“Like Saint John, Theresa sees that God, who is Love, and Love alone - "God is Charity" (John iv, 8) - does not will and never has willed our suffering for its own sake. He wills it, indeed, but as it were against His will, with what we theologians would term (but how cold it sounds after the intuitive language of Theresa) His subsequent will. Sin, having made suffering necessary, God wills it, but, even then, He only wills it by Love, as being the necessary means to lead men to love Him, to find their blessedness in loving Him . . . He wills it only in view of something else, in view of man's happiness - a painful remedy, but, man's egoism being what it is, one necessary for the health and happiness of his soul.”

“Like seeds planted in the depths of our souls, our dreams are at the center of who we really are. Our mission and our right is to nurture them and to allow them to grow. To follow your dreams takes courage, action, persistence, time and patience, but most of all, you must first believe in them. Believing in your dreams means that you trust your aspirations exist for a reason and the reason is your calling. Believing in your dreams means that you hold true that everything is possible and you can manifest the life and experiences you desire. We know that dreaming is a form of planning. We know that everything we enjoy and appreciate around us – every advancement and contribution to society – developed from the commitment, perseverance, and belief in our dreams.”

“Like Seita and Setsuko, like Chihiro - like Sophie Hatter who disappears from her dreary life into a world of talking fireballs and melting wizards - the myth of grief is not just a case of falling down the rabbit hole to escape reality. It's about what happens to us on the descent, what happened once we're down there, and in which ways we are profoundly changed forever once we re-emerge - if, that is, we're lucky enough to do so. It is a different kind of myth: one which doesn't so much offer up the answers as it does provide a way to find them for ourselves. It is a maze - a labyrinth - in which we are sent to become lost before the possibility of escape is even contemplated. It is not quick - it is not easy. There is no map, no key, no legend, and no scale. There is only the maze itself and the quiet echoes of the world above. A shelter until the moment it becomes a prison, grief is the myth we live by when living feels impossible.”