“We can roam the bloated stacks of the Library of Alexandria, where all imagination and knowledge are assembled; we can recognize in its destruction the warning that all we gather will be lost, but also that much of it can be collected again; we can learn from its splendid ambition that what was one man's experience can become, through the alchemy of words, the experience of all, and how that experience, distilled once again into words, can serve each singular reader for some secret, singular purpose.” MenPurposeLostImaginationSecretReaderAmbitionDestructionLibraryOne ManWarningSplendidAlchemyAlexandria Book:The Library at Night Source: The Library at Night
“That every will must consider every other will its equal would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness.” MenWould BeSecretPrinciplesPathEqualDestructionAgentsNothingnessHostileWearinessDissolution Book:On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo Source: On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo
“I trust in due time to lay the perfidy, meanness, and wickedness of [Henry] Clay naked before the American people. I have lately got an intimation of some of his secret movements, which, if I can reach with positive and responsible proof, I will wield to his political, and perhaps his actual, destruction.” PeopleIfsI CanPoliticalSecretMovementDestructionResponsibleLaysDuesProofNakedWickednessClayMeannessDue TimePerfidy Author:Andrew Jackson
“Literature, like magic, has always been about the handling of secrets, about the pain, the destruction, and the marvelous liberation that can result when they are revealed. If a writer doesn't give away secrets, his own or those of the people he loves, if he doesn't court disapproval, reproach and general wrath, whether of friends, family or party apparatchiks... the result is pallid, inanimate, a lump of earth.” PeopleIfsGivingEarthPainLiteratureResultsPartySecretMagicDestructionCourtLiberationMarvelousWrathReproachLumpsFamily FriendsDisapproval Author:Michael Chabon