- I believe that love that is true and real creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving or not loving well, which is the same thing. ll cowardice comes from not loving or not loving well, which is the same thing. And then the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face, like some rhino-hunters I know or Belmonte, who is truly brave... It is because they make love with sufficient passion, to push death out of their minds... until it returns, as it does, to all men... and then you must make really good love again.
- It was a good book because it was an honest book, and that's what war does to men. And there's nothing fine and noble about dying in the mud unless you die gracefully. And then it's not only noble but brave
- No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure.
- No, you can't, you couldn't pick one. I mean I can give you a checkmate argument for each side. You know, I sometimes think, how is anyone ever gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony, or a sculpture that can compete with a great city. You can't. Because you look around and every street, every boulevard, is its own special art form and when you think that in the cold, violent, meaningless universe that Paris exists, these lights, I mean come on, there's nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune, but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafés, people drinking and singing. For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe.
- Nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present. The name for this denial is ‘golden age thinking’. It’s the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one that one’s living in. It is a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.
- That's what the present is. It's a little unsatisfying because life is unsatisfying
- That’s the problem with writers, you’re so full of words - but I’m more emotional.
- The artist’s job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence
apr 6 2012 ∞
may 27 2012 +