“…stillness is natural to man: stillness and utter calm. Every poet knows this, for in stillness he begins to understand the greatness of his own inner powers–or ‘soul’, as Wordsworth would have said. If you throw a pebble into a stormy sea, it has no effect. If you throw it into a still pond, you…
Naked Lunch
“Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference. They would like to jump down into their stomachs and digest the food and shovel the shit out.” (p. 195) “What Are You Doing Here? Who Are You?” (p. 199) “There is only one thing a…
Once There Was a War
“And in the houses in the morning people were just beginning to be aware enough to cry.” (p. 59) John Steinbeck. Once There Was a War. New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1943.
Of Mice and Men
“Guy don’t need no sense to be a nice fella. Seems to me sometimes it jus’ works the other way around. Take a real smart guy and he ain’t hardly ever a nice fella.” (p. 37) John Steinbeck. Of Mice and Men. New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1937.
The Fountainhead
“Every form of happiness is private. Our greatest moments are personal, self-motivated, not to be touched. The things which are sacred or precious to us are the things we withdraw from promiscuous sharing. But now we are taught to throw everything within us into public light and common pawing.” (p. 608.) “I’d give my life…
Heart of Darkness
“No, I don’t like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don’t like work — no man does — but I like what is in the work — the chance to find yourself. Your own reality — for yourself, not for others — what…
Ethan Frome
“The words went on sounding between them as though a torch of warning flew from hand to hand through a black landscape.” (p. 120) Edith Wharton. Ethan Frome. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911.
Cup of Gold
“Ah! to be a god and ride on the storm! not under it.” (p. 44) John Steinbeck. Cup of Gold. New York, The Viking Press, Inc., 1929.
Cry, the Beloved Country
“Cry, the beloved country, these things are not yet at an end. The sun pours down on the earth, on the lovely land that man cannot enjoy. He knows only the fear of his heart.” (p. 74) “Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not…
Arthur Miller’s Collected Plays, Introduction
“In the more than half-dozen plays before it [All My Sons] I had picked themes at random — which is to say that I had no awareness of any inner continuity running from one of these plays to the next, and I did not perceive myself in what I had written.” (p. 14) “If I…