#comment

More immediately, I'm currently working on another Dracula in which there will be connections with ancient Egypt. That's about as far as I want to go in commenting on current work. ↗

— Fred Saberhagen

#ancient #another #as far as #commenting #connections

When I went to the Olympics, I had every intention of shaving the mustache off, but I realized I was getting so many comments about it - and everybody was talking about it - that I decided to keep it. ↗

— Mark Spitz

#comments #decided #every #everybody #getting

I paint things as they are. I don't comment. ↗

— Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

#i #paint #things

What the hell is this stuff?" he muttered, frowning at the oily spot on the linen cloth. "Pearlman slathered it on me this morning." "It's macassar oil. Gentlemen use it to keep their hair neat. Nicholas used it," she added pointedly. "Well, tomorrow he's giving it up. I smell like a rotten apple." "You do not. And I think it looks rather nice." He sent her an incredulous look. "I look like an otter. And everything I put my head against gets greasy." "That's why someone invented the antimacassar," she told him, almost smiling. "The-aha!" He laughed as he made the connection. "Of course. First they invent something stupid, then something ugly to make up for it. We live in a wondrous age, Annie. ↗

— Patricia Gaffney

#social-commentary #victorian-era #age

...all these things were part of the business of dreams. He had learned not to laugh at the advertisements offering to teach writing, cartooning, engineering, to add inches to the biceps and to develop the bust ↗

— Nathanael West

#capitalism #commercialization #conformity #disillusionment #self-perception

A library is a place where you learn what teachers were afraid to teach you. ↗

— Alan M. Dershowitz

#libraries #political-commentary #education

It's not Americans I find annoying; it's Americanism: a social disease of the postindustrial world that must inevitably infect each of the mercantile nations in turn, and is called 'American' only because your nation is the most advanced case of the malady, much as one speaks of Spanish flu, or Japanese Type-B encephalitis. It's symptoms are a loss of work ethic, a shrinking of inner resources, and a constant need for external stimulation, followed by spiritual decay and moral narcosis. You can recognize the victim by his constant efforts to get in touch with himself, to believe his spiritual feebleness is an interesting psychological warp, to construe his fleeing from responsibility as evidence that he and his life are uniquely open to new experiences. In the later stages, the sufferer is reduced to seeking that most trivial of human activities: fun. ↗

— Trevanian

#satire #social-commentary #experience

Doctor MacKenzie says "Sometimes I think the Victorians had the right idea. When you lost a family member back then you were suppose to be in full mourning, dress in nothing but black, for a whole year. Then you went into something they called 'half mourning' for another full year, adn during those two years, you were pretty much expected to have emotional breakdowns, you could do it whenever you felt you needed to, and everybody would support you. Now?, A month after a tragedy, maybe two, and you're expected to be all better-or down pills so you can pretend you are. ↗

— Mercedes Lackey

#family

Truly amazing, what people can get used to, as long as there are a few compensations. ↗

— Margaret Atwood

#human-nature #psychology #social-commentary #nature

To whom can I expose the urgency of my own passion?…There is nobody—here among these grey arches, and moaning pigeons, and cheerful games and tradition and emulation, all so skilfully organised to prevent feeling alone. ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#loneliness #social-commentary #nature