#era

I hope you’re not planning on kicking me,” he said, not even bothering to look up from his book, “as hard as you did those doors.” “I will,” I said, “if the next words out of your mouth are Pierce, you just need to relax. ↗

— Meg Cabot

#john #pierce-oliviera #humor

What sort of person," said Salzella patiently, "sits down and writes a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head. Opera can do that to a man. ↗

— Terry Pratchett

#opera #punctuation #humor

If you can't find an answer at the mall or the library, what does that say about the world? ↗

— Joan Bauer

#humor #shopping #humor

London has the trick of making its past, its long indelible past, always a part of its present. And for that reason it will always have meaning for the future, because of all it can teach about disaster, survival, and redemption. It is all there in the streets. It is all there in the books. ↗

— Anna Quindlen

#lessons #literary-london #london #meaning #past

Insularity is the foundation of ethnocentrism and intolerance; when you only know of those like yourself, it is easy to imagine that you are alone in the world or alone in being good and right in the world. Exposure to diversity, on the contrary, is the basis for relativism and tolerance; when you are forced to face and accept the Other as real, unavoidable, and ultimately valuable, you cannot help but see yourself and your 'truths' in a new - and trouble - way. ↗

— David Eller

#intolerance #relativism #tolerance #imagination

The genuine artist, Harris is saying, finds reality in a point of identity between subject and object, a point at which the created world and the world that is really there become the same thing. [p.211] ↗

— Northrop Frye

#literary-theory #poetics #imagination

As you can imagine, those who had fallen this far had been so worn down by their tortures in the seven other hells that they no longer had the strength to cry out. ↗

— Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

#japan #japanese #japanese-literature #torture #imagination

He knew it was necessary to drive the French out, but he had always imagined that this would be done gloriously, with thousands of men on horseback flashing their swords and calling upon Allah to aid them in their holy mission ... It was hard to see any connection between the splendid war of liberation and all this whispering and frowning. ↗

— Paul Bowles

#imagination

The books we love offer a sketch of a whole universe that we secretly inhabit, and in which we desire the other person to assume a role. One of the conditions of happy romantic compatibility is, if not to have read the same books, to have read at least some books in common with the other person—which means, moreover, to have non-read the same books. From the beginning of the relationship, then, it is crucial to show that we can match the expectations of our beloved by making him or her sense the proximity of our inner libraries. ↗

— Pierre Bayard

#compatability #imagination #inner-lives #interiority #literature

Don Quixote is not an imaginary person; he is as real as Alexander the Great. ↗

— Dejan Stojanovic

#don-quixote #imaginary #imagination #literature #real