#lists

It's the time of year when the literati give advice on what we should be reading on our summer holidays. These terrifying lists often leave me appalled at my own ignorance, but also suspicious about the pretension of their advocates. ↗

— Arthur Smith

#advice #also #appalled #give #holidays

The human animal differs from the lesser primates in his passion for lists. ↗

— H. Allen Smith

#differs #his #human #human animal #lesser

I want to kill the president because I no like the capitalists. I have the gun in my hand, I kill kings and presidents first and next all capitalists. ↗

— Giuseppe Zangara

#capitalists #first #gun #hand #i

I'm never going to complain about receiving free early copies of books, because clearly there's nothing to complain about, but it does introduce a rogue element into one's otherwise carefully plotted reading schedule. ... Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarly deflected from your chosen path. ↗

— Nick Hornby

#freebies #planning #president #reading #reading-lists

Like most novelists, I like to do exactly the opposite of what I'm told. It's in my nature as a novelist. Novelists can't trust anything they haven't seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands. (Jerusalem Prize acceptance speech, JERUSALEM POST, Feb. 15, 2009) ↗

— Haruki Murakami

#truth #writers #writing #nature

Short-story writing requires an exquisite sense of balance. Novelists, frankly, can get away with more. A novel can have a dull spot or two, because the reader has made a different commitment. ↗

— Lynn Abbey

#balance #because #commitment #different #dull

Some of my best friends are Venture Capitalists, but let's face it, a hamster with Alzheimer's could make those kind of numbers. It's great work if you can get it. ↗

— Scott Adams

#best #capitalists #could #face #friends

In emerging democracies like Russia, in authoritarian states like Iran or even Yugoslavia, journalists play a vital role in civil society. In fact, they form the very basis of those new democracies and civil societies. ↗

— Christiane Amanpour

#basis #civil #civil society #democracies #emerging

Set lists are tough because you come up with this structure of how the songs are going to go from one to the next, but at the same time, you have to be spontaneous and take requests and change the set list at the drop of a hat. ↗

— Billie Joe Armstrong

#change #come #drop #go #going

It's always the small people who change things. It's never the politicians or the big guys. I mean, who pulled down the Berlin wall? It was all the people in the streets. The specialists didn't have a clue the day before. ↗

— Luc Besson

#before #berlin #berlin wall #big #big guys