#lit

All novels are sequels; influence is bliss. ↗

— Michael Chabon

#cliche #novels #originality #writing #influence

. . . in seclusion, she had secluded herself from a thousand natural and healing influences; that, her mind, brooding solitary, had grown diseased, as all minds do and must and will that reverse the appointed order of their Maker . . . ↗

— Charles Dickens

#diseased #mind #perverse #perverted #reverse

All of us who are concerned for peace and triumph of reason and justice must be keenly aware how small an influence reason and honest good will exert upon events in the political field. ↗

— Albert Einstein

#influence

All over the world major museums have bowed to the influence of Disney and become theme parks in their own right. The past, whether Renaissance Italy or Ancient Egypt, is re-assimilated and homogenized into its most digestible form. Desperate for the new, but disappointed with anything but the familiar, we recolonize past and future. The same trend can be seen in personal relationships, in the way people are expected to package themselves, their emotions and sexuality, in attractive and instantly appealing forms. ↗

— J.G. Ballard

#disney #future #history #past #relationships

Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody’s going to know whether you did it or not. ↗

— Oprah Winfrey

#integrity #morality #real

Nothing is real. ↗

— John Lennon

#reality #truth #real

I hate how I don't feel real enough unless people are watching. ↗

— Chuck Palahniuk

#reality #real

A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil. ↗

— Terry Eagleton

#politics #socialism #ideology

It is wrong to have an ideal view of the world. That's where the mischief starts. That's where everything starts unravelling... ↗

— V.S. Naipaul

#politics #ideology

Yes, man is mortal, but that would be only half the trouble. The worst of it is that he's sometimes unexpectedly mortal—there's the trick! ↗

— Mikhail Bulgakov

#unexpected