#passivity

The writer is the duelist who never fights at the stated hour, who gathers up an insult, like another curious object, a collector's item, spreads it out on his desk later, and then engages in a duel with it verbally. Some people call it weakness. I call it postponement. What is weakness in the man becomes a quality in the writer. For he preserves, collects what will explode later in his work. That is why the writer is the loneliest man in the world; because he lives, fights, dies, is reborn always alone; all his roles are played behind a curtain. In life he is an incongruous figure. ↗

— Anaïs Nin

#passivity #writer #writing #life

I cannot have chaos erupting around me until I am prepared for it. I am a collector. I am an observer. I don't participate. My resources, and my standing, must be secure before I can allow the uncertainty of war to crash down upon us. ↗

— Derek Landy

#preparedness #war #uncertainty

Passivity is the same as defending injustice. ↗

— Deepak Chopra

#injustice #passivity #same

Passivity is fatal to us. Our goal is to make the enemy passive. ↗

— Mao Zedong

#fatal #goal #make #our #passive

When I go to the clinic next and sit with a tube in my arm and watch the poison go in, I'm in an attitude of abject passivity. It doesn't feel like fighting at all; it just feels like submitting. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#arm #attitude #clinic #feel #feels

You enter a state of controlled passivity, you relax your grip and accept that even if your declared intention is to justify the ways of God to man, you might end up interesting your readers rather more in Satan. ↗

— Ian Mcewan

#controlled #declared #end #enter #even

Too often in the past, U.S. leaders have forced Israel to pay the price for American strategic interests in the Middle East - through concessions in the peace process as well as passivity in the face of Iraqi attacks. ↗

— Ron Silver

#attacks #concessions #east #face #forced

People go to the movies instead of moving. Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them. ↗

— Tennessee Williams

#adventure #audience #hollywood #movement #movies

That requires as much power as a small radio transmitter--and rather similar skills to operate. For it's the application of the power, not its amount, that matters. How long do you think Hitler's career as a dictator of Germany would have lasted, if wherever he went a voice was talking quietly in his ear? Or if a steady musical note, loud enough to drown all other sounds and to prevent sleep, filled his brain night and day? Nothing brutal, you appreciate. Yet, in the final analysis, just as irresistible as a tritium bomb. ↗

— Arthur C. Clarke

#passivity #world #music

Are you as much of a criminal if you don't act when there's a crime taking place in front of you as you are one of the participants? That was something that I was thinking about a lot because there are many moments in 'Less Than Zero' where horrific things happen and Clay could do something about them, but his passivity stops him. ↗

— Bret Easton Ellis

#act #because #clay #could #crime