#t

The cry that 'fantasy is escapist' compared to the novel is only an echo of the older cry that novels are 'escapist' compared with biography, and to both cries one should make the same answer: that freedom to invent outweighs loyalty to mere happenstance, the accidents of history; and good readers should know how to filter a general applicability from a particular story. ↗

— Tom Shippey

#fiction #tolkien #tom-shippey #writing #freedom

The other thing I like, in fact, several months ago I introduced a bill to end the absurd catch and release policy where our government has been giving tickets, essentially, to people who enter illegally and then letting them go and show up of their own volition. ↗

— John Doolittle

#ago #been #bill #catch #end

In fiction, too, after the death of Cooper the main tendency for nearly a generation was away from the conquest of new borders to the closer cultivation, east of the Mississippi, of ground already marked. ↗

— Carl Clinton Van Doren

#already #away #borders #closer #conquest

Melville brought to the task a sound knowledge of actual whaling, much curious learning in the literature of the subject, and, above all, an imagination which worked with great power upon the facts of his own experience. ↗

— Carl Clinton Van Doren

#actual #brought #curious #experience #facts

I never wanted to see another quiz show. ↗

— Charles Van Doren

#i #never #quiz #see #show

Some of you read with me 40 years ago a portion of Aristotle's Ethics, a selection of passages that describe his idea of happiness. You may not remember too well. ↗

— Charles Van Doren

#aristotle #describe #ethics #happiness #his

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. ↗

— Mark Van Doren

#art #assisting #discovery #teaching

The job of the poet is to render the world - to see it and report it without loss, without perversion. No poet ever talks about feelings. Only sentimental people do. ↗

— Mark Van Doren

#ever #feelings #job #loss #only

Back then, it was more or less we couldn't change a line in our script. We weren't allowed to change lines. Today, actors change everything and won't do parts. It's very different today. Back then, the producers were in charge. Today actors are more in charge. ↗

— Donna Douglas

#back #change #charge #different #everything

Wit is the only wall between us and the dark. ↗

— Mark Van Doren

#dark #only #us #wall #wit