I once asked Aragon, the historian, how history was written. He said, 'You have to invent it.' When I wish as now to tell of critical incidents, persons, and events that have influenced my life and work, the true answer is all of the incidents were critical, all of the people influenced me, everything that happened and that is still happening influences me.
John CageRelated topics
answer everything historian history now once tell wish work writeRelated quotes
Unfortunately, we do not realize that when we do our work in a hurry, we become nervous. And when work is done nervously, it is not sanctified. Our goal should not be to do many things and be in constant anxiety. This is a demonic condition. What is done with calmness and prayer is blessed, and it also blesses the people who use it.
Paisios of Mount Athos
All kids draw and write poetry and everything, and some of us last until we're about eighteen, but most drop off at about twelve when some guy comes up and says, "You're no good." That's all we get told all our lives. "You haven't got the ability. You're a cobbler." It happened to all of us, but if somebody had told me all my life, "Yeah, you're a great artist," I would have been a more secure person.
John Lennon
Now you hung with me when all the others turned away turned up their nose.
We liked the same music, we liked the same bands, we liked the same clothes.
We told each other that we were the wildest, the wildest things we'd ever seen.
Now I wished you would have told me, I wished I could have talked to you.
Just to say goodbye Bobby Jean.
Bruce Springsteen
I am particularly fond of [Emmanuel Mendes da Costa's] Natural History of Fossils because this treatise, more than any other work written in English, records a short episode expressing one of the grand false starts in the history of natural science-and nothing can be quite so informative and instructive as a juicy mistake.
Stephen Jay Gould
To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative - the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.
Umberto Eco