By Harvey Blume
What was great about the 1950’s is that for one brief moment — maybe, say, six weeks — nobody understood art.
— Morton Feldman
You’re going to preposterously and conniptionly stand there in front of my indelible face and try to tell me that? You’re going to umbilically and contraptionally stand there with your Sherry-Netherlands hanging out and tell me that?
— Sid Caesar
Picasso had nicknamed Georges Braque “Wilbur,” thereby becoming “Orville” in their Wright Brothers-like ambition to get painting off the ground of conventional representation.
— Peter Schjeldahl
Unlike the talent for war, the ability to make peace has always been rare.
— Lawrence Wright
According to former team president Jon Spoelstra, one of the lowest of the the Nets low points came during his tenure. “We had six guys in jail,” he said. “Not together, because that would have meant teamwork
— Bill Littlefield
I don’t read Scripture and cling to no life precepts, except perhaps to Walter Cronkite’s rules for old men, which he did not deliver over the air: Never trust a fart. Never pass up a drink. Never ignore an erection.
— Roger Angell
I noticed that some of my deadness was being replaced by an intense feeling about the Greek stories and the Bible stories. They were similar. There was something naked about these stories. Terrible things happened, and then some more terrible things.
— Susanna Kaysen, Cambridge
A child who had been introduced to misery in Saudi Arabia, a teenager who went to wage jihad against the Soviets in Afghanistan, a deeply devout Muslim who had graduated with honors in medicine, a man who had fed a stranger to wild dogs in Damascus, a zealot who had dosed three foreigners with smallpox and watched them die in agony, gave thanks to Allah for the blessings that had been bestowed upon him.
— Terry Hayes, I Am Pilgrim
Not to worry: After all, twice in this century we beat them at their national game.
— Margaret Thatcher, re England losing in soccer to Germany
Recently remodelled from the fire station, it was a place where self-published poets found a platform, and sour white wine was dispensed from boxes; on Saturday mornings there were classes in self-assertion, yoga and picture framing.
— Hilary Mantel, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher
My mother remembers that in 1967 her father, my grandfather, a Communist and anti-Zionist, saw images on television of Israeli warplanes and muttered quietly, as if embarrassed by the sentiment, “Imagine, an air force of Jewish boys.”
–Mark Oppenheimer, “Zionism for Refugees”
“Philosospasms” — the kind we often suffered together.
— David Cronenberg, Consumed
I won’t have to miss smoking any more. Nobody smokes where I’m going: It’s like a row of restaurants in California.
— Clive James
Portnoy is as rich with ire as with lust. Who isn’t? Look at Robert Fagles’s translation of The Iliad. What’s the first word? “Rage.” That is how the whole of European literature begins: singing the virile rage of Achilles.
— Philip Roth
They walked together for a little, arm in arm. They were talking about their bowel movements. Loyalty from that quarter was the one thing necessary, said Ricasoli, for absolute peace of mind.
— Penelope Fitzgerald, Innocence
Several of the now-banned acts (for example, face-sitting) are cornerstones of “femdom” pornography, which carries explicit messages of female domination, agency and pleasure.
–Jenny Kutner “UK bans spanking and female ejaculation in porn.”
SCHOLEM: This is hashish. . . not tobacco!
ADORNO (astonished): How did you get hold of hashish up here?
BENJAMIN (laughs): If you must know, Sigmund Freud told me where to get some.
ADORNO: I thought he was into cocaine.
BENJAMIN: The same dealer handles both.
— Carl Djerassi, Four Jews on Parnassus — A Conversation: Benjamin,
Adorno, Scholem, Schonberg
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