text:
Dean Koontz

Dean Ray Koontz (born July 9, 1945), also known under a number of pseudonyms, including Leigh Nichols, is an American writer best known as a prolific and best-selling author of suspense novels.

Quotes

 * When it came to formal classes, I was a slacker. But I've always been a diligent autodidact and can teach myself virtually any subject — if I have a serious interest in it.

The Voice of the Night (1980)
Berkley, 1991, ISBN 0-425-12816-4

 * You've got to stay sharp, on your toes, alert. Always look over your shoulder. Always protect yourself. Don't let your guard down for even a second. There are people who will take advantage of you the moment they see you're not in control. The world's filled with people like that. Nearly everyone you meet is like that. We're animals in a jungle, and we've got to be prepared to fight if we want to survive. You can't trust hardly anyone, hardly anyone at all. Even people who are supposed to like you can turn on you faster than you think. Even friends. People who say they love you are the worst, the most dangerous, the most untrustworthy of all. People who say they love you will pounce when they get the chance. You gotta always remember that they're just waiting for the opportunity to get you. Love's a trick. A cover. A way to catch you off guard. Never let down your guard. Never.
 * Roy Borden, p. 53

Watchers (1987)

 * It's so damn hard to bloom… to change. Even when you want to change, want it more than anything in the world, it's hard. Desire to change isn't enough. Or desperation. Couldn't be done without… love.
 * Part 1, Chapter 7.5; Nora's comment on her changes since meeting Travis

 * Did you get the leash on him yet, Einstein?
 * Part 1, Chapter 7.6; Nora's query during Travis's futile struggle to leash human-smart dog Einstein

 * Evidently, Ted had walked down the block from his own house and entered with the intention of fixing something. Now Ted was broken, too, and beyond repair.
 * Part 1, Chapter 7.7; about the death of Travis's landlord, Ted Hockney

 * As an attorney, I assure you the law isn't a line engraved in marble, immovable and unchangeable through the centuries. Rather… the law is like a string, fixed at both ends but with a great deal of play in it — very loose, the line of the law — so you can stretch it this way or that, rearrange the arc of it so you are nearly always — short of blatant theft or cold-blooded murder — safely on the right side. That's a daunting thing to realize but true.
 * Part 1, Chapter 7.8; Garrison Dilworth reassuring the Cornells during their flight

 * … mankind has no right to employ its genius in the creation of another intelligent species, then treat it like property. If we've come so far that we can create as God creates, then we have to learn to act with the justice and mercy of God.
 * Part 1, Chapter 7.8; Garrison Dilworth on the responsibility to help keep Einstein free

 * I thought of you as my guardian, Einstein… you taught me that I'm your guardian, too, that I'm Travis's guardian, and he is my guardian and yours. We have a responsibility to stand watch over one another, we are watchers, all of us, watchers, guarding against the darkness. You've taught me that we're all needed, even those who sometimes think we're worthless, plain, and dull.
 * Part 2, Chapter 9.2; Nora to an ill and unresponsive Einstein at the veterinary clinic

Lightning (1988)

 * In a crunch a man's reputation never counts for as much as it ought to. Most people are good-hearted and willing to give a man the benefit of the doubt, but the poisonous few are eager to see others brought down, ruined. … Envy, Bob. Envy eats them alive. If you had money, they'd envy you that. But since you don't, they envy you for having such a good, bright, loving daughter. They envy you for just being a happy man. They envy you for not envying them. One of the greatest sorrows of human existence is that some people aren't happy merely to be alive but find their happiness only in the misery of others.
 * Part I, Chapter 1.2, the mysterious stranger's words to Bob Shane

 * "Maybe Nina wouldn't have died if I hadn't moved in with them and drawn Sheener after me, but I can't feel guilty about that. I tried hard to be a good foster daughter to them, and they were happy with me. What happened was that life dropped a big custard pie on us, and that's not my fault; you can never see the custard pies coming. It's not good slapstick if you see the pie coming." "Custard pie?" he asked, perplexed. "You see life as a slapstick comedy? Like the Three Stooges?" "Partly." "Life is just a joke then?" "No. Life is serious and a joke at the same time." "But how can that be?" "If you don't know," she said, "maybe I should be the one asking the questions here."
 * Part I, Chapter 2.10, dialog between 12-year-old Laura Shane and a psychotherapist after the death of her foster mother

 * "But there are two things that different kinds of people believe that are the worst, most dangerous, wrongest of all. Some people believe that the best way to solve a problem is with violence; they beat up or kill anyone who disagrees with them." … "But what's the other worst kind of bad thinking?" "Pacifism," she said. "That's just the opposite of the first kind of bad thinking. Pacificists believe that you should never lift a hand against another human being, no matter what he has done or what you know he's going to do." … "Some pacificists are cowards in disguise, but some really believe it's right to permit the murder of an innocent person rather than kill to stop it. They're wrong because by not fighting evil, they've become part of it."
 * Part II, Chapter 5.1; conversation between Laura and her son Chris

 * "They can hopscotch around us," Chris told Laura. They can pop ahead in time to see where we show up, then they pick and choose the easiest place along the time stream to ambush us. It's sorta like… if we were the cowboys and the Indians were all psychic."
 * Part II, Chapter 5.4; 8-year-old Chris considering the time-travellers' strategy for catching them

 * A fanatic is a nut who has something to believe in.
 * Part II, Chapter 6.4; Laura's explanation to Chris

 * How can you hope to win against goddamn time travelers? It's like playing blackjack when the dealer is God. … Come to think of it, all of life is a blackjack game with God as the dealer, isn't it? So this is no worse.
 * Part II, Chapter 6.12; Laura's musings

Midnight (1989)

 * Your sense of responsibility to others can never be excessive.
 * Harry Talbot; Part II, chapter 29, p. 287

The Bad Place (1990)

 * Bobby noticed two colorful charts posted on the wall near the refrigerator. The first displayed each kid's grades and major test results since the start of the school year in September. The other was a list of household chores for which each child was responsible. … Some attributed Asian-Americans' success to a conspiracy, but Bobby saw the simple explanation for their achievements everywhere in the Phan house: They tried harder. They embraced the ideals upon which the country had been based — including hard work, honesty, goal-oriented self-denial, and the freedom to be whatever one wanted to be. Ironically, their great success was partly due to the fact that so many born Americans had become cynical about those same ideals.
 * Chapter 32

Fear Nothing (1998)

 * The sane understand that human beings are incapable of sustaining conspiracies on a grand scale, because some of our most defining qualities as a species are inattention to detail, a tendency to panic, and an inability to keep our mouths shut.
 * Chapter 17; musings of Christopher Snow

Seize the Night (1999)

 * In this uncertain space between birth and death, especially here at the end of the world in Moonlight Bay, we need hope as surely as we need food and water, love and friendship. The trick, however, is to remember that hope is a perilous thing, that it's not a steel and concrete bridge across the void between this moment and a brighter future. Hope is no stronger than tremulous beads of dew strung on a filament of spider web, and it alone can't long support the terrible weight of an anguished mind and a tortured heart.
 * Chapter 4; musings of Christopher Snow

 * Human beings can always be relied upon to assert, with vigor, their God-given right to be stupid.

From the Corner of His Eye (2000)

 * He considered himself to be a thoroughly useless man, taking up space in a world to which he contributed nothing — but he did have a talent for baking… The gas oven might blow up in his face, at last bringing him peace, but if it didn't, he would at least have cookies for Agnes.
 * Chapter 27; on Agnes' shut-in brother Jacob

 * When we don't allow ourselves to hope, we don't allow ourselves to have purpose. Without purpose, without meaning, life is dark. We've no light within, and we're just living to die.
 * Chapter 41; words of Agnes Lampion

 * He's a hollow man. He believes in anything. Hollow men are vulnerable to anyone who offers them something that might fill the void and make them feel less empty.
 * Chapter 64; words of former policeman Thomas Vanadium

 * When you're as hollow as Enoch Kane, the emptiness aches. He's desperate to fill it, but he doesn't have the patience or the commitment to fill it with anything worthwhile… So a man like Kane obsesses on one thing after another — sex, money, food, power, drugs, alcohol — anything that seems to give meaning to his days, but that requires no real self-discovery or self-sacrifice.
 * Chapter 64; words of former policeman Thomas Vanadium

 * The cheerful tides of friends and neighbors, over the years, had washed away nearly all the stains that the dark rage Agne’s father had impressed on these rooms. She hoped her brothers might eventually see that hatred and anger are only scars upon a beach, while love is the rolling surf that ceaselessly smooths the sand.
 * Page 348; words of Agnes Lampion

One Door Away from Heaven (2001)

 * I'm either a mutant or a cripple, and I refuse to be a cripple. People pity cripples, but they're afraid of mutants […] Fear implies respect.
 * Leilani Klonk; chapter 1, p. 4

 * Change isn't easy, Micky. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think. Changing the way you think means changing what you believe about life. That's hard, sweetie. When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change, because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.
 * Geneva Davis; chapter 1, p. 8

 * There's lots of law these days, but not much justice. Celebrities murder their wives and go free. A mother kills her children, and the news people on TV say she's the victim and want you to send money to her lawyers. When everything's upside down like this, what fool just sits back and thinks justice will prevail?
 * Geneva Davis; chapter 60, p. 473

 * What will you find behind the door that is one door away from Heaven? […] If your heart is closed, then you will find behind that door nothing to light your way. But if your heart is open, you will find behind that door people who, like you, are searching, and you will find the right door together with them. None of us can ever save himself; we are the instruments of one another's salvation, and only by the hope that we give to others do we lift ourselves out of the darkness into light.
 * chapter 73, pp. 604, 605

By the Light of the Moon (2002)

 * Dylan… said, "Both Becky and Kenny need medical attention—" "And a prison cell until their social security kicks in," Jilly added. "—but give us two or three minutes before you call 9-1-1," Dylan finished. This instruction baffled Marj. "But you are 9-1-1." Jilly fielded that peculiar question: "We're one of the ones, Marj, but we're not the other one or the nine."
 * after Dylan & Jilly (who had claimed to be an undercover policewoman) save Marj and her grandson from homicidal teenagers

The Face (2003)

 * Fric had been assigned the dumbest of the standard tones, which the phone manufacturer described as "a cheerful, child-pleasing sound suitable for the nursery or the bedrooms of younger children." Why infants in nurseries or toddlers in cribs ought to have their own telephones remained a mystery to Fric. Were they going to call Babies R Us and order lobster-flavored teething rings?
 * Chapter 13; describing the estate's elaborate phone system

 * Dr. Bob managed so successfully to turn the answer to every question into a mini-lecture on self-esteem and positive thinking, that Ethan wanted Hazard to arrest him on charges of Felony Cliché and Practicing Philosophy Without An Idea.
 * Chapter 67; Ethan and Hazard's questioning of a pop-psychology university professor

Odd Thomas (2003)

 * My name is Odd Thomas, though in this age when fame is the altar at which most people worship, I am not sure why you should care who I am or that I exist.
 * Chapter 1; Odd Thomas's introduction

 * In fact I am such a nonentity by the standards of our culture that People magazine not only will never feature a piece about me but might also reject my attempts to subscribe to their publication on the grounds that the black-hole gravity of my noncelebrity is powerful enough to suck their entire enterprise into oblivion.
 * Chapter 1; Odd Thomas's introduction

 * Recognizing the structure of your psychology doesn't mean that you can easily rebuild it.
 * Chapter 34; observation of Odd Thomas

Life Expectancy (2004)

 * She said, "Love isn't enough. Your parents have to know how to relate to you, and to each other. They have to want to be with you more than with anyone else. They have to love being home more than anywhere in the world, and they have to be more interested in you than in…" "Snakes and tornadoes," I suggested. "God, I love them. They're nice, Jimmy, they really are, and they mean well. But they live inside themselves more than not, and they keep their doors closed. You see them mostly through windows."
 * Chapter 36; conversation between Lorrie Lynn Hicks and Jimmy Tock

 * "Where there's cake, there's hope. And there's always cake."
 * Chapter 39; Tock family saying

The Taking (2004)

 * Blizzards, floods, volcanos, hurricanes, earthquakes: They fascinate because they nakedly reveal that Mother Nature, afflicted with bipolar disorder, is as likely to snuff us as she is to succor us.
 * Part 1, Chapter 1

 * For most of her existence, Molly had not shied from a truth that most people understood but diligently suppressed: that every moment of every day, depending on the faith we embrace, each of us continues to live either by the merciful sufferance of God or at the whim of blind chance and indifferent nature.
 * Part 1, Chapter 2

Forever Odd (2005)

 * "Sometimes," I said, "it seems to me that a friend might not take such pleasure in making fun of me as you do." "Dear Odd! If one's friends do not openly laugh at him, they are not, in fact, his friends. How else would one learn to avoid saying those things that would elicit laughter from strangers? The mockery of friends is affectionate, and inoculates against foolishness."
 * Chapter 11; Odd Thomas's recounting of a conversation with Little Ozzie

 * Loneliness comes in two basic varieties. When it results from a desire for solitude, loneliness is a door we close against the world. When the world instead rejects us, loneliness is an open door, unused.
 * Chapter 21; musings of Odd Thomas

Velocity (2005)

 * Pain is a gift. Humanity, without pain, would know neither fear nor pity.  Without fear, there could be no humility, and every man would be a monster.  The recognition of pain and fear in others give rise in us to pity, and in our pity is our humanity, our redemption.
 * Chapter 54

Brother Odd (2006)

 * … less real than such threats as a man with a gun, a woman with a knife, or a U.S. Senator with an idea.
 * Chapter 38

The Good Guy (2007)

 * Sheep were docile, yes, but vigilant. Unlike many people, sheep were always aware that predators existed and were alert for the scent and the schemes of wolves. Contemporary Americans were so proseperous, so happily distracted by such a richness of vivid entertainments, they were reluctant to have their fun diminished by acknowledging that anything existed with fangs and fierce appetites. If now and then they recognized a wolf, they threw a bone to it and convinced themselves it was a dog.
 * Krait's musings
 * Chapter 7, pp. 52-53

 * In a world that daily disconnects further from truth, more and more people accept the virtual in place of the real, and all things virtual are also malleable.
 * Krait's musings
 * Chapter 21, p. 147

 * Experts must read the patterns and judge their usefulness as evidence. Under any of numerous pressures, an expert may wish to misread a pattern or even to alter it. Americans had a touching trust in "experts".
 * Krait musing about fingerprints
 * Chapter 21, p. 147

 * "Fear is a hammer, and when the people are beaten finally to the conviction that their existence hangs by a frayed thread, they will be led where they need to go." "Which is where?" "To a responsible future in a properly managed world."
 * Conversation between Wentworth and Timothy Carrier
 * Chapter 63, p. 368

Quotes about Koontz

 * This book, maybe as good as I can get, is for Dean Koontz, whose portrait, in The Oxford Universal Dictionary, appears contiguous with the definition of the word "mensch." (see also: Guy, stand-up.)
 * Harlan Ellison, dedication in Mefisto in Onyx (1993), Mark V. Zeisig Books, ISBN 0929480317

title: Dean Koontz


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Eddie Murphy

Edward Regan Murphy (born April 3, 1961, in Brooklyn, New York) is a Golden Globe-winning actor (2007) and comedian, for performance at  Beverly Hills Cop, Trading Places, The Nutty Professor, and most recently Tower Heist. He has also enjoyed a minor singing career.

Eddie Murphy Delirious (1983)

 * A bear and a rabbit were taking a shit in the woods. The bear turns to the rabbit and says, "Excuse me, do you have problems with shit sticking to your fur?" And the rabbit says, "No." So the bear wiped his ass with the rabbit.

 * There's somethin' about singing, that is the business! You sing, women go crazy! 'Cause Mick Jagger is an ugly motherfucker...with big-ass lips! Mick Jagger's lips so big, black people be goin', 'He got some big-ass lips! These are big motherfuckin' lips!'

 * Michael Jackson, who can sing, and is a good lookin' guy - but ain't the most masculine fellow in the world.

 * You don't even have to be able to talk. Just sing and get famous. 'Cause James Brown's been singin' 30 years. I don't know what the fuck James is talkin' about!

 * (About Stevie Wonder) I got mad, I was hanging out with Stevie two months ago. I said, 'Look, Steve, I get too much motherfuckin' flak over this impression. I don't like doin' it, I ain't doin' this shit no more.' Stevie said, 'Well, I feel that...' I said, 'Shut the fuck up, Steve.' 'Cause you've gotta cut Steve off, 'cause if he get a roll goin' he'll talk your ears off! You ever see Steve win a Grammy and go up and give one of them long ass acceptance speeches? They say, 'And the winner is Stevie Wonder!' Stevie be goin, 'I'd just like to say...all the people in the world today...God's children...' 'Look, just take the motherfuckin' award and get the fuck out!' 'Cause the credits be rollin' and Stevie be up there goin' 'And I'd like to thank...' I be in the car, I just said 'Shut the fuck up, Steve. I'm tellin' you, you a genius and all that shit, but you my boy, man, we hangin', man. It's nice and shit, but I don't appreciate all the flak. And personally, the piano and the singin' and all that, I told you how I feel about singin' man, I ain't impressed. You wanna impress me, take the wheel for a while, motherfucker!'

 * (Impersonating an angry fan) 'I heard that shit, man! That shit wasn't funny! Then I suppose at the end of your little sketch, Stevie crashed into a tree, right? Ha ha, very funny, motherfucker! Your mother got a wooden leg with a kick-stand, motherfucker! Your mother got a mouth in the back of her neck and the bitch chew like this!' (Nods his head up and down)

 * (Impersonating his father, drunk at the family cookout) Gus?! What the fuck is wrong with your wife?! Why can't she walk a flight of steps?! You come here every year, Gus, and you burn down my motherfuckin' backyard, and your wife rips down the steps! Why?! I work hard to get my place beautiful! And then the motherfucker come over and rip the steps down! Look at the motherfuckin' steps, they're fucked up, Gus! Why can't she walk the steps? You know why she can't walk the steps? 'Cause she's a fat, hairy bitch!!

 * (Impersonating his father ranting drunkenly at the cookout) I'll tell you somethin', motherfucker! You can take your motherfuckin' hairy, fat-ass moustache bitch out the fuck!! You can go upstairs and get the motherfuckin' dog and scoop up the shit, and take Eddie and get these long, Angela Davis afro-wearin' motherfuckin' kids of yours and put them in the motherfuckin' guni-gugu-mobile and get the fuck out!!

Interviews

 * I have nothing against homosexuals. I think an orgasm is your thing, and you should fuck whoever the fuck you feel like fucking. Whoever makes you cum the hardest. Anybody who says you shouldn't, politely tell them to mind their own business.
 * Playboy interview, February 1990.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Eddie Murphy


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Iraq

Iraq is a country on the continent of Eurasia and in the Middle East. Previously part of the Ottoman Empire, it became a separate entity under British supervision following World War I and gained formal sovereignty in 1932 under a Hashemite monarchy. A nationalist republican movement overthrew the monarchy in 1958 and was in turn overthrown in 2003 by the American invasion, which oversaw the creation of the present federal republic. Its current head of state is President Abdul Latif Rashid, and its current head of government is Mohammed Shia' Al Sudani.

A

 * Iraq is getting stronger, getting unified. I think others, or the interference of others in the affairs of Iraq, will become less and less. This is a new-built confidence among Iraqis, the Iraqi national feeling, which our aim is to increase people’s attachment to their own country.
 * Haider al-Abadi, interview with Tamer El-Ghobashy

 * I hope others in the [Middle Eastern] region will see a lot of hope and positive tendencies in our [Iraqi] democracy... We [Iraqis] have decided that we’ll accept that we are different. We are very eager to keep and protect our diversity. We want to undo whatever the terrorists have done.
 * Haider al-Abadi, as quoted in "Iraq’s Surprise: The Persistence of Democracy" (17 November 2017), by Yaroslav Trofimov, The Wall Street Journal

 * Iraq is one country. If you revert to dictatorship in one part, people might copy that in another part of the country. This is very dangerous for us... We have suffered a lot under dictatorship. We should never allow dictatorship to come back.
 * Haider al-Abadi, as quoted in "Iraq’s Surprise: The Persistence of Democracy" (17 November 2017), by Yaroslav Trofimov, The Wall Street Journal

 * I want to prove that the Iraqi woman has her own existence in society, she has her rights like men. I am afraid of nothing, because I am confident that what I am doing is not wrong.
 * Shaima Qassem Abdulrahman, as quoted in NBC News (December 2015).

 * We came to power on a CIA train.
 * Ba'ath Party official Ali Saleh Sa'adi, quoted in Saddam Hussein: The Politics of Revenge (2000), by Said K. Aburish.

 * If it is Syria’s shelter for the Iraqi resistance to the east that has made it the target for an American siege, it is with good reason. For in Iraq itself, the war has gone from bad to worse for Washington. Confronted with a dauntless insurgency, the Occupation is still—after three years and an outlay of over $200 billion—unable to assure regular supplies of water and electricity to the people it has subjugated. Factories remain idle. Hospitals and schools barely function. Oil revenues have been looted wholesale by America’s local minions, not to speak of a horde of U.S. contractors on the take. Wretched as living conditions were for the majority of the population under U.N. sanctions, under the Americans they have deteriorated yet further, as sectarian killings multiply and minimal security disappears.
 * Tariq Ali, Mid-Point in the Middle-East? New Left Review 38, March/April 2006.

 * Since I know that about a million people have been killed by the government of Iraq, I do not need much those weapons of mass destruction.
 * Martti Ahtisaari, as quoted in The Wall Street Journal (11 October 2008).

 * Hey Iranians! No one has been downtrodden in the country where Ali ibn Abi Ṭālib, Husayn ibn Ali and Abbas ibn Ali are buried. Iraq has undoubtedly been honorable country. All refugee should be precious. Everybody who wants to live in exile can choose Iraq freely. We Iraq's sons have been ambushing to foreign aggressors. The enemies who plan to assault to Iraq are going to be disfavored with God in this world and eternity universe. Be careful to think to attack to Iraq and Ali ibn Abi Ṭālib! If you surrender Perhaps you will be in peace.
 * An Iraqi notice for Propaganda against Iranian forces.

B

 * March 19 (2018) marks 15 years since the U.S.-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the American people have no idea of the enormity of the calamity the invasion unleashed. The U.S. military has refused to keep a tally of Iraqi deaths. General Tommy Franks, the man in charge of the initial invasion, bluntly told reporters, “We don’t do body counts.” One survey found that most Americans thought Iraqi deaths were in the tens of thousands. But our calculations, using the best information available, show a catastrophic estimate of 2.4 million Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion.The number of Iraqi casualties is not just a historical dispute, because the killing is still going on today. Since several major cities in Iraq and Syria fell to Islamic State in 2014, the U.S. has led the heaviest bombing campaign since the American War in Vietnam, dropping 105,000 bombs and missiles and reducing most of Mosul and other contested Iraqi and Syrian cities to rubble.
 * The Staggering Death Toll in Iraq, by Medea Benjamin & Nicolas J. S. Davies / AlterNet (15 March 2018)
 * I accept fully that those opposed to this course of action share my detestation of Saddam. Who could not? Iraq is a wealthy country that in 1978, the year before Saddam seized power, was richer than Portugal or Malaysia. Today it is impoverished, sixty per cent of its population dependent on food aid. Thousands of children die needlessly every year from lack of food and medicine. Four million people out of a population of just over twenty million are in exile. The brutality of the repression – the death and torture camps, the barbaric prisons for political opponents, the routine beatings for anyone or their families suspected of disloyalty are well documented. Just last week, someone slandering Saddam was tied to a lamp post in a street in Baghdad, his tongue cut out, mutilated and left to bleed to death, as a warning to others. I recall a few weeks ago talking to an Iraqi exile and saying to her that I understood how grim it must be under the lash of Saddam. ‘But you don’t,’ she replied. ‘You cannot. You do not know what it is like to live in perpetual fear.’ And she is right. We take our freedom for granted. But imagine not to be able to speak or discuss or debate or even question the society you live in. To see friends and family taken away and never daring to complain. To suffer the humility of failing courage in face of pitiless terror. That is how the Iraqi people live. Leave Saddam in place and that is how they will continue to be forced to live.
 * Tony Blair, 18 March 2003 speech

 * Iraq continues to flaunt its hostility toward America and to support terror. The Iraqi regime has plotted to develop, and nerve gas, and nuclear weapons for over a decade. This is a regime that has already used poison gas to murder thousands of its own citizens -- leaving the bodies of mothers huddled over their dead children. This is a regime that agreed to international inspections -- then kicked out the inspectors. This is a regime that has something to hide from the civilized world. States like these, and their terrorist allies, constitute an axis of evil, arming to threaten the peace of the world. By seeking weapons of mass destruction, these regimes pose a grave and growing danger. They could provide these arms to terrorists, giving them the means to match their hatred. They could attack our allies or attempt to blackmail the United States. In any of these cases, the price of indifference would be catastrophic.
 * George W. Bush, 2002 State of the Union Address (29 January 2002).

 * Iraq's talented people, rich culture, and tremendous potential have been hijacked by Saddam Hussein. His brutal regime has reduced a country with a long and proud history to an international pariah that oppresses its citizens, started two wars of aggression against its neighbors, and still poses a grave threat to the security of its region and the world.
 * George W. Bush, A Vision for Iraq and the Iraqi people (6 March 2003), Speech in Atlantic Summit in Azores, Portugal.

 * We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.
 * George W. Bush, invasion of Iraq speech (19 March 2003).

 * The establishment of a free Iraq at the heart of the Middle East will be a watershed event in the global democratic revolution.
 * George W. Bush, speech at the National Endowment for Democracy (6 November 2003)

 * The situation in Iraq is unacceptable to the American people; and it is unacceptable to me.
 * George W. Bush, address to the Nation (10 January 2007)

 * Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in “mission creep,” and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, there was no viable “exit strategy” we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post–Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different—and perhaps barren—outcome.
 * George H. W. Bush, A World Transformed (1998)

C

 * Iraq — the country identified in American minds with chaos and endless warfare — is a democracy. Citizens vote, and leaders must respond to their demands; otherwise, they won’t be reelected. It’s a deeply flawed democracy, to be sure, as Salih is the first to note. Yet its institutions, created after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, have endured. Iraqis routinely take to the streets to demonstrate. The country’s top religious leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who acts as an unofficial political arbiter, has persistently supported democratic institutions, as well as serving as a locus of Iraqi nationalism... We can let Iraq succumb entirely to Iranian influence — or we can reengage with the country, showing Iraqis that we stand with them and take their democratic aspirations seriously. There is an opportunity here that we shouldn’t miss.
 * Christian Caryl, "Iraq’s president explains why the U.S. must reengage with Baghdad" (20 March 2019), The Washington Post

 * We have not witnessed the reduction in violence one would have hoped for in a perfect world.
 * Major General William Caldwell, on the situation in Iraq since the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (20 July 2006).

 * We know from long experience in Iraq and Afghanistan to take territory, hold territory, and govern territory and prevent a reemergence of a terrorist group... The bane of Iraq has been sectarianism... There are three components to Iraq... We vastly prefer a multi-sectarian Iraqi state to any form of disintegration because we know where that leads... But, for that to work in Iraq? The Sunnis have to be represented, and they have to be part of the fight to take back their own territory. So, we are working with them a lot.
 * Ashton Carter, interview with Charlie Rose (February 2016)

 * Before there were any suicide bombers, it was also reported by the same sources that Saddam Hussein was giving $10,000 to the families of anyone who was killed by Israeli atrocities, and there were plenty of them. Well, should he've been doing that? So let's take the first month of the current intifada. I'm just relying now on IDF sources. What they say is, that in the first few days of the intifada, the Israeli army fired a million bullets. One of the high military officers said 'that means one bullet for every child'. Within the first month of the intifada, they killed about 70 people. Using U.S. helicopters, and in fact Clinton shipped new helicopters to Israel as soon as they started using them against civilians. That's just the first month. And it goes on, no suicide bombers. At the time, it was reported that Saddam Hussein was giving $10,000 to every family. Well, is that supporting terror? It seems to me, sending helicopters to Israel when they're using them to attack apartment complexes, that's supporting terror.
 * Noam Chomsky, "Why Iraq?" at Harvard University, November 4, 2002

 * I've been through the Pentagon, right after 9/11. About 10 days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon, and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military, and we can take down governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.” So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the secretary of defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” and I saw him a year or so ago and I said: "Remember that?" he said: "Sir, I didn't show you that memo! I didn't show it to ya!"
 * Wesley Clark, Democracy Now — Gen. Wesley Clark Weighs Presidential Bid: “I Think About It Every Day”, (2 March 2007)

D

 * Iraq has at least more political pluralism and civic space than most of its Arab neighbors, and that is something to appreciate and try to further support and nurture.
 * Larry Diamond, as quoted in "Iraq’s Surprise: The Persistence of Democracy" (17 November 2017), by Yaroslav Trofimov, The Wall Street Journal

 * British and US forces fired about 320 tonnes of depleted uranium munitions in the 1991 Gulf war and may have used up to 2000 tonnes in the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Because of its extreme density it is used to make the tips of armour piercing shells. Reports from southern Iraq have documented a steep rise in the incidence of cancers since the 1990s, especially cases in children.
 * Owen Dyer, “WHO suppressed evidence on effects of depleted uranium, expert says”, BMJ. 2006 Nov 11; 333(7576): 990.

F

 * The country faces big challenges and we can address these challenges together with parties from different backgrounds and ideologies who share the concerns and interest as the people of Iraq.
 * Raid Jahid Fahmi, as quoted in Communist leader: Iraqis to decide who controls Iraq, nobody else (25 May 2018), .

 * Our interest must not risk Iraq's interests. If we can build an Iraq on the basis of our own independence and sovereignty, I think this Iraq will be respected by others, whether it be the Americans, Iranians or any other country.
 * Raid Jahid Fahmi, as quoted in Communist leader: Iraqis to decide who controls Iraq, nobody else (25 May 2018), .

 * Iraqis will decide who controls Iraq - no one from outside.
 * Raid Jahid Fahmi, as quoted in Communist leader: Iraqis to decide who controls Iraq, nobody else (25 May 2018), .

 * Iraq will have a formally independent government that will be in perpetual gridlock and chaos.
 * George Friedman, interview with Matt Bai (2003), The New York Times

G

 * The inability of the United States to comprehend what it was becoming involved in when... it declared a Global War on Terror, has to be reckoned one of the singular failures of national security policy over the past twenty years. Not only did the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq make bad situations worse, but the fact that no one is Washington was able to define “victory” and think in terms of an exit strategy has meant that the wars and instability are still with us....The Iraqi Parliament has, in fact, asked U.S. forces to leave the country, a request that has been ignored both by Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Trump actually threatened to freeze Iraqi bank assets to pressure the Iraqis into accepting the continued U.S. occupation. At the same time, American troops illegally present in neighboring Syria, continue to occupy that country’s oil fields to deprive the government in Damascus of much needed resources. Neither Iraq nor Syria threatens the United States in any way.
 * Philip Giraldi in Whither Afghanistan? Getting Out Is Harder Than Getting In, Philip Giraldi, Strategic Culture, (July 22, 2021)

H

 * The future of Iraq after Saddam Hussein is also an open question. Some of my colleagues and some American analysts now speak authoritatively of Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds in Iraq, and how Iraq can be a test case for democracy in the Arab world. How many of us really know and understand much about Iraq, the country, the history, the people, the role in the Arab world? I approach the issue of post-Saddam Iraq and the future of democracy and stability in the Middle East with more caution, realism, and a bit more humility. While the people of the Arab world need no education from America about Saddam's record of deceit, aggression, and brutality, and while many of them may respect and desire the freedoms the American model offers, imposing democracy through force in Iraq is a roll of the dice. A democratic effort cannot be maintained without building durable Iraqi political institutions and developing a regional and international commitment to Iraq's reconstruction. No small task.
 * Chuck Hagel (2002), Stathis, S. W., 2009. Landmark Debates in Congress: From the Declaration of Independence to the War in Iraq. Washington, DC: CQ Press.
 * Actually, who is the terrorist, who is against human rights? The answer is the United States because they attacked Iraq. Moreover, it is the terrorist king, waging war.
 * Hamzah Haz, "Indonesian VP: United States Is 'Terrorist King'" (2003), Common Dreams.

 * We hope that war will not take place, but if war is forced upon us then Iraq will continue to be here and this country with history of over 8000 years, this country, the cradle of the first civilization of humanity will not finish just like that even though a huge power may want to be like that. Nobody! Nobody should accept that Iraq should finish in such a way!
 * Saddam Hussein, Interview with Dan Rather (2003)
 * Iraq is a great nation now, as it has been at times throughout history. Nations generally "go to the top" only once. Iraq, however, has been there many times, before and after Islam. Iraq is the only nation like this in the world. This "gift" was given to the Iraqi people by God. When Iraqi people fall, they rise again.
 * Saddam Hussein in an interview with FBI Senior Special Agent George L. Piro (7 February 2004); National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 279.

J

 * Iraq’s democratic and more importantly constitutional structures that were put in place as a result of 2003 and U.S. direct involvement have weathered 12 years, ISIS seizing one-third of the country, a simultaneous drop by 50% of its main economic driver oil, and conflict with Kurdistan.
 * James Jeffrey, as quoted in "Iraq’s Surprise: The Persistence of Democracy" (17 November 2017), by Yaroslav Trofimov, The Wall Street Journal

K

 * The tension between these conflicting aims is perhaps particularly acute in the late twentieth century because of the publicity given to the existence of various alternative “models” for emulation. On the one hand, there are the extremely successful “trading states”—chiefly in Asia, like Japan and Hong Kong, but also including Switzerland, Sweden, and Austria—which have taken advantage of the great growth in world production and in commercial interdependence since 1945, and whose external policy emphasizes peaceful, trading relations with other societies. In consequence, they have all sought to keep defense spending as low as is compatible with the preservation of national sovereignty, thereby freeing resources for high domestic consumption and capital investment. On the other hand, there are the various “militarized” economies—Vietnam in Southeast Asia, Iran and Iraq as they engage in their lengthy war, Israel and its jealous neighbors in the Near East, and the USSR itself—all of which allocate more (in some cases, much more) than 10 percent of their GNP to defense expenditures each year and, while firmly believing that such levels of spending are necessary to guarantee military security, manifestly suffer from that diversion of resources from productive, peaceful ends. Between the two poles of the merchant and the warrior states, so to speak, there lie most of the rest of the nations of this planet, not convinced that the world is a safe enough place to allow them to reduce arms expenditure to Japan’s unusually low level, but also generally uneasy at the high economic and social costs of large-scale spending upon armaments, and aware that there is a certain trade-off between short-term military security and long-term economic security.
 * Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500-2000 (1987)

 * We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure.
 * John Kerry Speech at New York University (21 September 2004)

 * If you mean by "military victory" an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible.
 * Henry Kissinger, Commenting on the Iraq War in a BBC interview of 19 November 2006, as quoted in "Kissinger: Iraq military win impossible" by Tariq Panja, Associated Press, at Yahoo! News (20 November 2006)

 * The motivation for war is simple. The U.S. government started the war with Iraq in order to make it easy for U.S. corporations to do business in other countries. They intend to use cheap labor in those countries, which will make Americans rich.
 * As quoted in

 * We should continue to support the Iraqi people's efforts to rebuild their country
 * Junichirō Koizumi, as quoted in "Beheaded Japanese to be flown home" (31 October 2004), CNN.

L

 * As we act, let us not become the evil we deplore.
 * Congresswoman Barbara Lee a speech to the House of Representatives (14 September 2001)

M

 * We pray to God almighty to give us strength so we can meet the ambitious goals of our people, who have suffered a lot.
 * Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, as quoted in.

 * Do not imagine that this problem is solely an Iraqi problem because the terrorist front represents a threat to all free countries and free people of the world. [...] Thousands of lives were tragically lost on Sept. 11 when these impostors of Islam reared their ugly head. Thousands more continue to die in Iraq today at the hands of the same terrorists who show complete disregard for human life.
 * Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, speaking before the U.S. Congress (26 July 2006).

 * Al-Qaeda is still the biggest threat for Iraq and the region.
 * Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Only 'one in five Iraqis' has confidence in coalition (March 2007).

 * Despite what we are suffering through, we haven't heard from our political partners with any support. They are not partners in facing the crisis, but they are partners in spending the wealth of Iraq.
 * Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, on Iraq's other political parties.
 * As quoted in Sunni Militants Advance Toward Large Iraqi Dam, (June 2014)

 * Few talk or think about Iraq these days; the media ignores this important but demolished nation. Iraq, let us recall, was the target of a major western aggression concocted by George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Britain’s Tony Blair, and financed and encouraged by the Gulf oil sheikdoms and Saudi Arabia... Most people don’t understand that Iraq remains a US-occupied nation. We hear nothing about the billions of dollars of Iraqi oil being extracted by big US oil firms since 2003. For the United States, Iraq was a treasure house of oil with 12 per cent of the world reserves. It was OPEC’s second largest producer.
 * Eric Margolis in The forgotten plunder of Iraq, CommonDreams (November 17, 2019)

 * The administration has said that Iraq has no right to stockpile chemical or biological weapons, mainly because they have used them in the past. Well, if that's the standard by which these matters are decided, then the U.S. is the nation that set the precedent. The U.S. has stockpiled these same weapons and more for over forty years.
 * Timothy McVeigh, "An Essay on Hypocrisy" (1998), Media Bypass.
 * Saddam set about transforming Iraq into what one dissident labelled the ‘Republic of Fear’. His notorious secret police, the Mukhabarat, together with the state internal security department (the Amn), established a fierce grip over the entire country. Regular massacres were carried out of Jews, Freemasons, communists, economic saboteurs or merely people who crossed Saddam or his greedy, pitiless family, all of whom served in his government. Purge followed upon purge, attended by show trials and televised confessions. Over the subsequent two decades Saddam Hussein killed at least 400,000 Iraqis — many of whom endured all manner of torture. His psychopathic sons, particularly the sadistic, demented heir apparent Uday, conducted their own struggles for power and brutal reigns of terror, personally torturing their enemies. At one point, Saddam's two sons-in-law, fearing murder by Uday, fled to Jordan but were tricked into returning and then slaughtered by Uday.
 * Simon Sebag Montefiore, Monsters: History's Most Evil Men and Women (2009), p. 5

N

 * Iran was in war with Iraq for 8 years, and Ayatollah Khomeini tried to topple Saddam, but he failed. Then, a few years later, in 2003, the U.S. entered Iraq and got rid of Saddam, but it got tangled in a never-ending conflict that turned Iraq into rubble and killed thousands of innocent Iraqis. Who is the winner of this terrible war? In my humble opinion, it is the Iranian regime, because with Saddam gone, they have tried to encourage an Islamic Republic in Iraq, which is the only other country with a majority Shia population in the region, and if this becomes reality, it could turn Iran into a huge power in the region. Actually, the U.S. invasion of Iraq greatly damaged the opposition in Iran, as now anyone who criticizes the Iranian regime is accused of asking for a U.S. invasion of Iran and working for the CIA. So one of the undisputable side effects of this war has been the strengthening of the government of Iran.
 * Marina Nemat, Democracy in Iran?.

 * "It's the cradle of civilization," says McGuire Gibson, who teaches Mesopotamian archaeology at the University of Chicago. "It's the place where we get the first cities, the first writing, the first thoughts about what's man's relationship to God. It's the first sort of ideas about death. It's the first recorded literature that we have." Gibson and other archaeologists are quick to say their first concern if war comes to Iraq is the loss of human life. But with nearly 100,000 archaeological sites at stake, they're also concerned about the loss of human history, DeRose reports. Gibson says the 1991 Gulf War literally chipped away at a priceless past. One example is the massive 4,000-year-old Ziggurat at Ur, in southern Iraq. The temple pyramid was hit by at least 400 shells that took out "big chunks" from the structure, Gibson says.
 * NPR Morning Edition, “Protecting Ancient History in Iraq”,(February 20, 2003).

O

 * There's something that I don't understand. I don't understand how we ended up invading a country that had nothing to do with 911 while Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda are setting up basecamps in safe haven to train terrorists to attack us? That was Senator McCain judgement, it's wrong judgement, when Senator McCain was cheerleading the president to going into Iraq, he suggested 'it is going to be quick and easy, we'll be great liberator' and that's the wrong judgement and it's been costly to us.
 * Barack Obama, US Presidential Debate (2008)

P

 * Rarely do we hear that Iraq has never committed any aggression against the United States. No one in the media questions our aggression against Iraq for the past 12 years by continuous bombing and imposed sanctions responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children. [...] Only tyrants can take a nation to war without the consent of the people. The planned war against Iraq without a Declaration of War is illegal. It is unwise because of many unforeseen consequences that are likely to result. It is immoral and unjust, because it has nothing to do with US security and because Iraq has not initiated aggression against us. We must understand that the American people become less secure when we risk a major conflict driven by commercial interests and not constitutionally authorized by Congress. Victory under these circumstances is always elusive, and unintended consequences are inevitable
 * Former U.S. Congressman Ron Paul Before We Bomb Iraq] (February 26, 2002).

 * War and its repercussions for archaeology in Western Asia have been practically omnipresent for the last 25 years; Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 and the pilfering of objects in the Kuwait Museum, followed by the damage to and looting of Iraqi sites in the wake of the US-led ground invasion and post invasion the dynamiting of the Buddhas in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, by the Taliban in spring 2001 and the smashing of anthropomorphic imagery in the Kabul Museum; the damage during the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003, most infamously in the Iraq Museum but also the ensuing looting of sites; the highly mediatized destructions of monuments and sites in Syria and northern Iraq by Islamic State since 2014 as well as the longer involvement of warring parties in looting and sales of antiquities; the damage to the Old City of Sanaa in Yemen as a result of Saudi bombing; and the ongoing conflicts in the West Bank and Gaza that have resulted in the neglect of sites.
 * Susan Pollock, “Archaeology and Contemporary Warfare”, Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 2016. 45:215–31, p.216

 * I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world, like Iraq where there's a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same.
 * George Bush on his talks with Vladimir Putin (15 July 2006)
 * We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy that they have in Iraq, quite honestly.
 * Response by Vladimir Putin (15 July 2006).

 * Without racism, soldiers would realize that they have more in common with the Iraqi people than they do with the billionaires who send us to war.
 * Michael Prysner, "Our real enemies," December 21, 2011

R

 * George Herbert Walker Bush invented regime change in Iraq and Bill Clinton inherited it, and ran with it. The CIA made four concerted efforts to assassinate Saddam Hussein under Clinton's leadership. So it's not like this was a passive program; it was an active program... And I really am tired of all the Clinton Democrats running around getting all-sanctimonious over Iraq. It was them who killed 1.5 to 2.2 million Iraqis through sanctions. Sanctions that Madeline Albright, their illustrious Secretary of State, when confronted with the fact of 500,000 dead Iraqi children, said it was a price she was willing to pay.
 * Scott Ritter Says Controversial Things About Clinton, Bush, Fox News, the Surge, etc., Interview with the Memphis Flyer, (8 May 2008)

 * If this was all about Israel dictating policy, we'd have skipped Iraq and gone straight to Iran. But this is not, and it never has been about Israel, or Iran, or Iraq. It's about America imposing its will on areas of the would that we believe to be in our national security interests. The big picture in the Middle East isn't Iran or Iraq. The big picture in the Middle East is China. People don't understand that. They don't know what’s going on right now. It's about leveraging control over Middle-Eastern and central-Asian oil, in order to dictate the pace of China's economic growth over the next 30 years.
 * Scott Ritter Says Controversial Things About Clinton, Bush, Fox News, the Surge, etc., Interview with the Memphis Flyer, (8 May 2008)

 * I wouldn't presume to present a plan different from that of the President. But I believe he was right to take on the war on terror on an aggressive front rather than a defensive front. We toppled the government ... walking away would mean a humanitarian disaster. We're there and we have a responsibility to finish the job.
 * Mitt Romney, response to Bill O'Reilly (27 September 2006)

 * Oh, I don't know. You know, I thought about that last night, and just musing over the words, the phrase, and what constitutes it. If you think of our Civil War, this is really very different. If you think of civil wars in other countries, this is really quite different. There is -- there is a good deal of violence in Baghdad and two or three other provinces, and yet in 14 other provinces there's very little violence or numbers of incidents. So it's a -- it's a highly concentrated thing. It clearly is being stimulated by people who would like to have what could be characterized as a civil war and win it, but I'm not going to be the one to decide if, when or at all.
 * Donald Rumsfeld in response to the question "Is the country closer to civil war?", Pentagon press conference (25 July 2006)].

S

 * Is the Iraqi state succeeding? I think there are some prospects for this country to be moving in the right direction. But the legacies of the past, the problems are really, really monumental... We need to deliver. Otherwise we will not be able to justify what we do in the eyes of our public. And public opinion does matter in Iraq. People speak their minds. People are engaged, are interested... Life is coming back... Every time I go out of the presidential palace in Baghdad — and I do try to go out as often as I can — I do see normalcy coming back, more and more. I do think there is a window of opportunity — it should be cherished. We’ve not had it like this for a long, long time... It’s precious, but precarious.
 * Barham Salih, as quoted in "Iraq’s president explains why the U.S. must reengage with Baghdad" (20 March 2019), by Christian Caryl, The Washington Post

 * The invasion of Iraq has resulted in the almost complete annihilation of that country’s Christian community, and the attempt to remove Bashar Assad from power in Syria has seen that country’s Christians mercilessly attacked by the agents of US power, radical Islamists. To be a Christian in the Middle East is to be in constant fear that the USA will set its sights on your country because wherever it arrives, Mujahideen are never that far away.
 * Niccolo Soldo, Saturday Commentary and Review #63, Substack, 29 November 2021

T

 * Iraq’s prospects are looking brighter. A resurgent central government has defeated Islamic State, thanks in part to renewed American military involvement, and has taken back lands lost to the country’s Kurdistan autonomous region since 2003. And Iraq’s improbable political experiment has endured. In an increasingly repressive and authoritarian part of the world, this nation of 40 million people stands apart as a rare—though still deeply flawed—democracy. Iraq’s elected leaders insist that, despite their country’s many travails, it still has something to teach the rest of the Middle East.
 * Yaroslav Trofimov, "Iraq’s Surprise: The Persistence of Democracy" (17 November 2017), The Wall Street Journal

 * It's the Harvard of Terrorists.
 * Donald Trump, interview with Charlie Rose (17 February 2016).

W

 * WHAT is Iraq, anyhow? Well, it's a lot of things, old and new. It is one of the oldest countries in the world–and one of the youngest under its present government.
 * War and Navy Departments, A Short Guide to Iraq (1942), Washington, D.C., p. 3

 * Baghdah’s control of Iraq’s provinces is, in part, based on its custodianship of the country’s petrodollars, with the oil sector contributing up to 99 percent of government revenue. The war against ISIS, however, forced the government to divert huge sums of money to the army, as well as to the salaries of 110,000 fighters from the Popular Mobilization Forces in November, in a bid to rein in Shia paramilitary groups. This siphoned much-needed revenue from the provinces.
 * Jack Watling, “Why Iraq Needs the Oil”, The Atlantic, (Jan 25, 2017).

Z

 * The problem, again, was that there were too many reasons for the war. What conferred a semblance of consistency on this multitude of reasons was, of course, ideology.
 * Slavoj Žižek, Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, p. 2. ISBN 1844675408

 * What then, was the real reason for going to war? Strangely, there were, in effect, three: (1) a sincere ideological belief that the USA was bringing democracy and prosperity to another nation; (2) the urge brutally to assert and demonstrate unconditional US hegemony; (3) control of Iraq's oil reserves. Each of the three levels has a relative autonomy of its own, and should not be dismissed as a mere deceptive semblance.
 * Slavoj Žižek, Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, p. 4. ISBN 1844675408

 * In autumn 2003, when, after hundreds of investigators had searched high and low for WMDs, yet not a single one had been located, the public were posing the elementary question: 'If there are no WMDs, Why did we attack Iraq? Did you lie to us?'
 * Slavoj Žižek, Iraq: The Borrowed Kettle, p. 12. ISBN 1844675408

 * The reason why the U.S. Government must be prosecuted for its war-crimes against Iraq is that they are so horrific and there are so many of them, and international law crumbles until they become prosecuted and severely punished for what they did. We therefore now have internationally a lawless world (or “World Order”) in which “Might makes right,” and in which there is really no effective international law, at all. This is merely gangster “law,” ruling on an international level... The seriousness of this international war crime is not as severe as those of the Nazis were, but nonetheless is comparable to it... On 15 March 2018, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies headlined at Alternet,  “The Staggering Death Toll in Iraq” and wrote that “our calculations, using the best information available, show a catastrophic estimate of 2.4 million Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion,” and linked to solid evidence, backing up their estimate.... On 6 February 2020, BusinessInsider bannered “US taxpayers have reportedly paid an average of $8,000 each and over $2 trillion total for the Iraq war alone”, and linked to the academic analysis that supported this estimate. The U.S. regime’s invasive war, which the Bush gang perpetrated against Iraq, was also a crime against the American people (though Iraqis suffered far more from it than we did).
 * Eric Zuesse, Why U.S. Must Be Prosecuted for Its War Crimes Against Iraq, American Herald Tribune, (16 May 2020)

 * Bush’s successors have become accessories after the fact, by this failure to press for prosecution of him and his henchmen regarding this grave matter. In fact, the “Defense One” site bannered on 26 September 2018, “US Official: We May Cut Support for Iraq If New Government Seats Pro-Iran Politicians”, and opened with “The Trump administration may decrease U.S. military support or other assistance to Iraq if its new government puts Iranian-aligned politicians in any ‘significant positions of responsibility,’ a senior administration official told reporters late last week.” The way that the U.S. regime has brought ‘democracy’ to Iraq is by threatening to withdraw its protection of the stooge-rulers that it had helped to place into power there, unless those stooges do the U.S. dictators’ bidding, against Iraq’s neighbor Iran. This specific American dictator, Trump, is demanding that majority-Shiite Iraq be run by stooges who favor, instead, America’s fundamentalist-Sunni allies, such as the Saud family who own Saudi Arabia and who hate and loathe Shiites and Iran. The U.S. dictatorship insists that Iraq, which the U.S. conquered, serve America’s anti-Shiite and anti-Iranian policy-objectives.
 * Eric Zuesse, Why U.S. Must Be Prosecuted for Its War Crimes Against Iraq, American Herald Tribune, (16 May 2020)

 * I do not want to criticize while my soldiers are still bleeding and dying in Iraq.
 * General Eric K. Shinseki to associates; quoted in

In fiction

 * Flagee: You see, Ribbon. We have to stop Iraq because they might develop weapons of mass destruction!
 * Ribbon: Gee whillikers. Flagee, I’m confused!
 * Ribbon: The Reagan/Bush administration helped Hussein plan and execute chemical weapon attacks against Iran in the '80s!
 * Flagee: Where did you read that leftist conspiracy madness, Ribbon?
 * Ribbon: The New York Times.
 * Flagee: Well, from now on, only Fox News for you!!
 * Aaron McGruder, The Boondocks, (9/25/2002).

authors: মোহাম্মদ জনি হোসেন

title: Iraq


text:
Kenneth Tynan

Kenneth Tynan (2 April 1927 – 26 July 1980) was a British theatre critic, author and literary manager of London's National Theatre Conmpany for a decade from 1963.

Quotes

 * A good many inconveniences attend playgoing in any large city, but the greatest of them is usually the play itself.
 * Article in the New York Herald Tribune (17 February 1957)

 * Useless, of course, to point out that the genesis of good plays is hardly ever abstract; that it tends, on the contrary, to be something as concrete and casual as a glance intercepted, a remark overheard, or an insignificant news item buried at the bottom of page three. Yet it is by trivialities like these that the true playwright's blood is fired. They spur him to story-telling; they bring on the narrative fit that is his glory and his basic credential. Show me a congenital eavesdropper with the instincts of a peeping Tom, and I will show you the makings of a dramatist. Only the makings, of course: curiosity about people is merely the beginning of the road to the masterpiece: but if that curiosity is sustained you will find, when the rules have been mastered and the end has been reached, that a miracle has happened.
 * Pausing on the Stairs (1957)

 * Lenny Bruce ... [is] the most original, free-speaking, wild-thinking gymnast of language this inhibited island has ever engaged to amuse its citizens.
 * [A]t the end he had broken through frontiers of language and feeling that one had hitherto thought inviolable ...
 * "Look Back in Quadruplicate" The Observer (London, 29 April 1962) p. 29

 * I believe in neither a director’s nor a writer’s theatre, but a theatre of intelligent audiences. I count myself as a member of an intelligent audience, and I wrote to you as such. That you should disagree with me I can understand, but that you should resent my expressing my opinions is something that frankly amazes me. I thought we had outgrown the idea of theatre as a mystic rite born of secret communion between author, director, actors and an empty auditorium.
 * Letter to George Devine (10 March 1964), printed in Kenneth Tynan : A Life by Dominic Shellard, p. 292

 * I doubt if there are very many rational people in this world to whom the word "fuck" is particularly diabolical or revolting or totally forbidden.
 * Spoken during a discussion on censorship, broadcast live on the BBC program BBC-3, (13 November 1965) Tynan is usually considered the first person to say this word on British television, leading to an apology from the BBC and several motions in the House of Commons.

 * Any country that has sexual censorship will eventually have political censorship.
 * As quoted in "Critic Kenneth Tynan Has Mellowed But Is Still England's Stingingest Gadfly" by Godfrey Smith in The New York Times (9 January 1966)

 * I hope I never need to believe in God. It would be an awful confession of failure.
 * As quoted in "Critic Kenneth Tynan Has Mellowed But Is Still England's Stingingest Gadfly" by Godfrey Smith in The New York Times (9 January 1966)

 * A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.
 * As quoted in "Critic Kenneth Tynan Has Mellowed But Is Still England's Stingingest Gadfly" by Godfrey Smith in The New York Times (9 January 1966)

 * No theater could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world.
 * As quoted in "Critic Kenneth Tynan Has Mellowed But Is Still England's Stingingest Gadfly" by Godfrey Smith in The New York Times (9 January 1966)

 * A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you're keeping.
 * As quoted in The Life of Kenneth Tynan (1987) by Kathleen Tynan, p. 188

Curtains (1961)

 * Curtains: Selections from the Drama Criticism and Related Writings (1961)

 * Art and ideology often interact on each other; but the plain fact is that both spring from a common source. Both draw on human experience to explain mankind to itself; both attempt, in very different ways, to assemble coherence from seemingly unrelated phenomena; both stand guard for us against chaos.

 * William Congreve is the only sophisticated playwright England has produced; and like Shaw, Sheridan, and Wilde, his nearest rivals, he was brought up in Ireland.

 * The unique thing about Margaret Rutherford is that she can act with her chin alone. Among its many moods I especially cherish the chin commanding, the chin in doubt, and the chin at bay.

 * Not content to have the audience in the palm of his hand; he goes one further and clinches his fist.
 * On singer Frankie Laine

Tynan Right and Left (1967)

 * Tynan Right and Left : Plays, Films, People, Places and Events (1967)

 * If a play does anything either tragically or comically satirically or farcically — to explain to me why I am alive, it is a good play. If it seems unaware that such questions exist, I tend to suspect that it's a bad one.
 * Foreword

 * A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.
 * Foreword

 * John Osborne spoke out in a vein of ebullient, free-wheeling rancour that betokened the arrival of something new in the theatre — a sophisticated, articulate lower-class. Most of the critics were offended by Jimmy Porter, but not on account of his anger; a working-class hero is expected to be angry. What nettled them was something quite different: his self-confidence. This was no envious inferior whose insecurity they could pity.
 * "Decade in Retrospect: 1959" (1959), p. 13

 * People have always needed art: but why have they needed it? And what shaped the forms by which they satisfied their need? … In the arts form tends to be conservative, and content to be revolutionary; it is novelty of content that precedes, demands and imposes novelty of form.
 * Review of The Necessity of Art (1959) by Ernest Fischer

 * When you've seen all of Ionesco's plays, I felt at the end, you've seen one of them.
 * Review of Victims of Duty by Eugène Ionesco (1960), p. 36

 * A villain who shares one's guilt is inevitably more attractive than a hero convinced of one's innocence.
 * Review of The Changeling, by Thomas Middleton (1961), p. 75

 * We shall be judged by what we do, not by how we felt while we were doing it.
 * Review of Altona, by Jean-Paul Sartre (1961), p. 97

 * The man who reacts to the universe with a cry of impotent anguish is acceptable as an artist only if he can persuade us that he has sanely considered the other possible reactions and found them inadequate.
 * "Anatomy of the Absurd" (1962), p. 104

 * How far should one accept the rules of the society in which one lives? To put it another way: at what point does conformity become corruption? Only by answering such questions does the conscience truly define itself.
 * Review of Le Misanthrope, by Molière, at the Piccadilly (1962), p. 117

 * When a society has doubts about its future, it tends to produce spokesmen whose main appeal is to the emotions, who argue from intuitions, and whose claim to be truth-bearers rests solely on intense personal feeling.
 * Review of After the Fall, by Arthur Miller, at the ANTA Washington Square Theatre, New York; Blues for Mister Charlie, by James Baldwin at the ANTA Theatre, New York (1962), p. 143

 * I attacked those Western playwrights who use their influence and affluence to preach to the world the nihilistic doctrine that life is pointless and irrationally destructive, and that there is nothing we can do about it. Until everyone is fed, clothed, housed and taught, until human beings have equal leisure to contemplate the overwhelming fact of mortality, we should not (I argued) indulge in the luxury of "privileged despair."
 * "Conference at Edinburgh" (1963), p. 146

 * Does the critic wish to influence the kind of film that costs more than £250,000? It is as if he were to send a postcard to General Motors explaining that he would like them to make a raft next year, or a helicopter, instead of a car.
 * "Footnote on Cinema" (undated), p. 260

 * Everyone is vulnerable who is at once gifted and gregarious.
 * "Orson Welles" (1961), p. 297

 * Judge and prosecutor had hammered it home that Lady Chatterly was an immoral woman, that she had had sexual relations before marriage, that she had committed adultery under her husband's roof; as if these charges somehow disqualified her from participation in serious literature. Indeed, there were long periods of the trial during which an outsider might well have assumed that a divorce case was being heard.
 * "Lady Chatterly's Trial (The Old Bailey, 20 October - 2 November 1960)", p. 409

 * The buttocks are the most aesthetically pleasing part of the body because they are non-functional. Although they conceal an essential orifice, these pointless globes are as near as the human form can ever come to abstract art.
 * "Meditations on Basic Baroque," IV (1966), p. 432

Profiles (1990)

 * edited by Ernie Eban

 * One would have thought that the notion of an impersonal critic was as patently absurd as that of an impersonal person: yet playwrights still cherish it as a sort of holy ideal. Admittedly, we all make mystiques: but this one is particularly wishful. The man who asks for an anonymous, impersonal criticism is trying to elevate criticism to the status of a science; whereas it is, I am afraid, only an art. The critic's business is to write readable English: the playwright's to write speakable English. Beyond that it is every man for himself.
 * "George Jean Nathan" (1953), p. 61

 * Welles is at once as abnormal and as natural as Niagara Falls.
 * "Orson Welles" (1953), p. 65

 * What, when drunk, one sees in other women, one sees in Garbo sober.
 * "Greta Garbo" (1954), p. 79

 * All writing is an antisocial act, since the writer is a man who can speak freely only when alone; to be himself he must lock himself up, to communicate he must cut himself off from all communication; and in this there is something always a little mad.
 * "Tennessee Williams" (1956), p. 97

 * In most writers, style is a welcome, an invitation, a letting down of the drawbridge between the artist and the world. Shaw had no time for such ruses. Unlike most of his countrymen, he abominated charm, which he regarded as evidence of chronic temperamental weakness.
 * "Bernard Shaw" (1956), p. 102

 * His puritan, muscular, moor-tramping soul (superbly mirrored in Higgins's hymn to the intellect in Pygmalion) bred in him a loathing of all things, whether poems or gadgets, that were designed to comfort the human condition without actively trying to improve it.
 * "Bernard Shaw," p. 103

 * Every speech, for Olivier, is like a mass of marble at which the sculptor chips away until its essential form and meaning are revealed. No matter how ignoble the character he plays, the result is always noble as a work of art.
 * "Laurence Olivier" (1966), p. 208

 * Her style looks absurdly simple — an effortless act of projection, a serpentine lasso whereby her voice casually winds itself around our most vulnerable fantasies. But it is not easy. It is what remains when ingratiation, sentimentality and the manifold devices of heart-warming crap have been ruthlessly pared away. Steel and silk are left, shining and durable.
 * "Marlene Dietrich" (1967), p. 215

 * She shows herself to the audience like the Host to the congregation.
 * "Marlene Dietrich," p. 217

Misattributed

 * Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.
 * From Dada Manifesto 1918 (23 March 1918) by Tristan Tzara

 * I do not see the EEC as a great love affair. It is more like nine middle-aged couples with failing marriages meeting at a Brussels hotel for a group grope.
 * "This going into Europe will not turn out to be the thrilling mutual exchange supposed. It is more like nine middle aged couples with failing marriages meeting in a darkened bedroom in a Brussels hotel for a group grope." - E.P. Thompson, "On the Europe Debate," The Times of London (27 March 1975)

 * It is the nature of ambition to make men liars and cheats, to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, another thing in their mouths, to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their own interest, and to make a good countenance without the help of good will.
 * Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, X, 5. This particular translation of the original Latin is from the essay "On Liberty" by Abraham Cowley: "Sallust, therefore, who was well acquainted with them both and with many such-like gentlemen of his time, says, 'That it is the nature of ambition' (Ambitio multos mortales falsos fieri coegit, etc.) 'to make men liars and cheaters; to hide the truth in their breasts, and show, like jugglers, another thing in their mouths; to cut all friendships and enmities to the measure of their own interest, and to make a good countenance without the help of good will.'" The Wikiquote page for Sallust has the quote and a different translation.

Quotes about Tynan

 * The hero of Tynan Right and Left is, as the title suggests, Tynan. The ostensible subject matter is of course wider, for the book consists of Tynan's writing over the past 10 years, not only in his capacities as theater and cinema reviewer but also as the author of occasional pieces, interviews and essays on a wide variety of people … But whatever he is writing about Tynan never forgets the subject on which he is the leading world expert: namely Kenneth Tynan, cultural journalist, moralist, socialist. "Occupation: opinion-monger observer of artistic phenomena, amateur ideologue."
 * Richard Boston, in his review of Tynan Right and Left, "Tynan Right and Wrong", in The New York Times (10 December 1967)

 * Tynan's interests cover an unusually broad range, and his references are equally wide: How many other critics would quote Seneca on Humphrey Bogart or Coleridge on the Beatles? … As a theater critic he has been extremely influential, and always in useful directions. Sometimes his concern for the state of contemporary drama leads him to overestimate particular plays for their tactical importance in the struggle for the sort of theater he would like to see … the state of British theater is far healthier now than it was when Tynan first appeared on the scene, and for this he can take some credit. … Like all good critics sooner or later, he has come up against the form and content argument, and like all good critics (at least when it is put in either-or terms) he comes down on the side of content. … Like George Orwell he has the ability always to pick on the important issues even when briefly reviewing a film or play which is in itself of little interest. He raises the right questions even if he does not always come up with the right answers, and usually he does come up with the right answers. Almost without exception he is readable and stimulating, whatever the subject; he is very honest, and often funny. If he is too interested in himself, there are after all a lot of people who are much less interesting.
 * Richard Boston, in "Tynan Right and Wrong", in The New York Times (10 December 1967)

 * Ken, the Tot of Destiny, had turned into the Marquis de Sade, and I in response had become a virago.
 * Elaine Dundy, on the deterioration of her marriage to Tynan, as quoted in her Obituary in The Telegraph (6 May 2008)

title: Kenneth Tynan


text:
A. A. Milne

Alan Alexander Milne (18 January 1882 – 31 January 1956) was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems.

Quotes

 * They have almost brought it off, the War to End Peace, for which they have been striving for three years. What an incredible joke! A war 'to defend the freedom of the Straits and the sanctity of our graves in Gallipoli', says Punch magnificently. Of course you can think of it like that, and it sounds quite dignified and natural. But you may also think, as I do, of those five or ten or twenty men, our chosen statesmen, sitting round a table; the same old statesmen; each with his war memories thick upon him; each knowing his own utter incompetence to maintain a war or to end a war.
 * On the Chanak Crisis; 'Another Little War', The Daily News (4 October 1922), quoted in P. N. Furbank, E. M. Forster: A Life, Volume Two: Polycrates' Ring 1914–1970 (1978; 1979 ed.), p. 112

 * Tell the innocent visitor from another world that two people were killed at Serajevo, and that the best that Europe could do about it was to kill eleven million more.
 * Peace with Honour, 1934.

 * I wrote somewhere once that the third-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the majority, the second-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking with the minority, and the first-rate mind was only happy when it was thinking.
 * War with Honour, Macmillan War Pamphlets, Issue 2 (1940).

When We Were Very Young (1924)

 * They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace — Christopher Robin went down with Alice. They've great big parties inside the grounds. "I wouldn't be king for a hundred pounds", Says Alice.

 * James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree Took great care of his mother Though he was only three. James James said to his mother Mother he said, said he: You mustn't go down to the end of the town if you don't go down with me. James James Morrison's Mother Put on a golden gown. James James Morrison's Mother Went to the end of the town James James Morrison's Mother Said to herself, said she: I can go right down to the end of the town and be back in time for tea!

 * Halfway down the stairs Is a stair Where I sit. There isn't any Other stair Quite like It. I'm not at the bottom, I'm not at the top; So this is the stair Where I always Stop. Halfway up the stairs Isn't up, Isn't down. It isn't in the nursery, It isn't in the town. And all sorts of funny thoughts Run round my head: "It isn't really Anywhere! It's somewhere else Instead!"

Winnie-the-Pooh (1926)

 * Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think about it.
 * Chapter One, opening lines.

 * "If there's a buzzing-noise, somebody's making a buzzing-noise, and the only reason for making a buzzing-noise that I know of is because you're a bee." Then he thought another long time, and said: "And the only reason for being a bee that I know of is making honey." And then he got up, and said: "And the only reason for making honey is so I can eat it." So he began to climb the tree.
 * Chapter One - Pooh.

 * Pooh always liked a little something at eleven o'clock in the morning, and he was very glad to see Rabbit getting out the plates and mugs; and when Rabbit said, "Honey or condensed milk with your bread?" he was so excited that he said, "Both," and then, so as not to seem greedy, he added, "But don't bother about the bread, please."
 * Chapter Two.

 * "What?" said Piglet, with a jump. And then, to show that he hadn't been frightened, he jumped up and down once or twice more in an exercising sort of way.
 * Chapter Three.

 * "I have been Foolish and Deluded," said he, "and I am a Bear of No Brain at All."
 * Chapter Three - Pooh.

 * These notices had been written by Christopher Robin, who was the only one in the forest who could spell; for Owl, wise though he was in many ways, able to read and write and spell his own name WOL, yet somehow went all to pieces over delicate words like MEASLES and BUTTEREDTOAST.
 * Chapter Four.

 * "I'm giving this to Eeyore," he explained, "as a present. What are you going to give?" "Couldn't I give it too?" said Piglet. "From both of us?" "No," said Pooh. "That would not be a good plan."
 * Chapter Six.

 * It was just as if somebody inside him were saying, "Now then, Pooh, time for a little something."
 * Chapter Six.

 * "Because my spelling is Wobbly. It's good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places."
 * Chapter Six - Pooh.

 * "It is hard to be brave," said Piglet, sniffing slightly, "when you're only a Very Small Animal."
 * Chapter Seven.

 * Owl was telling Kanga an Interesting Anecdote full of long words like Encyclopædia and Rhododendron to which Kanga wasn't listening.
 * Chapter Eight.

 * "It's a little Anxious," he said to himself, "to be a Very Small Animal Entirely Surrounded by Water."
 * Chapter Nine - Piglet.

 * Kanga said to Roo, "Drink up your milk first, dear, and talk afterwards." So Roo, who was drinking his milk, tried to say that he could do both at once . . . and had to be patted on the back and dried for quite a long time afterwards.
 * Chapter Ten.

 * "H–hup!" said Roo accidentally. "Roo, dear!" said Kanga reproachfully. "Was it me?" asked Roo, a little surprised.
 * Chapter Ten.

 * "And how are you?", said Winnie-the-Pooh. (...) "Not very how", he said. "I don't seem to have felt at all how for a long time."

 * Cottleston, cottleston, cottleston pie, A fly can't bird, but a bird can fly. Ask me a riddle and I reply, Cottleston, cottleston, cottleston pie.

 * "Good morning, Pooh Bear", said Eeyore gloomily. "If it is a good morning", he said. "Which I doubt", said he.

 * Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin.

 * How sweet to be a cloud Floating in the blue.

 * "Hello Rabbit, is that you?""Let's pretend it isn't", said Rabbit, "and see what happens."

 * Isn't it funny How a bear likes honey? Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! I wonder why he does?

 * There are some people who begin the Zoo at the beginning, called WAYIN, and walk as quickly as they can past every cage until they get to the one called WAYOUT, but the nicest people go straight to the animal they love the most, and stay there.

 * We can't all and some of us don't. That's all there is to it.
 * -Eeyore.

 * You can't stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.
 * -Pooh.

Now We Are Six (1927)

 * When I was One, I had just begun. When I was Two, I was nearly new. When I was Three I was hardly me. When I was Four, I was not much more. When I was Five, I was just alive. But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever, So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.
 * The End.

 * I found a little beetle, so that beetle was his name, And I called him Alexander and he answered just the same. I put him in a matchbox, and I kept him all the day... And Nanny let my beetle out Yes, Nanny let my beetle out She went and let my beetle out- And beetle ran away.  She said she didn't mean it, and I never said she did, She said she wanted matches, and she just took off the lid She said that she was sorry, but it's difficult to catch An excited sort of beetle you've mistaken for a match.  She said that she was sorry, and I really mustn't mind As there's lots and lots of beetles which she's certain we could find If we looked about the garden for the holes where beetles hid- And we'd get another matchbox, and write BEETLE on the lid.  We went to all the places which a beetle might be near, And we made the sort of noises which a beetle likes to hear, And I saw a kind of something, and I gave a sort of shout: "A beetle-house and Alexander Beetle coming out!"  It was Alexander Beetle I'm as certain as can be And he had a sort of look as if he thought it might be ME, And he had a kind of look as if he thought he ought to say: "I'm very, very sorry that I tried to run away."  And Nanny's very sorry too, for you know what she did, And she's writing ALEXANDER very blackly on the lid, So Nan and me are friends, because it's difficult to catch An excited Alexander you've mistaken for a match.
 * Forgiven (affectionately also known as Alexander Beetle).

The House at Pooh Corner (1928)

 * When we asked Pooh what the opposite of an Introduction was, he said "The what of a what?" which didn't help us as much as we had hoped, but luckily Owl kept his head and told us that the Opposite of an Introduction, my dear Pooh, was a Contradiction; and, as he is very good at long words, I am sure that that's what it is.
 * Contradiction.

 * The more he looked inside the more Piglet wasn't there.
 * Chapter One - Pooh.

 * "Nearly eleven o'clock," said Pooh happily. "You're just in time for a little smackerel of something."
 * Chapter One.

 * "Shall I look too?" said Pooh, who was beginning to feel a little eleven o'clockish. And he found a small tin of condensed milk, and something seemed to tell him that Tiggers didn't like this, so he took it into a corner by itself, and went with it to see that nobody interrupted it.
 * Chapter Two.

 * Pooh said good-bye affectionately to his fourteen pots of honey, and hoped they were fifteen; and he and Rabbit went out into the Forest.
 * Chapter Three.

 * Piglet looked up, and looked away again. And he felt so Foolish and Uncomfortable that he had almost decided to run away to Sea and be a Sailor, when suddenly he saw something.
 * Chapter Three.

 * One day when Pooh was thinking, he thought he would go and see Eeyore, because he hadn't seen him since yesterday.
 * Chapter Four.

 * Now it happened that Kanga had felt rather motherly that morning, and Wanting to Count Things — like Roo's vests, and how many pieces of soap there were left, and the two clean spots in Tigger's feeder.
 * Chapter Four.

 * "Yes," said Tigger, "they're very good flyers, Tiggers are. Strornry good flyers."
 * Chapter Four.

 * Piglet took Pooh's arm, in case Pooh was frightened.
 * Chapter Four.

 * "And he respects Owl, because you can't help respecting anyone who can spell Tuesday, even if he doesn't spell it right; but spelling isn't everything. There are days when spelling Tuesday simply doesn't count."
 * Chapter Five - Rabbit, speaking of Christopher Robin.

 * Owl took Christopher Robin's notice from Rabbit and looked at it nervously. He could spell his own name WOL, and he could spell Tuesday so that you knew it wasn't Wednesday, and he could read quite comfortably when you weren't looking over his shoulder and saying "Well?" all the time, and he could—
 * Chapter Five.

 * By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream had grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up, it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved more slowly. For it knew now where it was going, and it said to itself, "There is no hurry. We shall get there some day."
 * Chapter Six.

 * "I've got a sort of idea," said Pooh at last, "but I don't suppose it's a very good one." "I don't suppose it is either," said Eeyore.
 * Chapter Six.

 * "when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it."
 * Chapter Six - "In which Pooh invents a new game and Eeyore joins in".

 * Pooh looked at his two paws. He knew that one of them was the right, and he knew that when you had decided which one of them was the right, then the other one was the left, but he never could remember how to begin.
 * Chapter Seven.

Piglet sidled up to Pooh from behind. "Pooh!" he whispered. "Yes, Piglet?" "Nothing," said Piglet, taking Pooh's paw. "I just wanted to be sure of you."
 * "Lucky we know the forest so well, or we might get lost," said Rabbit half an hour later, and he gave the careless laugh which you give when you know the Forest so well that you can't get lost.
 * Chapter Seven.

 * ...and then he and Roo pushed each other about in a friendly way, and Tigger accidentally knocked over one or two chairs by accident, and Roo accidentally knocked over one on purpose, and Kanga said, "Now then, run along."
 * Chapter Seven.

 * "I don't see much sense in that," said Rabbit. "No," said Pooh humbly, "there isn't. But there was going to be when I began it. It's just that something happened to it on the way."
 * Chapter Seven.

 * "You only blinched inside," said Pooh, "and that's the bravest way for a Very Small Animal not to blinch that there is."
 * Chapter Ten.

 * "Well," said Pooh, "what I like best—" and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.
 * Chapter Ten.

 * "I'm not going to do just nothing anymore." "You mean never again?" "Well, not so much. They don't let you."

 * "I shouldn't be surprised if it hailed a good deal tomorrow", Eeyore was saying. "Blizzards and what-not. Being fine today doesn't mean anything. It has no sig - what's that word? Well, it has none of that. It's just a small piece of weather."

 * If I plant a honeycomb outside my house, then it will grow up into a beehive.

 * Then Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh walked hand in hand down the forest path and they said goodbye. So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them along the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the forest a little boy and his bear will always be playing.

 * "That's what Jagular's always do", said Pooh, much interested. "They call 'Help! Help!' and then when you look up, they'll drop on you."

 * "They wanted to come in after the pounds", explained Pooh, "so I let them. It's the best way to write poetry, letting things come".

Quotes about Milne

 * My mother is English, and as she was the one who read to us, my early world was A. A. Milne, Beatrix Potter, Kenneth Grahame, Lewis Carroll and Roald Dahl. None of them thought it necessary to protect children from darkness. On the contrary, they guided their readers right toward it. This gives one an enormous sense of being respected as a child. Not just of being trusted to handle things as they are, but to be accepted as not entirely good. To be recognized as having darkness within oneself, too.
 * Nicole Krauss Interview (2017)

 * To A. A. Milne belongs the honour of enshrining with urban romance the civilized and comfortable child of to-day. When we were Very Young marks an epoch as positively as any children's book has ever marked one. It is not extravagant to surmise that a distant posterity may find in that volume of children's verse a key with which to unlock the present more easily than with any contemporary novel, or poem, or play.
 * Compton Mackenzie, Literature In My Time (1933), pp. 19-20

 * And it is that word 'hummy,' my darlings, that marks the first place in The House at Pooh Corner at which Tonstant Weader fwowed up.
 * Dorothy Parker, in her "Constant Reader" book review of The House at Pooh Corner in The New Yorker (20 October 1928).

title: A. A. Milne