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Talk:Donald Knuth

Origin of "Premature optimization is the root of all evil"
Note: It was Tony Hoare who said "Premature optimization is the root of all evil."

 * You appear to be correct, although many folks attribute Knuth, perhaps because his restatement adds more authority. Anyhow, I moved the quote to attributed. ~ Stevesliva

 * The first quote in the "Sourced" section has no source that I can find. ~ Stevesliva

 * Note: I haven't read the book A equals B -- the quotation looks wrong. What Knuth actually says is "Science is knowledge which we understand so well that we can teach it to a computer; and if we don't fully understand something, it is an art do deal with it.".  That quote is found in his 1974 ACM Turing Award lecture, reprinted in December 1974 issue of Communications of the ACM 17(12):pp.667-673.

 * --Mmeri 14:40, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Photo
Is this the best picture of Don we can come up with? He looks like a prisoner!

Some sources
The last quote "An algorithm must be seen to be believed" is from "The Art of Computer Programming Vol.1: Fundamental Algorithms" Section 1.1 Page 4. The complete sentence is "...believed, and the best way to learn what an algorithm is all about is to try it."

--Kushal Kumaran 30 June 2005 04:14 (UTC)

"You're full of shit"
"You're full of shit" doesn't seem to be the kind of words Prof. Knuth uses normally, so that quotation is a somewhat questionable. Anyway, maybe it is correct; but the source doesn't mention "I seriously doubt that" (although that quotation seems way more likely, to me).

 * See:

 * It's that story that's full of shit. :-) See Knuth's recent reply here (to something else): The web has thousands of tales that aren't true, about virtually everybody in public life. (Including the story about me and Pixar's CEO.) shreevatsa 09:12, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

"Who are you, how did you get in my house?"
May be attributed to him, but I don't know the reliable source. The best source for now is --Jarash (talk) 08:59, 14 April 2018 (UTC)

Dead link
In "Counter Claim: Edsger Dijkstra (Tony Hoare) " the link is dead. Hence "A list is only as strong as its weakest link." 80.170.19.2 07:18, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced
Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Donald Knuth. --Antiquary 18:03, 11 September 2009 (UTC)
 * A list is only as strong as its weakest link.

 * In fact what I would like to see is thousands of computer scientists let loose to do whatever they want. That's what really advances the field.

 * The hardest thing is to go to sleep at night, when there are so many urgent things needing to be done. A huge gap exists between what we know is possible with today's machines and what we have so far been able to finish.
 * On the biggest challenge facing programmers today

 * The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language.

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

title: Talk:Donald Knuth


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Eric Clapton

Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE (born 30 March 1945), is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist and separately as a member of the Yardbirds and of Cream. He was also part of the bands Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominos.

Quotes

 * Did you plan your leads, or, for that matter, do you plan them now?
 * No. The only planning I do is about a minute before I play. I desperately try to think of something that will be effective, but I never sit down and work it out note for note.
 * Fred Stuckey, "Eric Clapton Interview," Guitar Player 4 (June 1970) p. 47. guitarplayer.com

 * Tell me why, must I fall in love with you?
 * Fall Like Rain (from the album Pilgrim - 1998)

 * Layla, you got me on my knees. Layla, I'm begging, darling please. Layla, darling won't you ease my worried mind.
 * Layla (by Derek and the Dominos - 1970)

 * Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven? Would it be the same If I saw you in heaven?
 * Tears in Heaven (from the album Unplugged - 1992)

 * And I say, "Yes, you look wonderful tonight."
 * Wonderful Tonight (from the album Slowhand - 1977)

 * Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. [...] Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I'm into racism. It's much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded, and Enoch [Powell] will stop it and send them all back. The black wogs and coons and Arabs and fucking Jamaicans and fucking ... don't belong here, we don't want them here. This is England, this is a white country, we don't want any black wogs and coons living here. We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man. We are a white country. I don’t want fucking wogs living next to me with their standards. This is Great Britain, a white country. What is happening to us, for fuck's sake?
 * "When Eric Clapton's Bigoted 1976 Rant Sparked Rock Against Racism" (at the Birmingham Odeon, 5 August 1976)
 * See more at Snopes. Accounts of the precise words Clapton used vary, although he has not disputed their accuracy or authenticity.

 * All I am certain of right now is that I don't want to go anywhere, and that's not bad for someone who always used to run.
 * Clapton: The Autobiography

 * Music will always find its way to us, with or without business, politics, religion, or any other bullshit attached. Music survives everything, and like God, it is always present. It needs no help, and suffers no hindrance.
 * Clapton: The Autobiography

 * In my lowest moments, the only reason I didn't commit suicide was that I knew I wouldn't be able to drink anymore if I was dead.
 * Clapton: The Autobiography, about his alcoholism in the 1980s

 * [Unplugged] was also the cheapest to produce and required the least amount of preparation and work. But if you want to know what it actually cost me, go to Ripley and visit the grave of my son.
 * Clapton: The Autobiography

 * You never told me he was that fucking good.
 * After first hearing Jimi Hendrix perform, as quoted in "Jimi Hendrix: 'You never told me he was that good'" by Ed Vulliamy in The Guardian (8 August 2010)

About

 * He is a great person, as well as a great musician. And this guy sings like he was born down below Mississippi!
 * B.B. King

 * I think Clapton is brilliant. He's the only one who moved me. The only one who made me want to play the guitar.
 * Eddie Van Halen

 * His fingers are directly wired to his soul.
 * Brian May

 * I had a Les Paul before Eric but I didn't have a Marshall. And when Eric got all of that together he was a delight to listen to. He really understood the blues.
 * Jimmy Page, quoted in

title: Eric Clapton


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User:Guanaco

This is now actually me. This account was previously registered by w:User:Michael. Guanaco 00:53, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)

title: User:Guanaco


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Alfred Hitchcock

Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE (13 August 1899 – 29 April 1980) was an English film director and producer, closely associated with the suspense thriller genre. He is a well-known man and an award-winning director. He directed and produced three of the American Film Institute Top 100 Films, Vertigo (1958), Psycho (1960), and North by Northwest (1959), two psychological thrillers and a suspense film. Additionally, Vertigo was rated as the best film of all time in the 2012 British Film Institute Sight and Sound poll of the greatest films of all time.

Quotes

 * Hitchcock: You know that I think all actors are cattle? George Raft: Yes, I know—but I'm no actor.
 * On the set of The House Across the Bay; as quoted in "The New Yorker" by Leonard Lyons, in The Washington Post (26 July 1940).

 * [T]he director passed off the phrase as one of his "Machiavellian quips," not to be taken seriously. "Let us say, rather, that actors are a necessary evil," he cautioned, with a straight face. "As a matter of fact, I couldn't work if I weren't on friendly terms with them; I'll bend over backward every time. Besides, I get into each picture I make, if only for a couple of seconds—so I'm probably a frustrated actor at heart myself."
 * Regarding his oft-cited quote stating that actors are cattle; as paraphrased and quoted in "Town Called Hollywood: Director Pleads Off Poundage" by Philip K. Scheuer, in the Los Angeles Times (30 May 1943).

 * It still goes. But Pat is the nicest cattle I've ever seen.
 * Reaffirming the "actors are cattle" quote while in Boston to see his daughter perform onstage; as quoted in "The Lyons Den" by Leonard Lyons, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (20 October 1944).

 * The lower lip definitely states that all actors are cattle—including the authorǃ
 * Handwritten note accompanying Hitchcock's sketched self-portrait; as seen in—and addressed to the author of—"Melodrama Maestro" by Hume Cronyn, in McClean's (1 November 1944).

 * Actors are cattle. I've always said actors are cattle. In fact, Carole Lombard once built a corral on set and put three live calves into it, in recognition of my feelings. I tell them that, and treat them as such, and we get along fineǃ
 * As quoted in "New York Close-Up" by Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg, in New York Herald Tribune (27 February 1950).

 * Deep inside, I am a shy man. And in the presence of colorful characters, I am a clam. I never try to out-eccentric the eccentricsǃ
 * As quoted in "New York Close-Up".

 * I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.
 * Newsweek (11 June 1956).

 * Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.
 * Picture Parade, BBC (5 July 1960)

 * The Birds could be the most terrifying motion picture I have ever made.
 * Movie trailer for the 1960s film The Birds.

 * You can't direct a Laughton picture. The best you can hope for is to referee.
 * Films and Filming (Volume 9, Issue 3; 1963), p. 20

 * I’m frightened of eggs, worse than frightened, they revolt me. That white round thing without any holes … have you ever seen anything more revolting than an egg yolk breaking and spilling its yellow liquid? Blood is jolly, red. But egg yolk is yellow, revolting. I’ve never tasted it.
 * News summaries (31 December 1963).

 * A clear horizon — nothing to worry about on your plate, only things that are creative and not destructive and that's within yourself. Within me I can't bear quarreling, I can't bear feelings between people. I think hatred is wasted energy and it's all non-productive. I'm very sensitive. A sharp word, said by a person who has a temper, if they're close to me, hurts me for days. I know we're only human, we do go in for these various emotions, call them negative emotions but when all these are removed and you can look forward, and the road is clear ahead, and now you're going to create something. I think that's as happy as I would ever want to be.
 * Hitchcock's Definition of Happiness (YouTube video), excerpt from CBC's interview 'A Talk with Alfred Hitchcock' (1964). Quoted in "Hitchcock's Secret to Happiness" by Maria Popova, The Atlantic (20 March 2012).

 * We do not recommend suicide as a way of life.
 * Alfred Hitchcock Presents. 1965.

 * I deny that I ever said actors are cattle. What I said was, "Actors should be treated like cattle."
 * Speaking at awards ceremony; as quoted in "(Needs New Time Slot, But...) There Is No Excuse for Axing 'Rogues'," by Win Fanning, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (March 8, 1965).

 * Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn't change people’s habits. It just kept them inside the house.
 * NY Journal-American (25 August 1965).

 * One of television's great contributions is that it brought murder back into the home, where it belongs.
 * National Observer (15 August 1966).

 * Seeing a murder on television can … help work off one’s antagonisms. And if you haven’t any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
 * National Observer (15 August 1966).

 * Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.
 * As quoted in Hitchcock (1967) by François Truffaut.

 * Puns are the highest form of literature.
 * Dick Cavett Show (8 June 1972).

 * Give them pleasure – the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare.
 * On audiences, Asbury Park NJ Press (13 August 1974).

 * Self-plagiarism is style.
 * Defending his repetition of filming techniques, in The Observer [London], (8 Aug. 1976).

 * Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.
 * Interview on CBS TV (20 February 1977).

 * [This award is] meaningful because it comes from my fellow dealers in celluloid.
 * On receiving American Film Institute's 1979 Lifetime Achievement Award, recalled on his death (29 Apr. 1980).

 * I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat, and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are . Had the beautiful Miss Reville not accepted a lifetime contract without options as Mrs. Alfred Hitchcock some 53 years ago, Mr. Alfred Hitchcock might be in this room tonight, not at this table but as one of the slower waiters on the floor.
 * Speaking on March 11, 1979, accepting AFI's Life Achievement Award; as paraphrased in "A Big Hollywood Turnout for Alfred Hitchcock; "Hollywood Salute to Alfred Hitchcock" by, Los Angeles Times (March 12, 1979); quoted in Alma Hitchcock: The Woman Behind the Man (2003) by Pat Hitchcock, pp. 220–221; and heard in "Alfred Hitchcock Accepts the AFI Life Achievement Award in 1979", YouTube (April 16, 2009)

 * I’m not against the police; I'm just afraid of them.
 * As quoted in Hitchcock (revised edition 1985) by François Truffaut, p. 109.

 * In the documentary the basic material has been created by God, whereas in the fiction film the director is a God; he must create life.
 * As quoted in Hitchcock (revised edition 1984) by François Truffaut with the collaboration of Helen G. Scott, p. 102.

 * The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema.
 * As quoted in Hitchcock (1967) by François Truffaut

 * There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.
 * Attributed to Hitchcock in Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion (1984).

Quotes about Hitchcock

 * Hitch is a gentleman farmer who raises goose flesh.
 * Ingrid Bergman, as quoted in Time magazine (1979).

 * I'd like to know more about his relationships with women. No, on second thought, I wouldn't.
 * Ingrid Bergman.

 * Here is someone … who has an enormous, inordinate, neurotic fear of disorder. And that's from which he makes his art. He always has his people in a moment of disorder. They think they're in control, they think they have power, they think they have order, and then he just slips the rug out from under them to see what they're going to do.
 * Drew Casper, as quoted in "Master of Suspense" on NewsHour (13 August 1999).

 * Like Freud, Hitchcock diagnosed the discontents that chafe and rankle beneath the decorum of civilization. Like Picasso or Dali, he registered the phenomenological threat of an abruptly modernised world.
 * Peter Conrad.

 * The man with the navy-blue voice.
 * Barbara Harris, as quoted in The Observer [London] (6 August 1976).

 * [Hitchcock, on the set of Marnie] I've never gone into detail about this, and I never will. I'll simply say that he suddenly grabbed me and put his hands on me. It was sexual, it was perverse. The harder I fought him, the more aggressive he became.
 * I've made it my mission ever since to see to it that while Hitchcock may have ruined my career, I never gave him the power to ruin my life.
 * [Explaining her initial silence on his behaviour] sexual harassment and stalking were terms that didn't exist [at the time].
 * Tippi Hedren "Tippi Hedren: Star of The Birds claims she was sexually assaulted by Alfred Hitchcock" The Independent (31 October 2016)
 * The extracts are from Tippi: A Memoir (2016)

Hitch has a tiny wife, who helps him with all his scenarios, and a tiny fairylike daughter, who bobs an old-fashioned curtsey to you when she speaks. These are the people who really rule his life. He is an old-fashioned person at heart, believing in the ordinary things of life, the small common decencies, the trivial events that alone make the big ones extraordinary. That is why, I am convinced, he is a good film-maker.
 * During my ten-year friendship with Hitch the full name is unthinkable to anyone who knows him I have never known him fail to impress strangers with a start of surprise. He has always been chubby, but to-day he is a mellow, exuberant mountain of a man in the late thirties, whose passion is music, whose pleasure is good living, and whose genius is for visual imagery. He is a man who visualises both by instinct and training. He cannot help drawing. As he talks to you his broad, draughtsman's pencil sneaks out, and he blocks in groups and figures on the napkin or table top. When he signs his name to a letter the flourish under the signature slips into a cartoon. His Christmas cards are self-portraits, broadly satiric.
 * Actually Hitch, like most heavy men, is the gentlest creature you could meet in a month of Sundays. He has done more kindly turns to out of work actors, assistants, secretaries, and mere sponging acquaintances than anyone I know in this industry. Off set he is many people's angel. On, he is frequently a fiend.
 * When I first met Hitchcock he was writing and ornamenting sub-titles for silent pictures. He used to announce "Came the dawn" in black letters on a while ground, or tell us that "Heart spoke to heart in the hush of the evening" in white letters on a black ground. His title cards were both elegant and original, because the man simply could not help drawing. All his instincts were towards visualisation, and all his training towards draughtsmanship.
 * [Hitchcock quoted] "I'm on a diet. And I don't do crazy tricks in my pictures any more. You know what a good time I used to have in the old days, with violent cuts and dissolves and wipes, everything in the room spinning round, standing on its head, all that sort of thing. But I've stopped all that. I haven't time to waste any more on technical tricks. I like my screen well filled, every corner used, but I've no fancy theories I want the cutting and continuity to be as inconspicuous as possible. All I'm concerned with is to get the characters developed and the story clearly told, without wasting any footage. I've turned technical ascetic, kid, without either fun or luxuries."
 * C.A.L. "Alfred Hitchcock and His Work: On 'The Set' and Off. A Contrast", The Observer (17 November 1935)
 * "C.A.L." was more usually known as C. A. (Caroline Alice) Lejeune who began her career on The Manchester Guardian and was film critic of The Observer (1928–1960). Identified under the headline as being "By Our Film Correspondent" with her monogram at the end of the text. Lejeune visited the set of Secret Agent while the film was in production. Her wikiquote article has a section on the director's early British period.

 * I suppose what surprised me most about Hitchcock was how little he directed us. I had done a number of films for and he seemed quite meticulous in contrast. Hitchcock, however, didn't seem to direct us at all. He was a dozing, nodding Buddha with an enigmatic smile on his face.
 * , as quoted in The Life of Alfred Hitchcock: The Dark Side of Genius (1983) by Donald Spoto, p. 174.

 * When you think of the visual style, when you think of the visual language of a film there tends to be a natural separation of the visual style and the narrative elements, but with the great, whether it is Stanley Kubrick, Terrence Malick or Hitchcock what you're seeing is inseparable, a vital relationship between the images and the story he's telling.
 * Christopher Nolan, Chistopher Nolan and David Fincher featurette on Movieweb

 * Hitchcock finds women captivating but dangerous. She allures by nature but she is chief artificer in civilisation, a magic fabricator of persona whose very smile is an arc of deception.
 * Camille Paglia, The Birds, p. 7

 * In another Hitchcock film, Foreign Correspondent, one of the most exciting and melodramatic sequences ever made, the airplane crash in mid-ocean is accomplished with a minimum of reference, in the speed and economy of image that is to be found in concentrated poems.
 * Muriel Rukeyser The Life of Poetry (1949)

title: Alfred Hitchcock


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The Producers

The Producers commonly refers to Mel Brooks's series of comedic works about two con-men who attempt to cheat theatre investors out of their money:

 * The Producers (1968 film), starring Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder.
 * The Producers (musical), a Broadway musical based on the film, dating from 2001.
 * The Producers (2005 film), a film adapted from the Broadway adaptation, starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick.

title: The Producers


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User:SimonMayer

My Links

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sounds that soothe, stress relief, meditation music, relaxing music, yoga music, relaxing sounds, massage music, serenity, yoga, massage, meditation, sleep, music therapy, relaxation, nature sounds, instrumental

title: User:SimonMayer


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Trigun

Trigun トライガン is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Yasuhiro Nightow. The manga was serialized in Tokuma Shoten's Shōnen Captain in 1995 until the magazine was discontinued in 1997; the series continued in Shōnen Gahosha's Young King Ours magazine, under the title Trigun Maximum トライガンマキシマム, from October 1997 to March 2007. Set on the fictional planet known as No Man's Land, the plot follows Vash the Stampede, a famous gunman who is constantly fighting bounty hunters seeking to obtain the immense bounty on his head.

The $$60,000,000,000 Man [1.1]

 * Dangerous toys are fun, but you could get hurt!
 * Suicide? To tell you the truth, I disapprove of suicide more than anything.
 * So did I work off the doughnuts and the ten double dollars?

 * Vash: HAHAHAHAHA!!! I'M LIKE A SITTING DUCK OVER HERE! I'M DEFENSELESS!
 * (bandit fires towards the voice but Vash grabs his gun, fires a smiley-face in a rock and holds him at gunpoint)
 * Bandit: Oh, shit!
 * Vash: Now, stand real still! You wouldn't want this gun to go off, would you?
 * Bandit: I FOUND HIM! HE'S RIGHT OVER HERE, BOSS!
 * Vash: Uh, would you mind lowering your gun like a good boy?
 * Bandit: Forget it!
 * Vash: You don't like pain, do you?
 * Bandit: I'm used to it!
 * Vash: Well, I'll feel sorry for your wife and kids, you'll make 'em cry...
 * Bandit: I ain't got no kids and most women find me pretty offensive so I'm single!
 * Vash: Sound like a pretty lonely life.
 * Bandit: I'm telling you... (turns around) ... you have to die! It would sure make us all very happy if you do!
 * Vash: (smiles) Sorry, I don't do requests!

 * Bandit Leader: Our fate is being partners. The only possible way he can be happy is when I'm happy!
 * Vash: (sarcastic) That's just beautiful!

Truth of Mistake [1.2]

 * Vash: And I'm known for my bullets never missing their mark. Especially if it's the heart of a beautiful lady. BANG! ~Vash
 * Ooo scaaary. Later!
 * Vash: Thanks a lot, dream wrecker
 * Vash: *snort* SCARRRRYYYYYYYY!
 * Vash: Ahh, I was so sure it would work out this time. She was such a cutie, but I guess there's no way it could have worked; I don't want to get arrested, and this one will probably be blamed on me too... Ahh.

Peace Maker [1.3]

 * Vash: (Slurred) Nightpatrol? Wow thats really great aren't these girls wonderful?

Frank: Here's to the beautiful women! Together: CHEERIO!
 * Vash: Look do you see that little girl, her mother promised to buy her something with her money that used to be in that bank.
 * Frank: you know her?
 * Vash: Nah I just made it up.
 * '''Frank: Whatdya plan to do with that gun?

 * Vash: I intend to use it create equality and peace throughout the world!

Love and Peace [1.4]

 * (pointing gun at paid thug) You know what friend? Did anybody ever tell you that you lack compassion?
 * Bandit: What's the matter? Just shoot the guy!!
 * Vash: (lowers gun) ...Rem...
 * Milly: I'm really glad that you didn't shoot him.

Vash: Yeah, me too.
 * This world is made of.... Love and Peace!!!!!!!!!!!

Hard Puncher [1.5]

 * Vash: I'm like a hunter of Peace, one who chases the elusive mayfly of love... or something like that

 * Vash: Mama, why does this keep happening to me? I haven't done anything wrong but I'm always in trouble and everybody's always picks on me, whado I do Mamaaaaa? [Notices he's been crying on boxers] AHH!!! (In the English dub, he says Why am I crying in French?!)

Lost July [1.6]

 * Vash:Stop there. I don't like sleeping with men, especially ugly ones. Would you please be good enough to go now?...Hey, he actually did what I asked him.

B.D.N. [1.7]

 * [Talking about Milly and Meryl's sense of perception that he's actually buying for two.]
 * Vash: Geez, those girls are pretty sharp. The big one [Milly] is exceptionally scary. My only salvation is she doesn't know how sharp she is.

And Between the Wasteland and Sky [1.8]

 * Vash: Ah, man! Why can't I just get a break?!  Death and poverty like me so much, they brought FRIENDS!  On yeah, and then the insurance girls!  It never ends! ...ow.

 * [While headbutting Kite to snap him out of being a crybaby]
 * Vash: WHAT (thud) ARE (thud) YOU (thud) GET- (thud) ING (thud) ALL (thud) SENTI- (thud) MENTAL (thud) ON (thud) ME (thud) FOR (thud) YOU (thud) LITTLE (thud) SQUIRT?! ...Feeling better now?

 * Vash: What a haul! Now we got some guns to play with!

 * Vash: Well, I guess it is kind of a stupid approach, isn't it? I know that...you're right, it's true. It is very sloppy of me. But you know what? I made a promise. If I put out even one flame of life, it would make her sad.

Murder Machine [1.9]

 * Vash: I am known as Valentinez Alkalinella Xifax Sicidabohertz Gombigobella Blue Stradivari Talentrent Pierre Andre Charton-Haymoss Ivanovicci Baldeus George Doitzel Kaiser (... the Third- English). :(Please - Japanese) Don't hesitate to call-
 * Milly: [Laughs.] What are you talking about, Mister Vash the Stampede?
 * Vash: I HATE IT WHEN YOU CALL ME BY MY FULL NAME!

 * Wolfwood: You're the outlaw!
 * Vash: What's that got to do with anything?!

 * Meryl: Why doesn't anything nice ever follow you!?
 * Vash: I know, it's a real drag, isn't it!?

 * Wolfwood: Well I'll be. I'm actually surprised that you can smile like that.
 * Vash: Huh? What do you mean?
 * Wolfwood: You had me kinda worried. I noticed you always smile and seem really friendly, but the way you smiled was so empty it hurt to watch you. You're hurting like crazy on the inside, yet you grin and bear it.

Quick Draw [1.10]

 * Vash: My name is Vash the Stampede. I have been a hunter of peace who chases the mayfly known as love for many, many moons now. There is no rest for me in my search for peace. I meditate diligently every morning. The subjects are life and love. I quit after 3 seconds.

 * [While exchanging gunshots at each other.]
 * Vash: So this is what you got me so plastered for yesterday!
 * Wolfwood: You really think I'd try something that cheap?!
 * Vash: Yeah, I do, after you went and signed me up without asking!
 * Wolfwood: You did the same to me!

 * Vash: Hey, don't kill them! [Dodges gunfire.]
 * Wolfwood: I'm amazed you can say that at a time like this!
 * Vash: Hey, whatever happened to thou shalt not kill?!

Escape from Pain [1.11]

 * Wolfwood: (Thinking to himself while losing at chess) Oh man! Now what am I supposed to do?  Should I butt this guy in the head and make a break for it?  [gasps]  No, no!  What am I thinking?  I can't do that!  I'm a man of God for God's sake!

 * Milly: Hey Mister Priest! What a peasant surprise!
 * Wolfwood: Ha! Pleasant.

 * Milly: Hey! That happened to be my can of pudding!  And you wasted it. [knocks out offenders with her stun gun] You should never get between people and their pudding.

 * Townswoman: (to Milly) Gee, young lady, you're enormous! Are you expecting sextuplets?
 * Milly: [giggles and turns to Wolfwood] Isn't it lovely today out, honey?
 * Wolfwood:[grimaces] Excruciatingly pleasant, honey.
 * Moore: (hiding beneath Milly's duster) I am really sorry about all this.
 * Wolfwood: It's all right. Just stay out of sight.
 * [thugs scuffle by, looking for Moore]
 * Wolfwood: (thinking) How did this happen? No matter what I do, I always seem to get into trouble with this girl. [Milly plucks the unlit cigarette from his lips] Hey!
 * Milly: Secondhand smoke is bad for the baby, darling.
 * Wolfwood: [forcing laughter] Oh, yeah. Gee.  Sorry about that, honey

 * [Milly and Wolfwood walk away from tent, Milly carrying pudding]
 * Milly: Thank you for buying all of these for me Mr Wolfwood!
 * Wolfwood: I should be thanking you. You saved my bacon, Chessmaster.
 * Milly: I guess I'm good at chess. My big brother used to make me play chess with him all the time.
 * Wolfwood: A big brother, huh? Hey, that must be nice. Any other siblings?
 * Milly: [Milly holds out her hands, dropping the bags of pudding] No, but there's 10 brothers and sisters!
 * Wolfwood: You're the youngest aren't you?
 * Milly: Yeah. Wow! How did you know that!?
 * Wolfwood: Sometimes the answers just crash down from heaven.

Diablo [1.12]

 * The sky is unbelievably blue... There I go again. Guess it's kinda stupid, huh? Still keep thinking how I'd like to show it to you, even though that's no longer possible. I just can't help myself...
 * The Deadly Dodgeball Head! A simple technique to hold the ball in place with intense suction! Try this at home, kids!
 * They're dead. People are dead. You killed them all! You killed all the people! Die with them!
 * I was dreaming, Rem. Everything... Everything was so horribly dry, even peoples' hearts. From far away, as I watched the people who lived there, I always found myself wondering how and why could they possibly keep on living? What motivation did they have that would get them up every day, no matter what, for the rest of their lives?
 * This is all I can do. If I... If I shoot him now, you really would die. It would be wrong to shoot him, right?

Vash the Stampede [1.13]

 * I'm not that trusting. I kept my finger on the trigger the whole time.

 * Meryl: (upon seeing Vash's scars for the first time) So those scars... are the price you paid for dealing with your opponents without killing them?
 * Vash: It's not exactly... something I don't like girls to see. I think many of them would run away.
 * Meryl: wouldn't run away... What I mean is, they wouldn't run away.

Little Arcadia [1.14]

 * (After helping Meryl from afar against the Nebraska family)That makes us even now for your help on the sandsteamer. *Frame shrinks* Hey! Is that all the screen time I get? *Frame disappears*

Demons Eye [1.15]

 * You killed them. Even though they did terrible things, the decision of who should and who should not live was never and never will be yours to make!
 * Not to mention, during this conversation, I could have groped you at least five times... Ok, so let's say maybe four times.
 * What kind of freak are you, lady?
 * Instead of spending time cleaning up people, you should be cleaning your house for the man you love. Like me for example. I am kidding, you know...
 * It's your job or your life.
 * I can't explain now. If I did, you would be put in danger. *Perks up 200%* So it's been a lot of fun, but... Well... I guess that's all!!
 * Legato, this time it's my turn to hunt you. I'll find you, whatever it takes.

Fifth Moon [1.16]

 * AW MAN, I ACTUALLY HAVE TO FIGHT THIS GUY!! How can I possibly win such a battle or even have a chance to survive a fight with a guy who smiles with those evil eyes?! The answer is I can't, I'm gonna be slaughtered, that's all. It's not even funny. I should just back out! That's what I should do alright! Yeah, yeah! For once I'm right! Yeah, yeah!
 * My name is... VASH THE STAMPEDE!! Ladies and gentlemen, forgive the lack of warning, but I'm afraid it's time for my daily massacre!  And if you don't believe I'm the real thing then take a long look at me and start freakin' out!  Observe the red coat, lovely golden locks, and if you're still having doubts...check out my one-hundred percent accurate gunmanship!
 * Are you telling me I have only two choices? To die or to let die?!
 * I haven't seen anything there at all... Except my own fear.
 * Not... the light!

Rem Saverem [1.17]

 * You know, you have me. I won't leave you alone. I promise I won't. Because I really love you, Rem!
 * I didn't want to kill the spider. I wanted to save them both!
 * Don't worry, Rem. I will... Take care of him.

Goodbye For Now [1.18]

 * It's not your right to decide whether they live or die. They deserve a chance!
 * I have fragmented visions. But more than anything, there's an ache in my heart that tells me I did it.
 * Whenever I do anything, people die.
 * Doesn't seem to matter how far I travel, my destiny is always followed by blood and gunsmoke. The result is always the same every time, mountains of death and debris.
 * 'Thou shalt not kill,' remember?! What kind of church man are you anyway??
 * Lina: I wanted to keep you safe, but it turned out the other way around. I was too weak.
 * Vash: Don't be stupid.
 * Lina: Thank you...I'm sorry.
 * Vash: Those are both my lines.

Hang Fire [1.19]

 * Wolfwood: Are you dissing my beautiful Angelina 2 Vash?!
 * Vash: Actually I'm dissing you, not your stupid broken motorcycle!!
 * Wolfwood: Come again needle noggin'?
 * Vash: Hey who you callin' needle noggin'?
 * Wolfwood: I'd say it's pretty damn obvious!

 * [singing] Total slaughter. Total slaughter. I won't leave a single man alive. La di da de die, Genocide. La di da de dud, An ocean of blood. Let's begin the killing time.

Alternative [1.22]

 * We're searching for a place...where we can live our lives in peaceful days. No wars, and no stealing; a place that isn't run by fear; a place where people can live, and actually trust other human beings.

Paradise [1.23]

 * Wolfwood: I picked up my first gun at the age of seven. And I shot. I remember how strangely easy it was to pull the trigger. Ha. I actually laughed. Because that one shot was all that was needed to silence that sickening piece of garbage who had the nerve to call himself my guardian. Ha. It was that simple. And so I was free. Yes, tomorrow would be different. Hm. Tomorrow. As much as I wanted to believe, it only went from bad to worse. A vicious cycle... I didn't want other kids to grow up like me, so I started my own orphanage. It was gratifying work, I was actually doing something for the good of others. It was my place of peace and happiness... yet sometimes, I still think to myself "there's no place worse than this planet. It's horrible here."

 * Chapel the Evergeen: Life is an incessant series of problems. All difficult, with brutally limited choices, and a time limit.

 * Vash: I failed. I failed to save someone again.
 * Wolfwood: Man is born a mortal being, and we all make mistakes. It's part of the game. Just be more careful the next time.
 * Vash: It's hard for me to accept making mistakes like this.
 * Wolfwood: Then you can choose to suffer. That's also a part of the experience of mortal life.
 * Vash: Oh yeah. Mortal.

Sin [1.24]

 * Legato: We should have died a very long time ago you and I. The instant we fell upon this sandy land without pain and without sorrow. Now the schedule's been merely set back. The end is near. It is time to embrace it.. That is why I must.. I must end it, end it now. This is the climax Vash the stamp- [gets cut off by Vash shooting him, before getting a gun pointed to his head] So do you hate me? I'm not surprised, if you do I wouldn't blame you. So many sad things happen to you, whether they are friend or enemy the people you meet die. Its enough to sap one's tears.
 * Vash: Shut up!
 * Legato: You know this is not finished yet. Did you really expect the end to come so easily? Don't you understand you're not human? It is time to realize exactly who you are!
 * Vash: Oh no.. Please it can't be!
 * Legato: There is power in that light. Power that you have always possessed. Even more this represents what you are.
 * Vash: I..I can't.. Not again... NOT AGAIN!!!! [deactivates the Angel Arm]
 * Legato: Haven't you given up yet Vash? Its really quite annoying.
 * [towns people shoot at Vash]
 * Vash: ... Bastard..
 * Legato: You're out of options. Fight back or you'll die. Why don't you go ahead? I would welcome this to be my time. After all, there's no reason for such an egocentric, incomplete life like mine to be allowed to continue anyway. Give me the gift of nothingness. Give me death. My master is waiting for you. He's looking forward to your visit. I was compelled to attach this arm to myself, I had to because you refused to be by his side. Kill me.
 * Vash: I-I can't..
 * Legato: Go ahead
 * Vash: I can't!
 * Meryl: [watches Milly get thrown down to the ground] Milly!
 * Vash: Stop them! No more! I said stop it now!
 * Legato: Then shoot me! Its alright kill me.. Its simple all you need to do is pull the trigger. Once you have killed me this will all be over. Come on time to choose. You have free will.
 * Vash: Stop it.. don't make me shoot.
 * Legato: You're faith in humanity is hopelessly obstinate... to actually believe the prattlings of a woman who speaks in idealistic terms that are worthless. I guess that kind of thinking is reasonable for someone who has lived for more than a century. But that.. that way of life is pathetic, even comical. Rem Saverem, hmph, a waste of existence who only spoke in aggravating logic. A worthless human being, just like me.. but unlike you.
 * Vash: THAT'S ENOUGH!
 * Wolfwood: Luck and persistence won't work forever.
 * Rem: As we journey through our lives we must always search for ways to make everyone happy.
 * Wolfwood: Don't force your way of life upon others..
 * Rem: No one has the right to take the life of another..
 * Wolfwood: Don't tell me what your dreams are in a world like this!
 * Rem: If you keep your vision clear you always find the future.

Live Through [1.25]

 * Vash: What have I... what have I be... come...? Wolfwood, what am I supposed to do when I see him? I actually killed a man with my own hand... what could I possibly say to him?  I'm no different... (Buries face in hands) Rem... I'm sorry, Rem... I did a terrible thing... Now I'm a sinner too...

 * Vash: Even if you make a mistake, if you realize it was a mistake, you can always fix it.

Under the Sky So Blue [1.26]

 * Knives: Make Vash suffer. Make him suffer for all eternity.

 * '''Knives: The humans treat you well? Did you have fun, dear brother?
 * Vash: Yeah, I did! Best thing that ever happened to me.

 * Knives (telepathically): [both using telepathy] I didn't create these weapons to be wasted like that!
 * Vash (telepathically): Using them this way is the only thing that gives them any meaning at all.
 * Knives: It's hopeless, isn't it?
 * Vash: I've made my decision.
 * Knives:: You're not a human being. You're a plant.
 * Vash I know that.
 * Knives: You're a superior being.
 * Vash: I disagree.

 * Vash: That day, that time, 130 years ago we were born, weren't we? There was nothing but peaceful days, and Rem was always close behind us. But our disagreeing thoughts changed each of our ways of life, didn't they? I don't regret it. I will vow once again not to kill, not to betray, but to find happiness, to talk about my dreams, because the ticket to the future is always blank.

About

 * I've always really liked industrial design, and whenever I'm out and about I find my eyes being constantly drawn to what I'd like to consider ‘good shapes'. Like any other artist, though, I draw a lot of my inspiration from movies, toys or artists that I admire. And about the intricacy of my character designs – well, I am sure readers have noticed, but there are subtle inconsistencies in design and art in each panel. These intricacies come back to haunt me every time I notice a difference in one panel to the next, and I really wonder sometimes why I decided to make Vash and Legato so detailed (laughs).
 * Yasuhiro-Nightow "GUNNING FOR ANSWERS! AN INTERVIEW WITH TRIGUN CREATOR YASUHIRO NIGHTOW", Darkhorse.com, 5/26/06

 * OK, OK, I remember now: In English, people use the term ‘dynamic' to politely describe something that is ‘incomprehensible', right (laughs)? To be completely honest with you, the parts of Trigun Maximum that I pay special attention to and try to make easy to understand are the action scenes within the story. I have all these images running through my head of characters moving this way and that, and contorting into all sort sorts of amazing action poses, but thinking about it and putting it to paper are always two different things. If I try to get the ideas from my head to the paper without compromising the original poses or action that I had, it often comes out complicated, affecting the ‘follow-ability' of the story, as well. Also, regarding the story, I have continually been trying to build it in a logical and intuitive manner, so maybe that's why it seems like the story has become easier to follow. One thing I'd like to note: I think that in creating manga, both hemispheres of the brain are used, and the differences between the two show themselves as you create.
 * Yasuhiro-Nightow "GUNNING FOR ANSWERS! AN INTERVIEW WITH TRIGUN CREATOR YASUHIRO NIGHTOW", Darkhorse.com, 5/26/06

title: Trigun


text:
Antitrust (film)

Antitrust is a 2001 thriller film about a promising computer programmer who stumbles across the terrible truth of his employer's company.
 * Directed by Peter Howitt. Written by Howard Franklin.

Truth can be dangerous…Trust can be deadly (taglines)

Milo Hoffman

 * This isn't a game! In the real world, when you kill people they die—for real!
 * Human knowledge belongs to the world.
 * Milo is an energy drink.
 * Milo helps each of us to beat energy gap.
 * Your adapters can't overcome the bandwidth limitations of wireless handhelds. Data takes too long to download so the image goes fuzzy.

Gary Winston

 * This business is binary, you're a one or a zero. Alive or dead.
 * The answer's not in the box, it's in the band.
 * Are we making CHEMICAL WEAPONS? KIDDIE PORN? Are we STRIP-MINING? NO! Why are they after me?
 * Gary is the name of spongebob's snail.

Larry Banks

 * He said, uh, "The answer's not in the box, it's in the band."

Dialogue

 * Milo Hoffman: Doesn't Bill Gates have something like that?
 * Gary Winston: Bill who?

 * Congressman: Mr. Winston, Can you reasonably deny that you have a monopoly in this area?
 * Gary Winston: Well, the only monopoly... we have at N.U.R.V, is monopoly on excellence.

Taglines

 * Truth can be dangerous…Trust can be deadly
 * Who's watching you?
 * Trust is not an option.

Cast

 * Ryan Phillippe — Milo Hoffman
 * Rachael Leigh Cook — Lisa Calighan
 * Claire Forlani — Alice Poulson
 * Tim Robbins — Gary Winston
 * Douglas McFerran — Bob Shrot
 * Richard Roundtree — Lyle Barton
 * Yee Jee Tso — Teddy Chin

title: Antitrust (film)


text:
User:Biggins

My User pages: Meta | Wikipedia | Wikisource | Wiktionary | Wikiquote | Wikibooks

title: User:Biggins


text:
Walter Bagehot

Walter Bagehot (February 3 1826 – March 24 1877) was an English businessman, essayist and journalist who wrote about literature, government and economics.

Shakespeare—the Man (1853)

 * The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people who can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.

 * Behind every man's external life, which he leads in company, there is another which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart. We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us.

 * The worst families are those in which the members never really speak their minds to one another; they maintain an atmosphere of unreality, and everyone always lives in an atmosphere of suppressed ill-feeling.

Edward Gibbon (1856)

 * Whatever may be the defects of Gibbon's history, none can deny him a proud precision and a style in marching order.
 * (quote p. 28)

 * ... Practical people have little idea of the practical ability required to write a large book, and especially a large history. Long before you get to the pen, there is an immensity of pure business: heaps of material are strewn every where; but they lie in disorder, unread, uncatalogued, unknown. It seems a dreary waste of life to be analysing, indexing, extracting works and passages, in which one per cent of the contents are interesting, and not half of that per centage will ultimately appear in the flowing narrative.
 * (quote p. 29)

 * ... The fame of Gibbon is highest among writers; those especially who have studied for years particular periods included in his theme (and how many those are; for in the East and West he has set his mark on all that is great for ten centuries!) acutely feel and admiringly observe how difficult it would be to say so much, and leave so little untouched ; to compress so many telling points; to present in so few words so apt and embracing a narrative of the whole.
 * (quote p. 31)

John Milton (1859)

 * ... For ancient heroes the exhaustive method is possible: all that can be known of them is contained in a few short passages of Greek and Latin, and it is quite possible to say whatever can be said about every one of these; the result would not be unreasonably bulky, though it might be dull. But in the case of men who have lived in the thick of the crowded modern world, no such course is admissible; overmuch may be said, and we must choose what we will say. Biographers, however, are rarely bold enough to adopt the selective method consistently. They have, we suspect, the fear of the critics before their eyes.
 * (quote from p. 151)

 * ... Nothing is so simple as the subject matter of his works. The two greatest of his creations, the character of Satan and the character of Eve, are two of the simplest—the latter probably the very simplest—in the whole field of literature. On this side, Milton's art is classical. On the other hand, in no writer is the imagery more profuse, the illustrations more various, the dress altogether more splendid; and in this respect the style of his art seems romantic and modern. In real truth, however, it is only ancient art in a modern disguise: the dress is a mere dress, and can be stripped off when we will.—we all of us do perhaps in memory strip it off for ourselves.
 * (quote from p. 174)

 * ... Satan is made interesting. This has been the charge of a thousand orthodox and even heterodox writers against Milton.
 * (quote from p. 179)

The English Constitution (1867)

 * A political country is like an American forest; you have only to cut down the old trees, and immediately new trees come up to replace them.
 * Introduction, p. xii

 * But the mass of the old electors did not analyse very much: they liked to have one of their "betters" to represent them; if he was rich they respected him much; and if he was a lord, they liked him the better. The issue put before these electors was, which of two rich people will you choose? And each of those rich people was put forward by great parties whose notions were the notions of the rich—whose plans were their plans. The electors only selected one or two wealthy men to carry out the schemes of one or two wealthy associations.
 * Introduction, p. xiii
 * The "old electors" Bagehot refers to were the £10 borough householders enfranchised by the Reform Act of 1832.

 * In excited states of the public mind they have scarcely a discretion at all; the tendency of the public perturbation determines what shall and what shall not be dealt with. But, upon the other hand, in quiet times statesmen have great power; when there is no fire lighted, they can settle what fire shall be lit. And as the new suffrage is happily to be tried in a quiet time, the responsibility of our statesmen is great because their power is great too.
 * Introduction, p. xxi

 * A cabinet is a combining committee,—a hyphen which joins, a buckle which fastens, the legislative part of the state to the executive part of the state. In its origin it belongs to the one, in its functions it belongs to the other.
 * No. I, "The Cabinet", p. 14

 * Cabinet governments educate the nation; the presidential does not educate it, and may corrupt it.
 * No. I, "The Cabinet", p. 19

 * Under a cabinet constitution at a sudden emergency this people can choose a ruler for the occasion. It is quite possible and even likely that he would not be ruler before the occasion. The great qualities, the imperious will, the rapid energy, the eager nature fit for a great crisis are not required—are impediments—in common times. A Lord Liverpool is better in everyday politics than a Chatham—a Louis Philippe far better than a Napoleon. By the structure of the world we want, at the sudden occurrence of a grave tempest, to change the helmsman—to replace the pilot of the calm by the pilot of the storm.
 * No. I, "The Cabinet", p. 29

 * But the Queen has no such veto; She must sign her own death-warrant if the two Houses unanimously send it up to her.
 * No. III, "The Monarchy (continued)", p. 58

 * The Sovereign has, under a constitutional monarchy such as ours, three rights—the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn.
 * No. III, "The Monarchy (continued)", p. 75

 * Nations touch at their summits.
 * No. IV, The House of Lords, p. 120

 * Whatever expenditure is sanctioned—even when it is sanctioned against the ministry's wish—the ministry must find the money. Accordingly, they have the strongest motive to oppose extra outlay.... The ministry is (so to speak) the breadwinner of the political family, and has to meet the cost of philanthropy and glory; just as the head of a family has to pay for the charities of his wife and the toilette of his daughters.
 * No. V, The House of Commons, p. 137

 * The caucus is a sort of representative meeting which sits voting and voting till they have cut out all the known men against whom much is to be said, and agreed on some unknown man against whom there is nothing known, and therefore nothing to be alleged.
 * No. V, The House of Commons, p. 155
 * Bagehot was commenting on the method of selecting Presidential candidates in the United States.

 * Free government is self-government. A government of the people by the people. The best government of this sort is that which the people think best.
 * No. V, The House of Commons, p. 159
 * Cf the Gettysburg Address.

 * The greatest enjoyment possible to man was that which this philosophy promises its votaries—the pleasure of being always right, and always reasoning—without ever being bound to look at anything.
 * No. VII, Its Supposed Checks and Balances, p. 250
 * From SHAKESPEARE: THE INDIVIDUAL, quote attributed to Bagehot says: "The greatest pleasure in life is doing what other people say you cannot do."

Physics and Politics (1869)

 * The great difficulty which history records is not that of the first step, but that of the second step. What is most evident is not the difficulty of getting a fixed law, but getting out of a fixed law; not of cementing (as upon a former occasion I phrased it) a cake of custom, but of breaking the cake of custom; not of making the first preservative habit, but of breaking through it, and reaching something better.
 * Ch. 2, The Use of Conflict

 * "Maternity," it has been said, "is a matter of fact, paternity is a matter of opinion."
 * Ch. 4, Nation Making

 * One of the greatest pains to human nature is the pain of a new idea.
 * Ch. 5, The Age of Discussion

 * All the inducements of early society tend to foster immediate action; all its penalties fall on the man who pauses; the traditional wisdom of those times was never weary of inculcating that "delays are dangerous," and that the sluggish man — the man "who roasteth not that which he took in hunting" — will not prosper on the earth, and indeed will very soon perish out of it. And in consequence an inability to stay quiet, an irritable desire to act directly, is one of the most conspicuous failings of mankind.
 * Ch. 5

 * I wish the art of benefiting men had kept pace with the art of destroying them; for though war has become slow, philanthropy has remained hasty. The most melancholy of human reflections, perhaps, is that, on the whole, it is a question whether the, benevolence of mankind does most good or harm. Great good, no doubt, philanthropy does, but then it also does great evil. It augments so much vice, it multiplies so much suffering, it brings to life such great populations to suffer and to be vicious, that it is open to argument whether it be or be not an evil to the world, and this is entirely because excellent people fancy that they can do much by rapid action — that they will most benefit the world when they most relieve their own feelings; that as soon as an evil is seen "something" ought to be done to stay and prevent it.
 * Ch. 5

Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market (1873)

 * Most men of business think "Anyhow this system will probably last my time. It has gone on a long time, and is likely to go on still."
 * Ch. I, Introductory

 * Credit means that a certain confidence is given, and a certain trust reposed. Is that trust justified? and is that confidence wise? These are the cardinal questions. To put it more simply credit is a set of promises to pay; will those promises be kept?
 * Ch. II, A General View of Lombard Street

 * The less money lying idle the greater is the dividend.
 * Ch. II, A General View of Lombard Street

 * The best way for the bank or banks who have the custody of the bank reserve to deal with a drain arising from internal discredit, is to lend freely. The first instinct of everyone is the contrary. There being a large demand on a fund which you want to preserve, the most obvious way to preserve it is to hoard it—to get in as much as you can, and to let nothing go out which you can help. But every banker knows that this is not the way to diminish discredit. This discredit means, 'an opinion that you have not got any money,' and to dissipate that opinion, you must, if possible, show that you have money: you must employ it for the public benefit in order that the public may know that you have it.
 * Ch. II, A General View of Lombard Street

 * The owners of savings not finding, in adequate quantities, their usual kind of investments, rush into anything that promises speciously, and when they find that these specious investments can be disposed of at a high profit, they rush into them more and more. The first taste is for high interest, but that taste soon becomes secondary. There is a second appetite for large gains to be made by selling the principal which is to yield the interest. So long as such sales can be effected the mania continues; when it ceases to be possible to effect them, ruin begins.
 * Ch. VI, Why Lombard Street Is Often Very Dull, and Sometimes Extremely Excited

 * The name ‘London Banker’ had especially a charmed value. He was supposed to represent, and often did represent, a certain union of pecuniary sagacity and educated refinement which was scarcely to be found in any other part of society.
 * Ch. X, The Private Banks

Literary Studies (1879)

 * To a great experience one thing is essential — an experiencing nature.
 * Shakespeare

 * The purse strings tie us to our kind.

 * The reason why so few good books are written is, that so few people that can write know anything. In general an author has always lived in a room, has read books, has cultivated science, is acquainted with the style and sentiments of the best authors, but he is out of the way of employing his own eyes and ears. He has nothing to hear and nothing to see. His life is a vacuum.
 * Shakespeare

 * A highly developed moral nature joined to an undeveloped intellectual nature, an undeveloped artistic nature, and a very limited religious nature, is of necessity repulsive. It represents a bit of human nature — a good bit, of course, but a bit only — in disproportionate, unnatural and revolting prominence.
 * Wordsworth, Tennyson and Browning

 * The Ethiop gods have Ethiop lips, Bronze cheeks, and woolly hair; The Grecian gods are like the Greeks, As keen-eyed, cold and fair.
 * Literary Studies, II. 410. "Ignorance of Man".

Biographical Studies (1907)

 * A constitutional statesman is in general a man of common opinions and uncommon abilities.
 * Sir Robert Peel

 * You may talk of the tyranny of Nero and Tiberius; but the real tyranny is the tyranny of your next-door neighbor... Public opinion is a permeating influence, and it exacts obedience to itself; it requires us to think other men's thoughts, to speak other men's words, to follow other men's habits.
 * Sir Robert Peel

 * It is good to be without vices, but it is not good to be without temptations.
 * Sir George Cornewall Lewis

 * [Of Guizot] A Puritan born in France by mistake.
 * Guizot

Walter Scott : The Critical Heritage (1970)

 * In truth, poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.
 * Chapter: Walter Bagehot on Scott National Review 1858, p404

The Life of Walter Bagehot (Biography by Emily Barrington, 1914)

 * Every trouble in life is a joke compared to madness.
 * This biography relates that Bagehot's "mother was at times insane", and that this fact was "the iron that entered into [Bagehot's] soul."

Misattributed

 * Honor sinks where commerce long prevails.
 * Where wealth and freedom reign, contentment fails, And honor sinks, where commerce long prevails. — Oliver Goldsmith, "The Traveller; or, a Prospect of Society'" (1764). This quote can be found on the Oliver Goldsmith page.

title: Walter Bagehot


text:
John Cheever

John Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) was an American novelist and short story writer.

Quotes

 * The novel remains for me one of the few forms where we can record man’s complexity and the strength and decency of his longings. Where we can describe, step by step, minute by minute, our not altogether unpleasant struggle to put ourselves into a viable and devout relationship to our beloved and mistaken world.
 * Accepting National Book Award, The Writer (September 1958).

 * He was a tall man with an astonishing and somehow elegant curvature of the spine, formed by an enlarged lower abdomen, which he carried in a stately and contented way, as if it contained money and securities.
 * Description of a Yankee rector, in The Wapshot Scandal (1964).

 * Homesickness is nothing … Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time.
 * “The Bella Lingua” in The Brigadier and the Golf Widow (1964).

 * Art is the triumph over chaos.
 * The Stories of John Cheever Knopf (1978).

 * I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.
 * Christian Science Monitor (October 24, 1979).

 * The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one’s life and discover one’s usefulness.
 * Accepting Edward MacDowell Medal (September 8, 1979).

 * A collection of short stories is generally thought to be a horrendous clinker; an enforced courtesy for the elderly writer who wants to display the trophies of his youth, along with his trout flies.
 * Quoted in James Charlton's The Writer’s Quotation Book (1980).

 * For me, a page of good prose is where one hears the rain [and] the noise of battle. [It] has the power to give grief or universality that lends it a youthful beauty.
 * Accepting National Medal for Literature (April 27, 1982).

 * I sometimes go back to walk through the ghostly remains of Sutton Place where the rude, new buildings stand squarely in one another’s river views.
 * “Moving Out” Esquire (June 1983).

 * When I remember my family, I always remember their backs. They were always indignantly leaving places. That’s the way I remember them, heading for an exit.
 * Quoted by Susan Cheever, Home before Dark Houghton Mifflin (1984).

 * What I am going to write is the last of what I have to say. I will say that literature is the only consciousness we possess and that its role as consciousness must inform us of our ability to comprehend the hideous danger of nuclear power.
 * Entry in his journal before his last public appearance, the ceremony at which he received the National Medal for Literature, quoted by Susan Cheever, Home before Dark Houghton Mifflin (1984).

 * Literature has been the salvation of the damned, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and can perhaps in this case save the world.
 * Entry in his journal before his last public appearance, the ceremony at which he received the National Medal for Literature, quoted by Susan Cheever, Home before Dark Houghton Mifflin (1984).

 * All literary men are Red Sox fans—to be a Yankee fan in a literate society is to endanger your life.
 * Newsweek (October 20, 1986).

 * My veins are filled, once a week with a Neapolitan carpet cleaner distilled from the Adriatic and I am as bald as an egg. However I still get around and am mean to cats.
 * Letter to Philip Roth (May 10, 1982); The Letters of John Cheever (1989).

The Wapshot Chronicle (1957)

 * He had that spooky bass voice meant to announce that he had entered the kingdom of manhood, but Rosalie knew that he was still outside the gates.

 * ...your underwear is clean in case you should be hit by a taxicab and have to be undressed by strangers.

 * ..for the dead fish was striped like a cat and the sky was striped like the fish and the conch was whorled like an ear and the beach was ribbed like a dog's mouth and the movables in the surf splintered and crashed like the walls of Jericho.

 * Admire the world. Relish the love of a gentle woman. Trust in the lord.

 * I'm wicked, as you say, and I'm rude and I'm boorish and I discovered, after marrying Mr Scaddon, that I could be all these things and worse and that there would still be plenty of people to lick my boots.

The Journals of John Cheever (1991)
Edited by Robert Gottlieb

 * When the beginnings of self-destruction enter the heart it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.
 * The Late Forties and the Fifties, 1952 entry.

 * Strange and predatory and truly dangerous, car thieves and muggers—they seem to jeopardize all our cherished concepts, even our self-esteem, our property rights, our powers of love, our laws and pleasures. The only relationship we seem to have with them is scorn or bewilderment, but they belong somewhere on the dark prairies of a country that is in the throes of self-discovery.
 * The Late Forties and the Fifties, 1955 entry.

 * I do not understand the capricious lewdness of the sleeping mind.
 * The Late Forties and the Fifties, 1955 entry.

 * Wisdom we know is the knowledge of good and evil not the strength to choose between the two.
 * The Late Forties and the Fifties, 1956 entry.

 * We praise Him, we bless Him, we adore Him, we glorify Him, and we wonder who is that baritone across the aisle and that pretty woman on our right who smells of apple blossoms. Our bowels stir and our cod itches and we amend our prayers for the spiritual life with the hope that it will not be too spiritual.
 * The Late Forties and the Fifties, 1956 entry.

 * One would never have guessed that the world had such a capacity for genuine grief. The most we can do is exploit our memories of his excellence.
 * On the assassination of John F. Kennedy
 * The Sixties, 1963 entry.

 * The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony.
 * The Sixties, 1963 entry.

 * The organizations of men, like men themselves, seem subject to deafness, nearsightedness, lameness, and involuntary cruelty. We seem tragically unable to help one another, to understand one another.
 * The Sixties, 1963 entry.

 * People named John and Mary never divorce. For better or for worse, in madness and in saneness, they seem bound together for eternity by their rudimentary nomenclature. They may loathe and despise one another, quarrel, weep, and commit mayhem, but they are not free to divorce. Tom, Dick, and Harry can go to Reno on a whim, but nothing short of death can separate John and Mary.
 * The Sixties, 1966 entry.

 * At my back I hear the word—”homosexual”—and it seems to split my world in two.... It is ignorance, our ignorance of one another, that creates this terrifying erotic chaos. Information, a crumb of information, seems to light the world.
 * The Sixties, 1966 entry.

 * A lonely man is a lonesome thing, a stone, a bone, a stick, a receptacle for Gilbey’s gin, a stooped figure sitting at the edge of a hotel bed, heaving copious sighs like the autumn wind.
 * The Sixties, 1966 entry.

About John Cheever

 * His religious requirements—that the service come from Cranmer’s rites in the old prayer book, that it take 33 minutes or less, that the church be within 10 minutes’ driving distance and that the altar be sufficiently simple so that it wouldn’t remind him of a gift shop—limited his choice of parishes.
 * Susan Cheever, Home before Dark Houghton Mifflin (1984).

 * I'm very fond of Cheever.
 * Shulamith Hareven 1985 interview in We Are All Close: Conversations with Israeli Writers by Haim Chertok (1989)

 * I'm not like some writers who are very specific about their audience. Cheever talks about looking into the woods and he sees somebody walking there and he's writing for that person. My sense of an audience is very wide-maybe people in the distant future-in a sense, the universe.
 * 1989 interview in Conversations with Maxine Hong Kingston (1998)

title: John Cheever


text:
William Golding

Sir William Golding (19 September 1911 – 19 June 1993) was an English novelist, playwright, and poet most famous for his novel Lord of the Flies. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1983.

Quotes

 * The Herr Doctor does not know about peoples.
 * Free Fall (1959), last line

 * The man who tells the tale if he has a tale worth telling will know exactly what he is about and this business of the artist as a sort of starry-eyed inspired creature, dancing along, with his feet two or three feet above the surface of the earth, not really knowing what sort of prints he's leaving behind him, is nothing like the truth.
 * Interview with Frank Kermode, BBC Third Programme (28 April 1959)

 * Basically I'm an optimist. Intellectually I can see man's balance is about fifty-fifty, and his chances of blowing himself up are about one to one. I can't see this any way but intellectually. I'm just emotionally unable to believe that he will do this. This means that I am by nature an optimist and by intellectual conviction a pessimist, I suppose.
 * Interview with James Keating, Purdue University (7 May 1961), printed in Lord of the Flies: The Casebook Edition (1964)

 * The theme is an attempt to trace the defects of society back to the defects of human nature. The moral is that the shape of a society must depend on the ethical nature of the individual and not on any political system however apparently logical or respectable. The whole book is symbolic in nature except the rescue in the end where adult life appears, dignified and capable, but in reality enmeshed in the same evil as the symbolic life of the children on the island. The officer, having interrupted a man-hunt, prepares to take the children off the island in a cruiser which will presently be hunting its enemy in the same implacable way. And who will rescue the adult and his cruiser?
 * Responses in a publicity questionnaire on Lord of the Flies from the American publishers, as quoted in Who Rules?: Introduction to the Study of Politics (1971) by Dick W. Simpson, p. 16

 * One day I was sitting one side of the fireplace, and my wife was sitting on the other, and I suddenly said to her, “Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave, being boys and not little saints as they usually are in children’s books.” And she said, “That’s a first-class idea! You write it!” So I went ahead and wrote it.
 * Introduction to his reading of Lord of the Flies in the unabridged audio version (1980)

 * I think women are foolish to pretend they are equal to men — they are far superior and always have been.
 * Introduction to his reading of Lord of the Flies in the unabridged audio version (1980)

 * Reason, when it is refined into logic, has something to offer but only in terms of itself and depends for its effect and use on the nature of the premise. That useful argument as to how many angels can stand on the point of a needle would turn into nothing without the concept of angels. I took a further step into my new world. I formulated what I had felt against a mass of reasonable evidence and saw that to explain the near infinite mysteries of life by scholastic Darwinism, by the doctrine of natural selection, was like looking at a sunset and saying "Someone has struck a match". As for Freud, the reductionism of his system made me remember the refrain out of Marianna in Moated Grande — "He cometh not, she said, she said I am aweary aweary, O God that I were dead!". This was my mind, not his, and I had a right to it.... We question free will, doubt it, dismiss it, experience it. We declare our own triviality on a small speck of dirt circling a small star at the rim of one countless galaxies and ignore the heroic insolence of the declaration. We have diminished the world of God and man in a universe ablaze with all the glories that contradict that diminution. Of man and God. We have come to it, have we not? I believe in God; and you may think to yourselves — here is a man who has left a procession and gone off by himself only to end with another gasfilled image he towns round with him at the end of the rope. You would be right of course. I suffer those varying levels or intensities of belief which are, it seems, the human condition. Despite the letters I still get from people who believe me to be still alive and who are deceived by the air of confident authority that seems to stand behind that first book, Lord of the Flies, nevertheless like everyone else I have had to rely on memories of moments, bet on what once seemed a certainty but may now be an outsider, remember in faith what I cannot recreate.
 * "Belief and Creativity" Address in Hamburg (11 April 1980); as quoted in Moving Target (2013), Faber & Faber ISBN 9780571265473

 * The writer probably knows what he meant when he wrote a book, but he should immediately forget what he meant when he's written it.
 * As quoted in Novelists in Interview (1985) edited by John Haffenden

 * I don’t like the word "allegorical", I don’t like the word "symbolic", the word I really like is "mythic" and people always think that means "full of lies" when what it really means is full of a truth that cannot be told in any other way but a story.
 * Interview in regard to his work Rites of Passage, quoted in The Dreams of William Golden, BBC Arena (2012)

 * It seems to me that we do live in two worlds. There is is this physical one, which is coherent, and there is a spiritual one, which to the average man, with his flashes of religious experience, if you like to call them that — that world is very often incoherent. This experience of having two worlds to live in all the time, or… not all the time, occasionally, is a vital one and is what living is like.
 * As quoted in "The Dreams of William Golding", BBC Arena (2012)

Lord of the Flies (1954)

"I don't think so." The fair boy said this solemnly; but then the delight of a realized ambition overcame him. In the middle of the scar he stood on his head and grinned at the reversed fat boy. "No grownups!"
 * "Aren't there any grownups at all?"
 * Ch. 1: The Sound of the Shell

Piggy shook his head. "I can't swim. I wasn't allowed. My asthma—" "Sucks to your ass-mar!" Piggy bore this with a kind of humble patience.
 * "Aren't you going to swim?"
 * Ch. 1: The Sound of the Shell

He beamed at Ralph. "That was what you meant, didn't you? That's why you got the conch out of the water." Ralph pushed back his fair hair. "How did your friend blow the conch?" "He kind of spat," said Piggy. "My auntie wouldn't let me blow on account of my asthma. He said you blew from down here." Piggy laid a hand on his jutting abdomen. "You try, Ralph. You'll call the others." Doubtfully, Ralph laid the small end of the shell against his mouth and blew. There came a rushing sound from its mouth but nothing more. Ralph wiped the salt water off his lips and tried again, but the shell remained silent. "He kind of spat." Ralph pursed his lips and squirted air into the shell, which emitted a low, farting noise. This amused both boys so much that Ralph went on squirting for some minutes, between bouts of laughter. "He blew from down here." Ralph grasped the idea and hit the shell with air from his diaphragm. Immediately the thing sounded. A deep, harsh note boomed under the palms, spread through the intricacies of the forest and echoed back from the pink granite of the mountain. Clouds of birds rose from the treetops, and something squealed and ran in the undergrowth.
 * "We can use this to call the others. Have a meeting. They’ll come when they hear us—"
 * Ch. 1: The Sound of the Shell

Murmur; and the grave nodding of heads. "He says the beastie came in the dark." "Then he couldn't see it!" Laughter and cheers. "Did you hear that? Says he saw the thing in the dark—" "He still says he saw the beastie. It came and went away again an' came back and wanted to eat him." "He was dreaming." Laughing, Ralph looked for confirmation round the ring of faces. The older boys agreed; but here and there among the little ones was the doubt that required more than rational assurance. "He must have had a nightmare. Stumbling about among all those creepers." More grave nodding. They knew about nightmares. "He says he saw the beastie, the snake-thing, and will it come back tonight?" "But there isn't a beastie!" "He says in the morning it turned into them things like ropes in the trees and hung in the branches. He says will it come back again tonight?" "But there isn't a beastie!" There was no laughter at all now and more grave watching. Ralph pushed both hands through his hair and looked at the little boy in mixed amusement and exasperation.
 * "You couldn't have a beastie, a snake-thing, on an island this size," Ralph explained kindly. "You only get them in big countries, like Africa, or India."
 * Ch. 2: Fire on the Mountain

"Shut up! Wait! Listen!" He went on in the silence, borne on in his triumph. "There’s another thing. We can help them to find us. If a ship comes near the island they may not notice us. So we must make smoke on top of the mountain. We must make a fire." "A fire! Make a fire!" At once half the boys were on their feet. Jack clamored among them, the conch forgotten. "Come on! Follow me!" The space under the palm trees was full of noise and movement. Ralph was on his feet too, shouting for quiet, but no one heard him. All at once the crowd swayed toward the island and was gone— following Jack. Even the tiny children went and did their best among the leaves and broken branches. Ralph was left, holding the conch, with no one but Piggy.
 * Ralph waved the conch.
 * Ch. 2: Fire on the Mountain

 * "How can you expect to be rescued if you don’t put first things first and act proper?"
 * Ch. 3: Huts on a Beach

"Kill the pig! Cut her throat! Spill the blood!" ''' Yet as the words became audible, the procession reached the steepest part of the mountain, and in a minute or two the chant had died away.
 * The chant was audible but at that distance still wordless. Behind Jack walked the twins, carrying a great stake on their shoulders. The gutted carcass of a pig swung from the stake, swinging heavily as the twins toiled over the uneven ground. '''The pig's head hung down with gaping neck and seemed to search for something on the ground. At last the words of the chant floated up to them, across the bowl of blackened wood and ashes.
 * Ch. 4: Painted Faces and Long Hair

 * His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.
 * Ch. 4: Painted Faces and Long Hair.

 * Jack stood up as he said this, the bloodied knife in his hand. The two boys faced each other. There was the brilliant world of hunting, tactics, fierce exhilaration, skill; and there was the world of longing and baffled common-sense.
 * Ch. 4: Painted Faces and Long Hair

"Who cares?" Ralph summoned his wits. "Because the rules are the only thing we've got!" But Jack was shouting against him. "Bollocks to the rules! We're strong — we hunt! If there's a beast, we'll hunt it down! We'll close in and beat and beat and beat — !"
 * "The rules!" shouted Ralph, "you're breaking the rules!"
 * Ch. 5: Beast from Water

"Me? Why me?" "I dunno. You got him over the fire; an' you're chief an' he isn't." "But he's Jack Merridew!" "I been in bed so much I done some thinking. I know about people. I know about me. And him. He can't hurt you: but if you're standing out of the way he'd hurt the next thing. And that's me." "Piggy's right, Ralph. There's you and Jack. Go on being chief."
 * "I'm scared of him," said Piggy, "and that's why I know him. If you're scared of someone you hate him but you can't stop thinking about him. You kid yourself he's alright really, an' then when you see him again; it's like asthma an' you can't breathe. I tell you what. He hates you too, Ralph —"
 * Ch. 5: Beast from Water

 * However Simon thought of the beast, there rose before his inward sight the picture of a human at once heroic and sick.
 * Ch. 6: Beast from Air.

"Or someone to pretend," said Jack. "You could get someone to dress up as a pig and then he could act — you know, pretend to knock me over and all that —" "You want a real pig," said Robert, still caressing his rump, "because you've got to kill him." "Use a littlun," said Jack, and everybody laughed.
 * "You want a pig," said Roger, "like in a real hunt."
 * Ch. 7: Shadows and Tall Trees

 * Jack was on top of the sow, stabbing downward with his knife. Roger found a lodgment for his point and began to push till he was leaning his whole weight. The spear moved forward inch by inch and the terrified squealing became a high-pitched scream. Then Jack found the throat and the hot blood spouted over his hands. The sow collapsed under them and they were heavy and fulfilled upon her. The butterflies still danced, preoccupied in the center of the clearing.
 * Ch. 8: Gift for the Darkness

"But we'll leave part of the kill for …" He knelt down again and was busy with his knife. The boys crowded round him. He spoke over his shoulder to Roger. "Sharpen a stick at both ends." Presently he stood up, holding the dripping sow's head in his hands. "Where's that stick?" "Here." "Ram one end in the earth. Oh — it's rock. Jam it in that crack. There." '''Jack held the head and jammed the soft throat down on the pointed end of the stick which pierced through into the mouth. He stood back and the head hung there, a little blood dribbling down the stick." Instinctively the boys drew back too; and the forest was very still. They listened, and the loudest noise was the buzzing of the flies over the spilled guts."'''
 * He paused and stood up, looking at the shadows under the trees. His voice was lower when he spoke again.
 * Ch. 8: Gift for the Darkness

"What are you doing out here all alone? Aren't you afraid of me?" Simon shook. '''"There isn't anyone to help you. Only me. And I'm the Beast." Simon's mouth labored, brought forth audible words. "Pig's head on a stick." "Fancy thinking the Beast was something you could hunt and kill! You knew, didn't you?" said the head. For a moment or two the forest and all the other dimly appreciated places echoed with the parody of laughter. "You knew, didn't you? I'm part of you? Close, close, close! I'm the reason why it’s no go? Why things are what they are?"'''
 * Simon's head was tilted slightly up. His eyes could not break away and the Lord of the Flies hung in space before him.
 * Ch. 8: Gift for the Darkness

 *  "Kill the beast! Cut his throat! Spill his blood! Do him in!"
 * Ch. 9: A View to a Death

The rock struck Piggy a glancing blow from chin to knee; the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist. Piggy, saying nothing, with no time for even a grunt, travelled through the air sideways from the rock, turning over as he went. The rock bounded twice and was lost in the forest. Piggy fell forty feet and landed on his back across that square, red rock in the sea. His head opened and stuff came out and turned red. Piggy's arms and legs twitched a bit, like a pig's after it has been killed. Then the sea breathed again in a long, slow sigh, the water boiled white and pink over the rock; and when it went, sucking back again, the body of Piggy was gone. This time the silence was complete. Ralph's lips formed a word but no sound came. Suddenly Jack bounded out from the tribe and began screaming wildly. "See? See? That's what you'll get! I meant that! There isn't a tribe for you any more! The conch is gone —" He ran forward, stooping. "I'm Chief!"
 * Ralph heard the great rock long before he saw it. He was aware of a jolt in the earth that came to him through the soles of his feet, and the breaking sound of stones at the top of the cliff. Then the monstrous red thing bounded across the neck and he flung himself flat while the tribe shrieked.
 * Ch. 11: Castle Rock - The first edition used the term "painted niggers", later editions changed this to "painted savages" or "painted Indians".

'''There was no Piggy to talk sense. There was no solemn assembly for debate nor dignity of the conch.'''
 * What was the sensible thing to do?
 * Ch. 12: The Cry of the Hunters

 * His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.
 * Ch. 12: The Cry of the Hunters

Pincher Martin (1956)

 * I will tell you what man is. He is a freak, an ejected foetus robbed of his natural development, thrown out into the world with a naked covering of parchment, with too little room for his teeth and a soft bulging skull like a bubble. But nature stirs a pudding there...
 * p. 190, as cited in
 * Sleep is when all unsorted stuff comes as from a dustbin upset in a high wind.
 * Chapter six, as cited in

The Hot Gates (1965)

 * The overall intention may be stated simply enough. Before the Second World War I believed in the perfectibility of social man; that a correct structure of society would produce goodwill; and that therefore you could remove all social ills by a reorganisation of society. .... but after the war I did not because I was unable to. I had discovered what one man could do to another... I must say that anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head... I am thinking of the vileness beyond all words that went on, year after year, in the totalitarian states. It is bad enough to say that so many Jews were exterminated in this way and that, so many people liquidated — lovely, elegant word — but there were things done during that period from which I still have to avert my mind less I should be physically sick. They were not done by the headhunters of New Guinea or by some primitive tribe in the Amazon. They were done, skillfully, coldly, by educated men, doctors, lawyers, by men with a tradition of civilization behind them, to beings of their own kind. My own conviction grew that what had happened was that men were putting the cart before the horse. They were looking at the system rather than the people. It seemed to me that man’s capacity for greed, his innate cruelty and selfishness, was being hidden behind a kind of pair of political pants. I believed then, that man was sick — not exceptional man, but average man. I believed that the condition of man was to be a morally diseased creation and that the best job I could do at the time was to trace the connection between his diseased nature and the international mess he gets himself into. To many of you, this will seem trite, obvious, and familiar in theological terms. Man is a fallen being. He is gripped by original sin. His nature is sinful and his state is perilous. I accept the theology and admit the triteness; but what is trite is true; and a truism can become more than a truism when it is a belief passionately held.... I can say in America what I should not like to say at home; which is that I condemn and detest my country's faults precisely because I am so proud of her many virtues. One of our faults is to believe that evil is somewhere else and inherent in another nation. My book was to say you think that now the war is over and an evil thing destroyed, you are safe because you are naturally kind and decent. But I know why the thing rose in Germany. I know it could it could happen in any country. It could happen here.
 * On his motivations to write Lord of the Flies, from his essay "Fable", p. 85

Nobel prize lecture (1983)

 * Nobel lecture (7 December 1983)

For we are a marvel of creation. I think in particular of one of the most extraordinary women, dead now these five hundred years, Juliana of Norwich. She was caught up in the spirit and shown a thing that might lie in the palm of her hand and in the bigness of a nut. She was told it was the world. She was told of the strange and wonderful and awful things that would happen there. At the last, a voice told her that all things should be well and all manner of things should be well and all things should be very well. Now we, if not in the spirit, have been caught up to see our earth, our mother, Gaia Mater, set like a jewel in space. We have no excuse now for supposing her riches inexhaustible nor the area we have to live on limitless because unbounded. We are the children of that great blue white jewel. '''Through our mother we are part of the solar system and part through that of the whole universe. In the blazing poetry of the fact we are children of the stars.'''
 * Words may, through the devotion, the skill, the passion, and the luck of writers prove to be the most powerful thing in the world. They may move men to speak to each other because some of those words somewhere express not just what the writer is thinking but what a huge segment of the world is thinking. They may allow man to speak to man, the man in the street to speak to his fellow until a ripple becomes a tide running through every nation — of commonsense, of simple healthy caution, a tide that rulers and negotiators cannot ignore so that nation does truly speak unto nation. Then there is hope that we may learn to be temperate, provident, taking no more from nature's treasury than is our due. It may be by books, stories, poetry, lectures we who have the ear of mankind can move man a little nearer the perilous safety of a warless and provident world. It cannot be done by the mechanical constructs of overt propaganda. I cannot do it myself, cannot now create stories which would help to make man aware of what he is doing; but there are others who can, many others. There always have been. We need more humanity, more care, more love. There are those who expect a political system to produce that; and others who expect the love to produce the system. My own faith is that the truth of the future lies between the two and we shall behave humanly and a bit humanely, stumbling along, haphazardly generous and gallant, foolishly and meanly wise until the rape of our planet is seen to be the preposterous folly that it is.

I stopped opposite them and took my parking ticket out of its plastic envelope. They crossed to me. I asked if, as I had pressing business, I could go straight to the Town Hall and pay my fine on the spot. "No, sir," said the senior policeman, "I'm afraid you can't do that." He smiled the fond smile that such policemen reserve for those people who are clearly harmless if a bit silly. He indicated a rectangle on the ticket that had the words 'name and address of sender' printed above it. "You should write your name and address in that place," he said. "You make out a cheque for ten pounds, making it payable to the Clerk to the Justices at this address written here. Then you write the same address on the outside of the envelope, stick a sixteen penny stamp in the top right hand corner of the envelope, then post it. And may we congratulate you on winning the Nobel Prize for Literature."
 * While it may be proper to praise the idea of a laureate the man himself may very well remember what his laurels will hide and that not only baldness. In a sentence he must remember not to take himself with unbecoming seriousness. Fortunately some spirit or other — I do not presume to put a name to it — ensured that I should remember my smallness in the scheme of things. The very day after I learned that I was the laureate for literature for 1983 I drove into a country town and parked my car where I should not. I only left the car for a few minutes but when I came back there was a ticket taped to the window. A traffic warden, a lady of a minatory aspect, stood by the car. She pointed to a notice on the wall. "Can't you read?" she said. Sheepishly I got into my car and drove very slowly round the corner. There on the pavement I saw two county policemen.

Quotes about Golding

 * Beautifully written, tragic and provocative.
 * E. M. Forster on Lord of the Flies in The Observer (1954), quoted in John Carey, William Golding: The Man who Wrote Lord of the Flies (2009; 2010 ed.), p. 165

 * I have just had a wonderful pre-read of The Spire and it is a wonderful book. I also congratulate you. The last part – anyhow after the Visitor's part – went away from me, but even then the sense of human individuals was maintained. And all through – and this is its great (literary) merit – there is the sense of weight – stone weight. I have only once come across it before in a novel called The Nebuly Coat (author's name forgotten) but there it is only incidental – the central pillars groan to each other despairingly in the night – but in The Spire it's continuous. But how I do deplore Christianity. A Hindu or Egyptian building wouldn't have created half that trouble or been so riddled by that sense of sin.
 * E. M. Forster to Golding (4 February 1964), quoted in E. M. Forster, Commonplace Book, ed. Philip Gardner (1985), p. 248

 * [The Inheritors is] a prose quite astounding in its poetic clarity...the most astonishing and original tour de force I have seen since I first reviewed a novel. Mr Golding is a genius.
 * Peter Green, review of The Inheritors in The Daily Telegraph (1955), quoted in John Carey, William Golding: The Man who Wrote Lord of the Flies (2009; 2010 ed.), p. 185

Golding harnessed his unsentimental view of boyhood to a story of adventure and swiftly mounting suspense. To the twelve-year-old boy I was, the idea of roaming an uninhabited tropical island without parental supervision at first seemed liberating, almost heavenly. By the time the boy with the birthmark on his face (the first littleun to raise the possibility of a beast on the island) disappeared, my sense of liberation had become tinged with unease. And by the time the badly ill – and perhaps visionary – Simon confronts the severed and fly-blown head of the sow, which has been stuck on a pole, I was in terror. … 'there was nothing scholarly or analytical about my first reading of Lord of the Flies''. It was, so far as I can remember, the first book with hands – strong ones that reached out of the pages and seized me by the throat. It said to me, ‘This is not just entertainment; it’s life or death.’ '… By the time I reached the last seventy pages of Lord of the Flies I understood not only that some of the boys might die, but that some would'' die. It was inevitable. I only hoped it wouldn’t be Ralph, with whom I identified so passionately that I was in a cold sweat as I turned the pages. No teacher needed to tell me that Ralph embodied the values of civilization and that Jack’s embrace of savagery and sacrifice represented the ease with which those values could be swept away; it was evident even to a child. Especially to a child, who had witnessed (and participated in) many acts of casual schoolyard bullyragging. ...I finished the last half of Lord of the Flies in a single afternoon, my eyes wide, my heart pounding, not thinking, just inhaling. But I’ve been thinking about it ever since, for fifty years and more. My rule of thumb as a writer and a reader – largely formed by Lord of the Flies – is feel it first, think about it later. Analyse all you want, but first dig the experience. What I keep coming back to is Golding saying, ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea to write a story about some boys … showing how they would really behave.’ '''It was a good idea. A very good idea that produced a very good novel, one as exciting, relevant and thought-provoking now as it was when Golding published it in 1954.'''
 * I was … unprepared for what I found between the covers of Lord of the Flies: a perfect understanding of the sort of beings I and my friends were at twelve or thirteen, untouched by the usual softsoap and deodorant. Could we be good? Yes. Could we be kind? Yes again. Could we, at the turn of a moment, become little monsters? Indeed we could. And did. At least twice a day and far more frequently on summer vacations, when we were often left to our own devices.
 * Stephen King, in his Introduction to the centenary edition of Golding's novel Lord of the Flies (2011)

 * To me it [ Pincher Martin ] belongs to a class of reading that I deplore, which looks at nothing except what I call the underbelly of the human body, and it sees nothing but the nasty side of it, the horrid side of it.
 * C. A. Lejeune on the BBC Radio programme The Critics (28 October 1956), quoted in John Carey, William Golding: The Man who Wrote Lord of the Flies (2009; 2010 ed.), p. 200

 * A splendid work of imagination... his vision is true, sad and superbly conveyed.
 * Philip Oakes, review of The Inheritors in Truth (1955), quoted in John Carey, William Golding: The Man who Wrote Lord of the Flies (2009; 2010 ed.), p. 185

 * [Golding is] the most original and imaginatively exciting novelist we have today...enthralling...a many-dimensional and astonishing book.
 * Isabel Quigly, review of The Inheritors in The Spectator (30 September 1955), quoted in John Carey, William Golding: The Man who Wrote Lord of the Flies (2009; 2010 ed.), p. 185

 * The way you have sounded the universal elements in this horror strikes me as masterly.
 * Mary Renault to Golding after reading Lord of the Flies (1954), quoted in John Carey, William Golding: The Man who Wrote Lord of the Flies (2009; 2010 ed.), p. 165

 * I found the tone of the book singularly attractive. It is highly individual yet profoundly modest; it has an unusual, slightly angular candour, full of painful knowledge and a beautiful humanity; it couldn't be pretentious if it tried... [E]ven the slightest piece bears the mark of his rare, austere mind, his remarkable imagination... Even these occasional essays are enough to remind us that, on his day, there is not, at the moment, a writer to touch him.
 * Tony Tanner, review of The Hot Gates in New Society, Volume 6, Issues 158–170 (1965), pp. 35-36

title: William Golding