Terence Ball > Quotes

“Are any people more overtly and overtly—and yes, tiresomely—polite than the English upper-middle class? Always begging pardon, asking forgiveness for real or imagined infractions that don’t even register on anyone else’s Richter Scale. An American says, “Please pass the salt.” An Englishman of a certain class and age says, “I’m very sorry, but could I possibly trouble you for the salt?’ That’s more than a matter of degree. It’s a yawning chasm of attitude and sensibility.”
― Terence Ball, Rousseau's Ghost: A Novel

“...that without the possibility of legally "owning" information there would be little incentive for "developing" it.”
― Terence Ball, Rousseau's Ghost: A Novel

“Pack your bags, Jack: the barbarians are already inside the gates, and damned if they aren't all professors. Not of history, thank heaven, but of English and of something called Cultural Studies (don't ask me what that is; I don't actually know, nor, I think, do they—though they do manage to put the 'cult' into 'culture'). Décon is their guru, and they his mindless acolytes. They'd follow him anywhere, including the death camps, which are of course only another 'social construction' on their telling.”
― Terence Ball, Rousseau's Ghost: A Novel

“Ideas—good, bad, or banal—have consequences. And the goodness, badness, or banality of these ideas has little to do with their authors’ intentions and everything to do with their final fruits, some of which are poisonous beyond belief and even perhaps beyond their authors’ worst imaginings.”
― Terence Ball, Rousseau's Ghost: A Novel

“I recall Ted saying that the best English prose was now being written by non-native speakers: Rushdie, Ishiguro, Naipaul and others.”
― Terence Ball, Rousseau's Ghost: A Novel

“There are still more readers who should learn to read, than there are authors who should learn to be consistent.”
― Terence Ball, Rousseau's Ghost: A Novel

“Your life wouldn't work for me, but it doesn't have to. It only has to work for you.”
― Terence Ball