John Leonard > Quotes

“It takes a long time to grow an old friend.”
― John Leonard

“Isn't post-modernism really one big cover-up for the failure of the French to write a truly interesting novel ever since a sports car ate Albert Camus?”
― John Leonard

“In the cellars of the night, when the mind starts moving around old trunks of bad times, the pain of this and the shame of that, the memory of a small boldness is a hand to hold.”
― John Leonard

“Baseball happens to be a game of cumulative tension but football, basketball and hockey are played with hand grenades and machine guns. ”
― John Leonard

“Books are where we go alone to complicate ourselves. Inside this solitude, we take on contours, textures, perspectives. Heightened language levitates the reader. Great art transfigures. And when we go back to it, it's full of even more surprises. We get older; it gets smarter.”
― John Leonard

“It seems to me that my whole life I've been standing on some tower or a pillbox or a trampoline, waving the names of writers, as if we needed rescue. And the first person I had to rescue was myself.”
― John Leonard, Reading for My Life: Writings, 1958-2008

“I was going to suggest some hard-won guidelines for responsible reviewing. For instance: First, as in Hippocrates, do no harm. Second, never stoop to score a point or bite an ankle. Third, always understand that in this symbiosis, you are the parasite. Fourth, look with an open heart and mind at every different kind of book with every change of emotional weather because we are reading for our lives and that could be love gone out the window or a horseman on the roof. Fifth, use theory only as a periscope or a trampoline, never a panopticon, a crib sheet or a license to kill. Sixth, let a hundred Harolds Bloom.”
― John Leonard

“Everybody is forever saying that the essay is dead. This is always said in essays.”
― John Leonard

“popular culture is where we go to talk to and agree with one another; to simplify ourselves; to find our herd. It’s like going to the Automat to buy an emotion. The thrills are cheap and the payoffs predictable and, after a while, the repetition is a bummer. Whereas books are where we go alone to complicate ourselves. Inside this solitude, we take on contours, textures, perspectives. Heightened language levitates the reader. Great art transfigures. And when we go back to it, it’s full of even more surprises. We get older; it gets smarter.”
― John Leonard, Reading for My Life: Writings, 1958-2008

“To be capable of embarrassment is the beginning of moral consciousness. Honor grows from qualms.”
― John Leonard

“from investigating the German activity there.  The Germans had to be there for some classified reason.  What was that?  It stands to reason and starts to make sense that this trip by our government was of serious national security importance, and was absolutely handled that way.  With all the massive resources used, and”
― John Leonard, UFOs The Shocking Truth: The Antarctica Hollow Earth Connection

“the space station show that even small particles of matter will group together when in total weightlessness.  Supporting the fact that it is possible to have gravity on the inside and outside of a hollow planet, holding people to the land mass that is between the inside and outside.  Seismic testing has been done confirming this hollow earth theory is possible.  Oceanographic Geology, when studied closely, shows the earth is expanding in size, and has been doing so for a long time.  Why don't we know this theory?  The answer should be obvious.  "They" don't want us to know.  Whomever controls this society doesn't want us to be aware of certain facts that show us updated versions of the world around us.  They don't want people to discover we may not be the only civilization here, and that it may be possible”
― John Leonard, UFOs The Shocking Truth: The Antarctica Hollow Earth Connection

“to discover that the moon has something on it and it seems to be intelligently controlled.  When we were in our infancy of development,”
― John Leonard, UFOs The Shocking Truth

“we have proven to ourselves that someone intelligent is here, whom isn't our known society, we can move on to who they are and what they are doing.  There is no need for interviews of people who may have had experiences with them, so we can try to guess the facts.  The interviews only matter in the context of us gaining more insight into their overall agenda, and can only be considered relevant as a portion of that agenda.  We need to know why they are not revealing themselves openly to us from the beginning and are continuing to remain secret today.  You may say, "they don't remain secret", citing the fact that so many have seen them,”
― John Leonard, UFOs The Shocking Truth

“Some evidence suggests they may have come up from some of those holes through the earth,”
― John Leonard, UFOs The Shocking Truth: The Egyptian Pyramid Connection

“For Pol Pot, as for every other kamikaze of Kingdom Come, "the goal was not to destroy but to transmute." We have heard this chiliastic tommyrot before, from a variety of faith-based ethnic cleansers forever seeking to transmute the rest of us to death.”
― John Leonard