Ron Clave > Ron's Quotes

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  • #1
    Samuel Johnson
    “My congratulations to you, sir. Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good. ”
    Samuel Johnson

  • #2
    Vladimir Nabokov
    “O my Carmen, my Carmen!
    Something, something those something nights
    And the stars, and the cars, and the bars and the barmen ~”
    Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

  • #3
    Samuel Johnson
    “No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.”
    Samuel Johnson, The Life of Samuel Johnson

  • #4
    Vladimir Nabokov
    “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.”
    Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

  • #5
    Vladimir Nabokov
    “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.”
    Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

  • #6
    Vladimir Nabokov
    “Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only unnaturally but unethically.”
    Vladimir Nabokov, Pnin

  • #7
    Vladimir Nabokov
    “I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze
    I cannot get out, said the starling”
    Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

  • #8
    Vladimir Nabokov
    “I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
    By the false azure in the windowpane;
    I was the smudge of ashen fluff -and I
    Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
    And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate
    Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:
    Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass
    Hang all the furniture above the grass,
    And how delightful when a fall of snow
    Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
    As to make chair and bed exactly stand
    Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!”
    Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

  • #9
    A.E. Housman
    “White in the moon the long road lies,
    The moon stands blank above;
    White in the moon the long road lies
    That leads me from my love.

    Still hangs the hedge without a gust,
    Still, still the shadows stay:
    My feet upon the moonlit dust
    Pursue the ceaseless way.

    The world is round, so travellers tell,
    And straight through reach the track,
    Trudge on, trudge on, 'twill all be well,
    The way will guide one back.

    But ere the circle homeward hies
    Far, far must it remove:
    White in the moon the long road lies
    That leads me from my love.”
    A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

  • #10
    A.E. Housman
    With Rue My Heart Is Laden

    With rue my heart is laden
    For golden friends I had,
    For many a rose-lipt maiden
    And many a lightfoot lad.

    By brooks too broad for leaping
    The lightfoot boys are laid;
    The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
    In fields where roses fade.”
    A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

  • #11
    Samuel Johnson
    “I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am.”
    Samuel Johnson

  • #12
    Jack Kerouac
    “Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.”
    Jack Kerouac, On the Road
    tags: sex

  • #13
    Jonathan Swift
    “He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.”
    Jonathan Swift
    tags: food

  • #14
    Anthony Bourdain
    “Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans ... are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit.”
    Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential : Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

  • #15
    Thomas de Quincey
    “[H]ere was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered: happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket; portable ecstacies might be had corked up in a pint bottle, and peace of mind could be sent down in gallons by the mail-coach.”
    Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater

  • #16
    Thomas de Quincey
    “Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o'clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.”
    Thomas De Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater

  • #17
    Virginia Woolf
    “The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare.”
    Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

  • #18
    Philip Larkin
    “When getting my nose in a book
    Cured most things short of school,
    It was worth ruining my eyes
    To know I could still keep cool,
    And deal out the old right hook
    To dirty dogs twice my size.

    Later, with inch-thick specs,
    Evil was just my lark:
    Me and my coat and fangs
    Had ripping times in the dark.
    The women I clubbed with sex!
    I broke them up like meringues.

    Don't read much now: the dude
    Who lets the girl down before
    The hero arrives, the chap
    Who's yellow and keeps the store
    Seem far too familiar. Get stewed:
    Books are a load of crap.

    (A Study Of Reading Habits) ”
    Philip Larkin, Collected Poems

  • #19
    Wallace Stevens
    “Let be be finale of seem.
    The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream.”
    Wallace Stevens, Harmonium

  • #20
    Wallace Stevens
    “The Plot Against The Giant

    First Girl
    When this yokel comes maundering,
    Whetting his hacker,
    I shall run before him,
    Diffusing the civilest odors
    Out of geraniums and unsmelled flowers.
    It will check him.

    Second Girl
    I shall run before him,
    Arching cloths besprinkled with colors
    As small as fish-eggs.
    The threads
    Will abash him.

    Third Girl
    Oh, la...le pauvre!
    I shall run before him,
    With a curious puffing.
    He will bend his ear then.
    I shall whisper
    Heavenly labials in a world of gutturals.
    It will undo him.”
    Wallace Stevens, Harmonium
    tags: poetry

  • #21
    Jane Austen
    “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
    Jane Austen, Jane Austen's Letters

  • #22
    Jane Austen
    “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.”
    Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

  • #23
    Vladimir Nabokov
    “From my point of view, any outstanding work of art is a fantasy insofar as it reflects the unique world of a unique individual. Art is not just simple arithmetic, it's a delicate calculus. Keep in mind the passion of the scientist and the precision of the artist.”
    Vladimir Nabokov

  • #24
    Kakuzō Okakura
    “Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity, the romanticism of the social order. It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life.”
    Kakuzo Okakura, The Book of Tea

  • #25
    T.S. Eliot
    “Here we go round the prickly pear
    Prickly pear prickly pear
    Here we go round the prickly pear
    At five o’clock in the morning.

    Between the idea
    And the reality
    Between the motion
    And the act
    Falls the Shadow
    For Thine is the Kingdom

    Between the conception
    And the creation
    Between the emotion
    And the response
    Falls the Shadow
    Life is very long

    Between the desire
    And the spasm
    Between the potency
    And the existence
    Between the essence
    And the descent
    Falls the Shadow
    For Thine is the Kingdom

    For Thine is
    Life is
    For Thine is the

    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang but a whimper.”
    T.S. Eliot, The Hollow Men



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