Magnus Botterill > Magnus's Quotes

“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
― Groucho Marx

“Reading, for me, is like this: consumptive, pleasing, calming, as much as edifying. It's how I feel after a good dinner. That's why I do it so often: It feels wonderful. The book is mind and I insert myself into it, cover it entire, ear my way through every last slash and dot. That's something you can do with a book, unlike television or movies or the Internet. You can eat it, or mark it, like a dog does on a hydrant. ”
― Tara Bray Smith

“It seems to me that television is exactly like a gun. Your enjoyment of it is determined by which end of it you're on.”
― Alfred Hitchcock

“If TV were only an invention to broadcast soccer, it would be justified.”
― Roberto Fontanarrosa

“Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.”
― Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

“A word about TV: If a television is on, an infant will stare at it. This is not a sign of advanced development. TV entertains at a cost. Young children easily become dependent on the TV for stimulation and lose some of their natural drive to explore. A child with a plastic cup and spoon, a few wooden blocks, and a board book can think up fifty creative ways to use those objects; a child in front of a TV can only do one thing.”
― Benjamin Spock, Baby and Child Care

“American culture has regressed because of contemporary society’s glorification of making a good living and spending free time in media activities rather than constantly devoting themselves to a learning and self-improvement. The combination of grooming youngsters to fit into a commercial workplace and Americans willingness to submit themselves to endless hours of watching television shows filled with murders, violence, sex, and replete with advertisements that promote the goods of commercial giants has eroded the American spirit and contributed to lack of an intellectually sophisticated populous.”
― Kilroy J. Oldster, Dead Toad Scrolls

“TV pollutes our minds and dulls our senses. It is a babysitter that molests children. And yet those who are on the television scream “first amendment” and “freedom of speech”. How is corporate control freedom of speech? And what rights did our forefathers grant corporations, anyway?”
― James Rozoff

“Being alone has a power over me that never fails. My interior dissolves (for the time being only superficially) and is ready to release what lies deeper. When I am willfully alone, a slight ordering of my interior begins to take place and I need nothing more.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“My condition is not unhappiness, but it is also not happiness, not indifference, not weakness, not fatigue, not another interest – so what is it then?”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“But I will write in spite of everything, absolutely; it is my struggle for self-preservation.”
― Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1910-1923

“Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished you are always surprised." - John Steinbeck from the Fall 1975 issue of The Paris Review”
― - John Steinbeck from the Fall 1975 issue of The Paris Review

“Time expands, then contracts, all in tune with the stirrings of the heart.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“There are some things about myself I can’t explain to anyone. There are some things I don’t understand at all. I can’t tell what I think about things or what I’m after. I don’t know what my strengths are or what I’m supposed to do about them. But if I start thinking about these things in too much detail the whole thing gets scary. And if I get scared I can only think about myself. I become really self-centered, and without meaning to, I hurt people. So I’m not such a wonderful human being.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Elephant Vanishes

“People fall in love without reason, without even wanting to. You can't predict it. That's love.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“A gentleman is someone who does not what he wants to do, but what he should do.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Even so, there were times I saw freshness and beauty. I could smell the air, and I really loved rock 'n' roll. Tears were warm, and girls were beautiful, like dreams. I liked movie theaters, the darkness and intimacy, and I liked the deep, sad summer nights.”
― Haruki Murakami, Dance Dance Dance

“Love can rebuild the world, they say, so everything's possible when it comes to love.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn. New styles, new information, new technology, new terminology … But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“But if something did happen, it happened. Whether it's right or wrong. I accept everything that happens, and that's how I became the person I am now.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“I think that my job is to observe people and the world, and not to judge them. I always hope to position myself away from so-called conclusions. I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world.”
― Haruki Murakami

“Never let fear and stupid pride make you lose someone who's precious to you.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“The body is not the only target of rape. Violence does not always take a visible form, and not all wounds gush blood.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“What we see before us is just one tiny part of the world. We get in the habit of thinking, this is the world, but that's not true at all. The real world is a much darker and deeper place than this, and much of it is occupied by jellyfish and things.”
― Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

“I always feel as if I'm struggling to become someone else. As if I'm trying to find a new place, grab hold of a new life, a new personality. I suppose it's part of growing up, yet it's also an attempt to re-invent myself. By becoming a different me, I could free myself of everything. I seriously believed I could escape myself - as long as I made the effort. But I always hit a dead end. No matter where I go, I still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I'm still the same old incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I think that lack itself is as close as I'll come to defining myself.”
― Haruki Murakami, South of the Border, West of the Sun

“I am a flawed human being - a far more flawed human being than you
realize.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“And still, after all this time,
The sun never says to the earth,
"You owe Me."

Look what happens with
A love like that,
It lights the Whole Sky.”
― Hafiz

“This sky
Where we live
Is no place to lose your wings
So love, love
Love.”
― Hafez, The Gift

“Love is simply creation's greatest joy.”
― Hafez