Howard Palmer > Howard's Quotes

“A writer who writes, ''I am alone''... can be considered rather comical. It is comical for a man to recognize his solitude by addressing a reader and by using methods that prevent the individual from being alone. The word alone is just as general as the word bread. To pronounce it is to summon to oneself the presence of everything the word excludes.”
― Maurice Blanchot

“When I was a Poet
Everything was Possible
there wasn't Anything
that wasn't Poetry”
― David Meltzer, When I Was a Poet

“Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”
― E.L. Doctorow, Writers At Work: The Paris Review Interviews, 2nd Series

“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader—not the fact that it is raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
― E.L. Doctorow

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”
― E.L. Doctorow

“To me, being an intellectual doesn't mean knowing about intellectual issues; it means taking pleasure in them.”
― Chinua Achebe

“Legality is just the name for everything that's not dangerous for the ruling order.”
― Hari Kunzru, My Revolutions

“There is no greater love than the love the wolf feels for the lamb-it-doesn’t-eat.”
― Hélène Cixous, Stigmata: Escaping Texts

“You only have to look at the Medusa straight on to see her. And she's not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing.”
― Helene Cixous

“Writing is the delicate, difficult, and dangerous means of succeeding in avowing the unavowable.”
― Hélène Cixous

“If my desire is possible, it means the system is already letting something else through.”
― Hélène Cixous, The Newly Born Woman

“Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we've ever met.”
― Marguerite Duras

“Surviving - that is the other name of a mourning whose possibility is never to be awaited.”
― Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship

“The means of defence agst. foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.”
― James Madison

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

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

“Learn from the mistakes of others. You can never live long enough to make them all yourself.”
― Groucho Marx

“Humor is reason gone mad.”
― Groucho Marx

“I've had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it.”
― Groucho Marx

“If you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong.”
― Groucho Marx

“I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal.”
― Groucho Marx

“Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light.”
― Groucho Marx

“Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, and I'm going to be happy in it.”
― Groucho Marx

“Peace is only possible when one of the warring sides takes the first step, the hazardous initiative, the risk of opening up dialogue, and decides to make the gesture that will lead not only to an armistice but to peace.”
― Jacques Derrida

“That which I call a text is practically everything… Speech is a text, gesture is a text, reality is a text in this new sense. This is not about re-establishing graphocentrism alongside logocentrism or phonocentrism or text-centrism. The text is not a centre. The text is an openness without borders, of ever-differentiating references.”
― Jacques Derrida

“In order to approach now the very concept of forgiveness, logic and common sense agree for once with the paradox: it is necessary, it seems to me, to begin from the fact that, yes, there is the unforgivable. Is this not, in truth, the only thing to forgive? The only thing that calls for forgiveness? If one is only prepared to forgive what appears forgivable, what the church calls 'venial sin', then the very idea of forgiveness would disappear. If there is something to forgive, it would be what in religious language is called mortal sin, the worst, the unforgivable crime or harm.”
― Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness