Steve mitchell

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
― Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature

“This was another of our fears: that Life wouldn't turn out to be like Literature.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“In the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Man made the truths himself and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts. All about in the world were the truths and they were all beautiful. [...]

There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon. Hundreds and hundreds were the truths and they were all beautiful.

And then the people came along. Each as he appeared snatched up one of the truths and some who were quite strong snatched up a dozen of them.

It was the truths that made the people grotesques. The old man had quite an elaborate theory concerning the matter. It was his notion that the moment one of the people took one of the truths to himself, called it his truth, and tried to live his life by it, he became a grotesque and the truth he embraced became a falsehood.”
― Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio

“In youth there are always two forces fighting in people. The warm unthinking little animal struggles against the thing that reflects and remembers”
― Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio