Kyle Clewett

“Put romantic love at the center of a novel today, and who could be persuaded that in its pursuit the characters are going to get to something large? That love is going to throw them up against themselves in such a way that we will all learn something important about how we got to be as we are, or how the time in which we live got to be as it is. No one, it seems to me. Today, I think, love as a metaphor is an act of nostalgia, not of discovery.”
― Vivian Gornick, The End of The Novel of Love

“Hegel observed that newspapers serve modern man as a substitute for morning prayers”
― Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism

“I am reminded of Housman's remark that 'accuracy is a duty, not a virtue.' To praise a historian for his accuracy is like praising an architect for using well-seasoned timber or properly mixed concrete in his building. It is a necessary condition of his work, but not his essential function.”
― Edward Hallett Carr, What Is History?

“No more arresting emblems of the modern culture of nationalism exist than cenotaphs and tombs of Unknown Soldiers.”
― Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism