Beth Mclaughlin

“In The Invention of Literature (1999), the classical scholar Florence Dupont reminds us that many of the greatest works of human imagination were created to be performed, to be heard. Before the printing press and mass literacy, the written versions existed as blueprints or records of performances, recitals, speeches, songs, and other forms of oral communication. Voicing was an art of living creators, and the voice of the storyteller was”
― Marina Warner, Once Upon a Time: A Short History of Fairy Tale

“And yet, if there was any question about how women in general fared on Planet Politics, one needed only to look at how Nancy Pelosi, the smart and hard-driving Speaker of the House of Representatives, was often depicted as a shrew or what Hillary Clinton was enduring as cable pundits and opinion writers hashed and rehashed each development in the campaign. Hillary’s gender was used against her relentlessly, drawing from all the worst stereotypes. She was called domineering, a nag, a bitch.”
― Michelle Obama, Becoming

“Tomohiko Amada’s Killing Commendatore might be seen as one such “unknown vista.” Like a great poem, the painting was a perfect metaphor, one that launched a new reality into the world.”
― Haruki Murakami, Killing Commendatore

“By today’s sensibilities, it’s more than a little macabre that a great moral movement would adopt as its symbol a graphic representation of a revolting means of torture and execution.”
― Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined