Glumdalclitch

“In reading, one should notice and fondle details. There is nothing wrong about the moonshine of generalization when it comes after the sunny trifles of the book have been lovingly collected. If one begins with a readymade generalization, one begins at the wrong end and travels away from the book before one has started to understand it. Nothing is more boring or more unfair to the author than starting to read, say, Madame Bovary, with the preconceived notion that it is a denunciation of the bourgeoisie. We should always remember that the work of art is invariably the creation of a new world, so that the first thing we should do is to study that new world as closely as possible, approaching it as something brand new, having no obvious connection with the worlds we already know. When this new world has been closely studied, then and only then let us examine its links with other worlds, other branches of knowledge.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“The collective principle asserts that ... no society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of lack of means.”
― Aneurin Bevan, In Place of Fear

“There is no nature to things,’ you wrote in the book. ‘There are no faces except masks held tight against the pitching chaos behind them.”
― Thomas Ligotti, Noctuary

“You cannot continue to victimize someone else just because you yourself were a victim once—there has to be a limit”
― Edward Said