Bruce Russell

“Gandalf is fictional. King Arthur is a lie.”
― David Mitchell, Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens

“I don’t mean to be a doom-monger but we could do with it now. A big threat to our current civilization is the persistent post-Victorian assumption of progress. This ‘Whig Interpretation of History’ has been regularly debunked ever since the term was coined by the historian Herbert Butterfield in 1931, a tough year for believers in things getting better. Still, most of us unreflectingly go along with it. You hear it in the way people rebuke each other for prejudiced remarks by saying ‘Come on, it’s the twenty-first century’, as if the passage of time inevitably brings with it ethical improvements. The pejorative word ‘dated’ shows how ingrained is our assumption that human civilization gets better over time. It probably has recently, technologically at least, but it’s not a given. Is assuming that things improve the best way of ensuring they will? I doubt it. A healthy fear of societal cataclysm may be a good technique for avoiding it.”
― David Mitchell, Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens

“Those who make their living flirting with catastrophe develop a faculty of pessimistic imagination, of anticipating the worst, that is often all but indistinguishable from clairvoyance.”
― Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

“I thought the deeper joke was that all TV is wasted innovation and a grotesque squandering of the human spirit.”
― Brian Abrams, And Now...An Oral History of "Late Night with David Letterman," 1982-1993