Ihab Hassan Quotes & Sayings

Quotations offer one kind of break in what the eye can see, the ear can hear. — Ihab Hassan

The (post) structuralist temper requires too great a depersonalization of the writing/speaking subject. Writing becomes plagiarism; speaking becomes quoting. Meanwhile, we do write, we do speak. — Ihab Hassan

We rarely quote nowadays to appeal to authority ... though we quote sometimes to display our sapience and erudition. Some authors we quote against. Some we quote not at all, offering them our scrupulous avoidance, and so make them part of our "white mythology." Other authors we constantly invoke, chanting their names in cerebral rituals of propitiation or ancestor worship. — Ihab Hassan

Unknowingly, we plow the dust of stars,
blown about us by the wind, and drink the
universe in a glass of rain. — Ihab Hassan

Universal violence compels the language to be mute ... Silence is not only a metaphor of Hemingway's work; it is also the source of its formal excellence, its integrity. — Ihab Hassan