Celton Dutton Quotes & Sayings

Literature destabilizes thought by breaking open language and smuggling in sound, rhythm, and image--an invasion of aesthetics. More easily than analytic writing, poetry can emancipate itself from the standard definitions of words, enabling a breakthrough to new (and perhaps wayward or even nonsensical) meaning, which can then develop after the fact--different at each new reading. Literary language is presumptuous. It dips into the unknown in order to get nearer to a truth different from that of the superficially visible. As the poet Franz Josef Czernin described it, it is as though one step after another into emptiness could become a ladder. Literary writing can take the writers themselves by surprise; it can disturb and disappoint them--for stirring up turmoil is inherent in metaphor. Thus with every flash of understanding that comes from hearing or reading a poem, the fundamental work of thinking is taken up anew. — Marie Luise Knott

The refusal to be committed and the attitude of indifference can in fact never be neutral. — John Bertram Phillips

On television, it's all just shiny, successful people, and so I feel somebody has to wave a flag for the ordinary people who are not quite sure that they are getting it right. — Rachel Joyce

Pachelbel's Canon in D major. — Anonymous

Because a lot of the time ever when I say anything about how the world is goin to hell in a handbasket people will just sort of smile and tell me I'm gettin old. — Cormac McCarthy

You must be very patient, very persistent. The world isn't going to shower gold coins on you just because you have a good idea. You're going to have to work like crazy to bring that idea to the attention of people. They're not going to buy it unless they know about it. — Herb Kelleher

And what if you're trying to knock out another man," she said, sarcastic. There was no expression in his cool blue eyes. "Then I kiss him," he said in the calmest of voices. "Now you try it. — Anne Stuart

Every uncomfortable feeling, every pain, every moment of stress & suffering is for your own self-realizatio n. — Byron Katie

Whenever it feels uncomfortable to tell the truth, that's often the most important time to tell it. — Jennifer Lopez

Forgiveness feels most dramatic when some ancient pattern of self-punishment collapses in a torrent of tears. But it is just as effective when practiced daily in tiny doses - relinquishing a pointless worry, getting wise to a self-destructive habit, serving notice on a cruel notion about yourself that has previously seemed justified. The beginning of forgiveness is alertness to false ideas. — D. Patrick Miller

Each time I'm starting to work on a film, even if I love to settle the plot in the real world, I start to think about the plot as a fairy tale, or a dream, or a nightmare ... As if it was the best way to tell the truth about characters or narration, instead of realism. — Arnaud Desplechin

Reasoning is the pastime of my whole household, and all this reasoning has driven out Reason. — Moliere

We live 24 minutes too late and that is viewed from the right side — Kurt Schwitters

Drinks were a lot like books, really: it didn't matter where you were, the contents of a vodka tonic were always more or less the same, and you could count on them to take you away to somewhere better or at least make your present arrangements seem more manageable. — Lev Grossman