Critical Text Quotes & Sayings

Satin Island, like all books, contains hundreds of borrowings, echoes, remixes and straight repetitions. To list them all would take up as much space as the text itself. The critical reader can entertain him- or herself tracking some of them down, if he or she is that way inclined. — Tom McCarthy

After Nigeria, we are the second biggest black African nation. We are the headquarters of the African Union. We are the only African country that has never been colonized. This is perhaps the last surviving African civilization. — Meles Zenawi

What is the student but a lover courting a fickle mistress who ever eludes his grasp? — William Osler

You never say to a president for certain you wouldn't do anything, but I have no - look at me now - I have no desire to sit on the Supreme Court, none. It would be a great honor , but I have no desire, any more than George Mitchell did. — Joe Biden

Don't wait until you die to learn the warrior's way. Do it now, each night, just before you drift off to sleep. As you review your day, consider these two questions of courage and love. Learn from each day, so that each day you can show a little more courage and a little more love. Then, as incidents occur, you may rise to the occasion and look back at the end of your life and feel good about the way you lived. — Dan Millman

The bricoleur, says Levi-Strauss, is someone who uses 'the means at hand,' that is, the instruments he finds at his disposition around him, those which are already there, which had not been especially conceived with an eye to the operation for which they are to be used and to which one tries by trial and error to adapt them, not hesitating to change them whenever it appears necessary, or to try several of them at once, even if their form and their origin are heterogenous - and so forth. There is therefore a critique of language in the form of bricolage, and it has even been said that bricolage is critical language itself ... If one calls bricolage the necessity of borrowing one's concepts from the text of a heritage which is more or less coherent or ruined, it must be said that every discourse is bricoleur. — Jacques Derrida

Babe, how can you can be so blind when your eyes are wide open? Even if he wasn't the coolest kid I have ever met, even if I didn't enjoy the hell out of my time reliving my childhood with the little guy, he is part of you. No, he isn't yours and I understand that, but he is part of you, and Beauty, how can I not love that — Harper Sloan

A final word. Curious. Many years of reading many books has led me to a somewhat bizarre literary critical theory, namely that all significant texts are distinguished by the preponderance of a single word. In Alice's adventures in Wonderland that word is 'curious' (In The Brothers Karamazov it's 'ecstasy', but that needn't concern us here.) The word 'curious' appears so frequently in Carroll's text that it becomes a kind of tocsin awakening us from our reverie. But it isn't the strangeness of Alice's Wonderland that it reminds us of-it's the bizarre incomprehensibility of our own. — Will Self

After my last audition for 'Game of Thrones,' they said, 'Congratulations, princess.' I was like, 'Bye-bye, call centre.' — Emilia Clarke

Imagine a twelve-year-old-girl.
Imagine her being attacked, raped and murdered.
Take your time.
Then imagine God.
M. Barin, poet — Hakan Nesser

The labours I devoted between 1888 to 1900 to the critical edition, translation and commentary of Kalhana's Rajatarangini, the only true historical text of Sanskrit literature, afforded me ample opportunities of gaining close contact with Sanskrit savants of Kashmir, the land where traditional learning of Hindu India had flourished in old times greatly and survived until recent years. — Aurel Stein

How do we remember this emptiness so in fullness we won't forget?' Asked once, when emptiness was the worst. Why ever [would] he want to remember that? — Mark Z. Danielewski

Annie took his hand. She kissed it and held it to the pulse point at her neck. She didn't speak. Words would have been an intrusion on what was happening between them. She could almost see the tiny ends of the soul-wire that had been severed in October, winding around each other, knotting, connecting in a way that she doubted would ever again come undone. That was how she wanted it. — Barbara Delinsky

Dynamic equivalence is a central concept in the translation theory, developed by Eugene A. Nida, which has been widely adopted by the United Bible Societies...Purporting to be an academically linguistic concept, it is in fact a sociocultural concept of communication. Its definition is essentially behavourist: determined by external forces, such as society--with strong pragmatist overtones--focusing on the reader rather than the writer. [M]ost twentieth-century American philosophical endeavours are predominantly pragmatist, dwelling in the shadows cast by William James and John Dewey. — J. Cammenga

The other that will guide you and itself through this dissolution is a rhythm, text, music, and within language, a text. But what is the connection that holds you both together? Counter-desire, the negative of desire, inside-out desire, capable of questioning (or provoking) its own infinite quest. Romantic, filial, adolescent, exclusive, blind and Oedipal: it is all that, but for others. It returns to where you are, both of you, disappointed, irritated, ambitious, in love with history, critical, on the edge and even in the midst of its own identity crisis; a crisis of enunciation and of the interdependence of its movements, an instinctual drive that descends in waves, tearing apart the symbolic thesis. — Julia Kristeva

If I was to be his for eternity, fine. He might own my body. He would never own my soul. — Pepper Winters

Relationships are at the core of any political system and economic system - any family - and I think we drifted away from understanding that in our country. The people-to-people level is critical. It is ironic, though - we can text with anybody in the world, we can have a videoconference with anybody in the world, but [there should be] an even higher premium on showing up and getting to know someone. — Hillary Clinton

To be a critical reader means for me: (1) to affirm the enduring power of the Bible in my culture and in my own life and yet (2) to remain open enough to dare to ask any question and to risk any critical judgement. Nothing less than both of these points, together, can suffice for me. I was a reader of the Bible before I was a critic of it, but I found becoming a critic to be liberating and satisfying, and therefore I judge criticism to be a high calling of inestimable value. Yet, I recognize the prior claim of the text and the preeminence of reading over criticism; accordingly, I see and occasionally am apprehended by moments in which the text wields its indubitable power. The critic's ego says this could be a taste of the cherished post-critical naivete; the reader's proper humility before the text says that a reader should not judge such things. — Robert M. Fowler

whether or not you are already there, you will probably agree that a Stage Six default is worthy of your aspirations in just about any area of life. Life is a wonderful occasion. Rising to that occasion means becoming far bigger than your roles. That is the breakthrough to Stage Six. I also see this stage as the major part of a new and apt definition of positive mental health. Stage Six is the first of the two Target Stages. A Default Stage here breaks you out of the pack — Michael S. Broder

All work is the avoidance of harder work. — James Richardson

I think maybe L.A. or San Francisco could be rushed, but Sacramento is just laid back! — Nick Johnson

Don't you ever apologize for being what you are. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

In filling the well, think magic. Think delight. Think fun. Do not think duty. Do not do what you should do - spiritual sit-ups like reading a dull but recommended critical text. Do what intrigues you, explore what interests you; think mystery, not mastery. — Julia Cameron