Daikon Quotes & Sayings

Two moral forces shaped how we think and live in this shining twentieth century: the Virgin, and the Dynamo. The Dynamo represents the desire to know; the Virgin represents the freedom not to know.

What's the Virgin made of? Things that we think are silly, mostly. The peculiar logic of dreams, or the inexplicable stirring we feel when we look on someone that's beautiful not in a way that we all agree is beautiful, but the unique way in which a single person is. The Virgin is faith and mysticism; miracle and instinct; art and randomness.

On the other hand, you have the Dynamo: the unstoppable engine. It finds the logic behind a seeming miracle and explains that miracle away; it finds the order in randomness to which we're blind; it takes the caliper to a young woman's head and quantifies her beauty in terms of pleasing mathematical ratios; it accounts for the secret stirring you felt by discoursing at length on the nervous systems of animals. — Dexter Palmer

Selfishness and self-absorption are deadly charm-exterminators. — Loretta Young

Age does not bring wisdom, Ben, but it does give perspective ... and the saddest sight of all is to see, far behind you, temptations you've resisted. — Robert A. Heinlein

Something I've always written about is social expectations: that the eyes of the community are on you all the time, expecting you to line up with certain social norms, certain behaviours. Whenever you forgot about them, they'd be strongly reiterated to you, in no uncertain terms. — Lynn Coady

It's hard to make a living doing documentaries. Frankly, if it takes you five years to do a film, and that's the only film you're doing, you're in trouble. — Alex Gibney

More than nine-tenths of all literate men and women certainly read nothing but newspapers, and consequently model their orthography, grammar and style almost exclusively on them and even, in their simplicity, regard the murdering of language which goes on in them as brevity of expression, elegant facility and ingenious innovation; indeed, young people of the unlearned professions in general regard the newspaper as an authority simply because it is something printed. For this reason, the state should, in all seriousness, take measures to ensure that the newspapers are altogether free of linguistic errors. A — Arthur Schopenhauer

[Written in 1901:] Nothing has been so deplorable for countries as centralization. I am afraid when I see Germany grow so powerful, and centralizing in Berlin; it is the beginning of the end! — Elisabeth Of Wied

One of the biggest oxymorons is the term "self-made" man or woman. No man or woman ever "made" him- or herself. The psalmist understood this when he wrote, "It is [God] who has made us, and not we ourselves" (Psalm 100:3, NKJV). I also love what he goes on to say at the end of the verse: "We are His people, and the sheep of His pasture. — Henry Cloud

No one sees the world like you do, Emma. Creating art is about sharing your own personal vision with the world. Taking something no one else can see and bringing it to life. — Jennifer McMahon

How easy it is for men to talk about beauty, and how subtly intimidating when they do. — Alex Shakar

Wanted to be home desperately, and when I said "home," that meant "wherever Larry is" more than Lower Manhattan, — Piper Kerman

I'm on a quest, I think," he said, not having realised this before. "Or something like one."
"Those went out of fashion a long time ago. — Max Gladstone

I sat through Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones like three times at the Skyway when it came out. — Paul Westerberg