Detestabilis Quotes & Sayings

It is natural if you feel as strongly as most decent people do about racial discrimination to welcome books that give it short shrift; but to assess books on their racial attitude rather than their literary value, and still more to look on books as ammunition in the battle, is to take a further and still more dangerous step from literature-as-morality to literature-as-propaganda - a move toward conditions in which, hitherto, literary art has signally failed to thrive.

("Didacticism in Modern Dress" from Only Connect (2nd ed., 1980). — John Rowe Townsend

Portofino in the '60s was magic. Women in bright silk, each with a gardenia in their hand. The bottle started then, in my mind. — Elsa Peretti

Hey, things like that happen at the Academy too," I insisted, almost triumphantly. "Last year the freezers failed so there was no ice for" - the wind went out of my sails as I realized how lame this was going to sound - "the sushi bar." He nodded sympathetically. "You guys should get T-shirts made. You know: I Survived the Sushi Crisis. — Gordon Korman

I used to hate England because they ruled my country but I am happy they gave us the game of cricket, which they can't play very well, and the English language, which I can't speak very well, — Kapil Dev

This is a story that could only have taken place in the tropics, where the climate draws sea rovers, pirates, and desperadoes from all corners of the world. They come and go, these adventurers, bedazzled and dazzling, and they leave women behind, lovers, who repeat outlandish tales, murmuring to themselves unheard, and if heard, not believed ... — Margaret Cezair-Thompson

Again and again as we discussed Lolita in that class, our discussions were colored by my students' hidden personal sorrows and joys. Like tearstains on a letter, these forays into the hidden and the personal shaded all our discussions of Nabokov. And more and more I thought of that butterfly; what linked us so closely was this perverse intimacy of victim and jailer. — Azar Nafisi

After the Beatles and Dylan, there's this assumption that you are a singer-songwriter, or that if someone else is writing your rhymes, you're a fake rapper. — Alan Light

I want you back here now. I want you next to me now. I cannot believe that my family, your brother, all our friends, and an entire police force can't keep tabs on one twenty-six year old graphic designer who thinks he's fuckin' Batman.
Detective Sam Kage in A Matter Of Time (vol 2 or part 4) — Mary Calmes

I wouldn't want to see anything irreparable happen, but I also like it when seemingly irreparable thing occur and men and women find a way to move past it. — Robert Downey Jr.

Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Like I need to play on the Wii when you're there willing to f*** me. Video games are what men invented to fill the sex void. Any man who chooses video games over sex deserves to live in his mother's basement with his mint-condition, in box Star Wars figurines and his real doll. — Lauren Dane

Evil is caused by selfishness, by people acting out of the belief that they and their needs are paramount. And just because our first and only commandment is love, the diametric opposite of selfishness, doesn't mean that we're going to save people from the consequences of their selfishness. If you force the vast majority of people to live in squalor so you can live in splendor, you'll bring on the Black Death. If you allow the rise of a homicidal maniac like Hitler because you see him as a way to beat down those who want equality and social justice, he'll start killing people. Don't blame God. — Tony Hendra

There's a fine edge to new grief, it severs nerves, disconnects reality
there's mercy in a sharp blade. Only with time, as the edge wears, does the real ache begin. — Christopher Moore

Where, as again Vaughan writes, the liberated soul ascends, looking at the sunset towards the west wind, and hearing secret harmonies. — Anthony Powell

Chicago has very few public spaces where people are encouraged to get together. It's partly to prevent riots, and also to segregate a city with a history of racial segregation. — Aleksandar Hemon