This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Time passes, as the novelist says. The single most useful trick of fiction for our repair and refreshment: the defeat of time. A century of family saga and a ride up an escalator can take the same number of pages. Fiction sets any conversion rate, then changes it in a syllable. The narrator
Richard Wright, fully Richard Nathaniel Wright
It's always difficult to pare down so many books. There's only room for five on the raft. So there was give and take. There has to be compromise, but it was very amicable. We had a fair degree of consensus. And we're happy with the choices. We think these five books represent the best of Canadian fiction this year.
Richard Wright, fully Richard Nathaniel Wright
My mother's suffering grew into a symbol in my mind, gathering to itself all the poverty, the ignorance, the helplessness; the painful, baffling, hunger-ridden days and hours; the restless moving, the futile seeking, the uncertainty, the fear, the dread; the meaningless pain and the endless suffering. Her life set the emotional tone of my life, colored the men and women I was to meet in the future, conditioned my relation to events that had not yet happened, determined my attitude to situations and circumstances I had yet to face. A somberness of spirit that I was never to lose settled over me during the slow years of my mother's unrelieved suffering, a somberness that was to make me stand apart and look upon excessive joy with suspicion, that was to make me keep forever on the move, as though to escape a nameless fate seeking to overtake me. At the age of twelve, before I had one year of formal schooling, I had a conception of life that no experience would ever erase, a predilection for what was real that no argument could ever gainsay, a sense of the world that was mine and mine alone, a notion as to what life meant that no education could ever alter, a conviction that the meaning of living came only when one was struggling to wring a meaning out of meaningless suffering. At the age of twelve I had an attitude toward life that was to endure, that was to make me seek those areas of living that would keep it alive, that was to make me skeptical of everything while seeking everything, tolerant of all and yet critical. The spirit I had caught gave me insight into the sufferings of others, made me gravitate toward those whose feelings were like my own, made me sit for hours while others told me of their lives, made me strangely tender and cruel, violent and peaceful. It made me want to drive coldly to the heart of every question and it open to the core of suffering I knew I would find there. It made me love burrowing into psychology, into realistic and naturalistic fiction and art, into those whirlpools of politics that had the power to claim the whole of men's souls. It directed my loyalties to the side of men in rebellion; it made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.
Age | Argument | Awe | Circumstances | Education | Events | Experience | Fate | Feelings | Heart | Insight | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Men | Pain | Politics | Power | Question | Sense | Spirit | Suffering | Wonder | World | Fate |
All gaming, since it implies a desire to profit at the expense of others, involves a breach of the tenth commandment.
Desire |
There is no reason to suppose that people today feel less than their grandfathers, but there is good reason to think that they are less able to read in a way which makes them feel. It is natural for them to blame books rather than themselves, and to demand fiction which is highly peppered, like a glutton whose palate is defective.
I am not able to instruct you. I can only tell that I have chosen wrong. I have passed my time in study without experience; in the attainment of sciences which can, for the most part, be but remotely useful to mankind. I have purchased knowledge at the expense of all the common comforts of life: I have missed the endearing elegance of female friendship, and the happy commerce of domestic tenderness.
Attainment | Commerce | Elegance | Happy | Knowledge | Study | Time | Commerce |
Humor very often consists of shrewd perceptions about people. It's usually fun at someone's expense. Nowadays if you're funny at anybody's expense they run to the UN and say, I must have an ombudsman to protect me. You hardly dare have a shrewd perception about anybody.
Fun | Perception |
It is not as though Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law was a precept from which splendid fiction could not be drawn; it is rather that what these small-time rebels choose to do is so trivial, so cheap, and in the end, so dreary.
Robert Byrne, fully Robert Leo Byrne
Learning to dislike children at an early age saves a lot of expense and aggravation later in life.
Camera lies all the time. It's all it does is lie, because when you choose this moment instead of this moment, when you... the moment you've made a choice, you're lying about something larger. 'Lying' is an ugly word. I don't mean lying. But any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.
Sense |
Robert Service, fully Robert William Service
My Library - Like prim Professor of a College I primed my shelves with books of knowledge; And now I stand before them dumb, Just like a child that sucks its thumb, And stares forlorn and turns away, With dolls or painted bricks to play. They glour at me, my tomes of learning. You dolt! they jibe; you undiscerning Moronic oaf, you make a fuss, With highbrow swank selecting us; Saying: I'll read you all some day' - And now you yawn and turn away. Unwanted wait we with our store Of facts and philosophic lore; The scholarship of all the ages Snug packed within our uncut pages; The mystery of all mankind In part revealed - but you are blind. You have no time to read, you tell us; Oh, do not think that we are jealous Of all the trash that wins your favour, The flimsy fiction that you savour: We only beg that sometimes you Will spare us just an hour or two. For all the minds that went to make us Are dust if folk like you forsake us, And they can only live again By virtue of your kindling brain; In magic print they packed their best: Come - try their wisdom to digest… Said I: Alas! I am not able; I lay my cards upon the table, And with deep shame and blame avow I am too old to read you now; So I will lock you in glass cases And shun your sad, reproachful faces. My library is noble planned, Yet in it desolate I stand; And though my thousand books I prize, Feeling a witling in their eyes, I turn from them in weariness To wallow in the Daily Press. For, oh, I never, never will The noble field of knowledge till: I pattern words with artful tricks, As children play with painted bricks, And realize with futile woe, Nothing I know - nor want to know. My library has windowed nooks; And so I turn from arid books To vastitude of sea and sky, And like a child content am I With peak and plain and brook and tree, Crying: Behold! the books for me: Nature, be thou my Library!
Blame | Books | Children | Knowledge | Magic | Mystery | Play | Shame | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wisdom | Words | Child | Old | Think |
Since private and publick Vices, are in Reality, though not always apparently, so nearly connected, of how much Importance, how necessary is it, that the utmost Pains be taken by the Publick, to have the Principles of Virtue early inculcated on the Minds even of children, and the moral Sense kept alive, and that the wise institutions of our Ancestors for these great Purposes be encouraged by the Government. For no people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffusd and Virtue is preservd. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauchd in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.
Angus Wilson, fully Sir Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson
Envy is impotent, numbed with fear, never ceasing in its appetite, and it knows no gratification, but endless self-torment. It has the ugliness of a trapped rat, which gnaws its own foot in an effort to escape.
Confidence | Magic | People |
The search for a community reality takes the form of a massive rescue operation. I think this is the great adventure of our time, infinitely more valuable to man than the conquest of space. It represents the return and revival of ancient Gnosticism. For those who answer the call, what happens in the world of science, despite its place in politics still considerable governmental lose more existential sense. In their eyes, and many scientists will émoules archaic figure of clergy, liturgy professional absurd, busy exchanging knowledge, supposedly available to the public in the secret sanctuary of their church from the state.
I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being.
Balance | Influence | Mob | Moderation | Rest | Rule | Safe | Wise | Moderation | Think | Understand |