Quote

“No science without fancy. No art without facts” (Vladimir Nabokov, via Carlos Martinez del Rio)

Quote

“Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that you’d think the mere fact of existing would keep us all in a contented dazzlement of surprise.” Lewis Thomas in Lives of a Cell (HT Skeeter Leard)

Quote of the day

“You must surrender yourself first to extravagance. Poverty is apt to strike suddenly like influenza, and it is well to have a few memories of extravagance in store for bad times.” – Graham Greene

Quote

“I’m just about to junk the whole left/ right taxonomy as useless and indeed an active impediment to thought and action. Why should we be dominated by a political labeling system based on where people sat in the Constituent Assembly in Versailles in 1789…?” – Alexander Cockburn

Quote

Brad has reminded me of the late great impossible Barry Hannah. An almost random quote (sometimes I think he wrote only quotable phrases): “Walthall bought an ancient Jaguar sedan for nothing, and when it ran, smelling like Britain on the skids or the glove of a soiled duke…”

Quote

Something sent by Teddy Moritz, who read it in a book called Defending Jacob, though the quote itself is from the 1921 textbook A General Theory of Human Violence. Despite its seriousness and truth there is just a bit of an air of Wodehouse in the language… “Let us be practical in our expectations of …

Read more

Quote

“Work that does not lead directly to food should be forbidden in fall.” – Carlos Martinez del Rio

Quote

“What passes for optimism is most often the effect of an intellectual error.”– Raymond Aron