Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the de...ssert, a bit like meringue.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that ...increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation.... Tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Too often when you thought you'd be showered with confetti What they flung at you was a plate of hot spaghetti... You've put your fancy clothes and flashy gems in hock Yet you pause before your father's door afraid to knockLESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It always appeared to me that he estimated the compositions of Richardson too highly, and that he had an unreasonable prejudice ag...ainst Fielding. In comparing these two writers, he used this expression: "that there was as great a difference between them as between a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking at the dial plate." This was a short and figurative state of his distinction between drawing characters of nature and characters only of manners. But I cannot help being of opinion , that the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed as the large clocks of Richardson, and that his dial-plates are brighter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In comparing these two writers, he [Samuel Johnson] used this expression: "that there was as great a difference between them as be...tween a man who knew how a watch was made, and a man who could tell the hour by looking on the dial-plate." This was a short and a figurative statement of his distinction between drawing characters of nature and characters only of manners, but I cannot help being of opinion, that the neat watches of Fielding are as well constructed as the large clocks of Richardson, and that his dial plates are brighter.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
You don't know what you might be if you would look beyond the ball, the opera, the fashion-plate--and right over the heads of the ...perfumed, mustached bipeds who call themselves men and worship at your feet.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I sometimes have the sense that I live my life as a writer with my nose pressed against the wide, shiny plate glass window of the ..."mainstream" culture. The world seems full of straight, large-circulation, slick periodicals which wouldn't think of reviewing my book and bookstores which will never order it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »