Franceska: I was happy in the life I built up for myself. I put a fine high wall of music around me and nothing could touch me. I ...was safe and secure. And then you had to come along and knock it all down and I hate you for that. Maxwell: On the contrary, you love me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Darwin was, like Copernicus, a one-idea man. Each had his "nuclear inspiration" early in life, and spent the rest of his life work...ing it out--the ratio of inspiration to perspiration being heavily in favor of the second. Both lacked the many-sidedness, that universality of interest and amazing multitude of achievement in unrelated fields of research which characterised Kepler, Newton, Descartes, Franklin, Faraday, Maxwell, and hundreds of lesser but equally versatile geniuses. It is perhaps no coincidence that both Darwin and Copernicus, after the decisive turning point when their course was set, led a life of duty, devotion to task, rigorous self-discipline, and spiritual desiccation. It looks as if the artesian wells of their inspiration had been replaced by a mechanical water supply kept under pressure by sheer power of will.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
They live (when they live) in fear of blinding, of burning, of choking under a... mushroom cloud in the year of the roach. And they want (like us) the eternity of today, they want this fear to be struck out at once....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Obviously, where art has it over life is in the matter of editing. Life can be seen to suffer from a drastic lack of editing. It s...tops too quick, or else it goes on too long. Worse, its pacing is erratic. Some chapters are little more than a few sentences in length, while others stretch into volumes. Life, for all its raw talent, has little sense of structure. It creates amazing textures, but it can't be counted on for snappy beginnings or good endings either. Indeed, in many cases no ending is provided at all. The kind of work that Maxwell Perkins did for Thomas Wolfe, or more recently, that Verna Fields did for Stephen Spielberg, doesn't get done in life. Even in a literary age like the nineteenth century it never occurred to anyone to posit God as Editor, useful as the metaphor might have been.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the night I dreamed of trout-fishing; and, when at length I awoke, it seemed a fable that this painted fish swam there so near ...my couch, and rose to our hooks the last evening, and I doubted if I had not dreamed it all. So I arose before dawn to test its truth, while my companions were still sleeping. There stood Ktaadn with distinct and cloudless outline in the moonlight; and the rippling of the rapids was the only sound to break the stillness. Standing on the shore, I once more cast my line into the stream, and found the dream to be real and the fable true. The speckled trout and silvery roach, like flying-fish, sped swiftly through the moonlight air, describing bright arcs on the dark side of Ktaadn, until moonlight, now fading into daylight, brought satiety to my mind, and the minds of my companions, who had joined me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Whenever there's a big war coming on, you should rope off a big field. And on the big day, you should take all the kings and their... cabinets and their generals, put 'em in the center dressed in their underpants and let them fight it out with clubs. The best country wins.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Kemmerick: He's dead. He's dead. Katczinsky: Why did you risk your life bringing him in?... Kemmerick: But it's Behm. My friend. Katczinsky: It's a corpse, no matter who it is.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I don't want to shoot any Englishmen. I never saw one 'til I came up here. But I suppose most of them never saw a German 'til they... came up here.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Oh, God, why do they do this to us? We only wanted to live, you and I. Why should they send us out to fight each other? If we thre...w away these rifles and these uniforms, you could be my brother.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »