Louise, something in me tightens when an American intellectual's eyes shine, and they start to talk to me about the Russian people.... Something in me says, Watch it, a new version of Irish Catholicism is being offered for your faith.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The wise screen writer is he who wears his second-best suit, artistically speaking, and doesn't take things too much to heart. He ...should have a touch of cynicism, but only a touch. The complete cynic is as useless to Hollywood as he is to himself. He should do the best he can without straining at it. He should be scrupulously honest about his work, but he should not expect scrupulous honesty in return. He won't get it. And when he has had enough, he should say goodbye with a smile, because for all he knows he may want to go back.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Russian forests crash down under the axe, billions of trees are dying, the habitations of animals and birds are layed waste, river...s grow shallow and dry up, marvelous landscapes are disappearing forever.... Man is endowed with creativity in order to multiply that which has been given him; he has not created, but destroyed. There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
An enormously vast field lies between "God exists" and "there is no God." The truly wise man traverses it with great difficulty. A... Russian knows one or the other of these two extremes, but is not interested in the middle ground. He usually knows nothing, or very little.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In Western Europe people perish from the congestion and stifling closeness, but with us it is from the spaciousness.... The expans...es are so great that the little man hasn't the resources to orient himself.... This is what I think about Russian suicides.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
[Ognev] recalled endless, heated, purely Russian arguments, when the wranglers, spraying spittle and banging their fists on the ta...ble, fail to understand yet interrupt one another, themselves not even noticing it, contradict themselves with every phrase, change the subject, then, having argued for two or three hours, begin to laugh.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Watching a woman make Russian pancakes, you might think that she was calling on the spirits or extracting from the batter the phil...osopher's stone.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
...the worst horror of the Russian Revolution was the letting loose of one hundred million orators, for their passion for talk was... immediately responsible for all the other horrors ...Oratory prevented Russia from becoming a constitutional country. Oratory tore the Revolution from the patriots and gave it into the bloody hands of the mob. Oratory murdered the Czar, his wife, and their innocent children. Oratory almost wiped out the educated classes. Oratory held the stupid populace spellbound while the Germans invaded the country, boosted Lenine [sic] into power, and paved the way for the treaty of Brest-Litovsk. I never want to hear any more oratory as long as I live.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The great leading distinction between writing and speaking is, that more time is allowed for the one than the other, and hence dif...ferent faculties are required for, and different objects attained by each. He is properly the best speaker who can collect together the greatest number of apposite ideas at a moment's warning; he is properly the best writer who can give utterance to the greatest quantity of valuable knowledge in the course of his whole life. The chief requisite for the one, then, appears to be quickness and facility of perception--for the other, patience of soul and a power increasing with the difficulties it has to master. He cannot be denied to be an expert speaker, a lively companion, who is never at a loss for something to say on every occasion or subject that offers. He, by the same rule, will make a respectable writer who, by dint of study, can find out anything good to say upon any one point that has not yet been touched upon before, or who by asking for time, can give the most complete and comprehensive view of any question. The one must be done off-hand, at a single blow; the other can only be done by a repetition of blows, by having time to think and do better.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »