The world is eaten up by boredom.... You can't see it all at once. It is like dust. You go about and never notice, you breathe it ...in, you eat and drink it. It is sifted so fine, it doesn't even grit on your teeth. But stand still for an instant and there it is, coating your face and hands. To shake off this drizzle of ashes you must be for ever on the go. And so people are always "on the go."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A novel which survives, which withstands and outlives time, does do something more than merely survive. It does not stand still. I...t accumulates round itself the understanding of all these persons who bring to it something of their own. It acquires associations, it becomes a form of experience in itself, so that two people who meet can often make friends, find an approach to each other, because of this one great common experience they have had ...LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Run fast, stand still. This, the lesson from lizards. For all writers. Observe almost any survival creature, you see the same. Jum...p, run, freeze. In the ability to flick like an eyelash, crack like a whip, vanish like steam, here this instant, gone the next--life teems the earth. And when that life is not rushing to escape, it is playing statues to do the same. See the hummingbird, there, not there. As thought arises and blinks off, so this thing of summer vapor; the clearing of a cosmic throat, the fall of a leaf. And where it was--a whisper. What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping. In between the scurries and flights, what? Be a chameleon, ink- blend, chromosome change with the landscape. Be a pet rock, lie with the dust, rest in the rainwater in the filled barrel by the drainspout outside your grandparents' window long ago.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When a friend calls to me from the road And slows his horse to a meaning walk,... I don't stand still and look around On all the hills I haven't hoed....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
America does not concern itself now with Impressionism. We own no involved philosophy. The psyche of the land is to be found in it...s movement. It is to be felt as a dramatic force of energy and vitality. We move; we do not stand still. We have not yet arrived at the stock-taking stage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He had been a lad of whom something was expected. Beyond this all had been chaos. That he would be successful in an original way, ...or that he would go to the dogs in an original way, seemed equally probable. The only absolute certainty about him was that he would not stand still in the circumstances amid which he was born.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Would it be possible to stand still on one spot more majestically--while simulating a triumphant march forward--than it is done by... the two English Houses of Parliament?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usuall...y means that thereafter we stand still.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Ah, Faustus, Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,... And then thou must be damned perpetually! Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease and midnight never come! Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again and make Perpetual day; or let this hour be but A year, a month, a week, a natural day, That Faustus may repent and save his soul!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »