Harry Mathews Quotes
Well, I had this little notion - I started writing when I was eleven, writing poetry. I was passionately addicted to it; it was my great refuge through adolescence.
Quotes to Explore
-
It is my own firm belief that the strength of the soul grows in proportion as you subdue the flesh.
-
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
-
When I dealt with set theory, I could never make it be the music that I wanted.
-
Master of the universe is every man's potential insight, cosmic potential.
-
When I write, I write for myself, and I have high expectations... so I'm just trying to meet those. I'm not going to distract myself with other people's expectations.
-
Vikings were pretty brutal, but also very educated people. They were salesmen, businessmen who started raiding when business wasn't good. That's why they had such great boats.
-
The people have nothing to fear of me; people have never feared me.
-
Nothing is so boring as having to keep up a deception.
-
My mother always told me not to handle a buffalo by its tail, but always catch it by its horns. And I have used that lesson in everything in my life, including the Railways.
-
I don't have bad taste; I have no taste. I wear a lot of the things I wore in high school, but not the cowl-neck sweaters. I was never tall, and I am the same size, so I still wear a lot of those clothes.
-
We shared our father with the world.
-
I just don't think I've ever been comfortable at public functions and selling myself as an entity.
-
You have to love your children unselfishly. That's hard. But it's the only way.
-
It's not refreshing where there is confusion or any kind of discomfort in a group that has to work that closely together.
-
L.A. is my office. I come here for work and work only.
-
In the 1920s, big names in the Arab world spoke of Scheherazade as an example for intellectuals fighting for their rights. She was a fighter for the right of free expression.
-
Better were it to be unborn than ill-bred.
-
To be of no church is dangerous. Religion, of which the rewards are distant, and which is animated only by faith and hope, will glide by degrees out of the mind unless it be invigorated and reimpressed by external ordinances, by stated calls to worship, and the salutary influence of example.
-
Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours.
-
I went to school in California, at Stanford when I was seventeen, and I lived in San Francisco until I was twenty-three, and then I lived in Hungary for, like, a summer, and then I went to Iowa for three years. At Iowa, I actually did the fiction program, not poetry. I was a fiction writer for a long time before I was 'out' as a poet.
-
The conclusion that I have come to is that actually, no religion, whether it's Islam, Christianity or any idea based on scripture or texts, is a religion of 'anything,' really.
-
The genius of a good leader is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully.
-
Well, I had this little notion - I started writing when I was eleven, writing poetry. I was passionately addicted to it; it was my great refuge through adolescence.
