Michael Dirda Quotes
Once we know the plot and its surprises, we can appreciate a book's artistry without the usual confusion and sap flow of emotion, content to follow the action with tenderness and interest, all passion spent. Rather than surrender to the story or the characters - as a good first reader ought - we can now look at how the book works, and instead of swooning over it like a besotted lover begin to appreciate its intricacy and craftmanship. Surprisingly, such dissection doesn't murder the experience. Just the opposite: Only then does a work of art fully live.
Michael Dirda
Quotes to Explore
Some people ask me, Do they put aging makeup on you? It's just this very nice street makeup.
Frances Conroy
I've always dreamed of having an album. The problem is that it's just very difficult to make an album nowadays because through technology, music shifts so fast, especially electronic music. Once you make five songs, the first one you did is already old and you wished you would have put it out right away. So that's kind of the difficult part.
Anton Zaslavski
Because I was a diminutive, arty kid, I felt like a misfit in high school - but who doesn't?
Garry Trudeau
When you leave New York, you are astonished at how clean the rest of the world is. Clean is not enough.
Fran Lebowitz
When James Bond gets old, you get rid of him and bring a new James Bond in.
Irwin Winkler
I had a lot of alone time with no brothers or sisters running around, or anything. I would just sit and imagine things, all the time.
Karen Gillan
I used to be able to think. My brain's circuits were all connected, and I had spark, a quickness of mind that let me function well in the world.
Floyd Skloot
I've decided to recast myself as Utopian. I like this landscape of the M25 and Heathrow. I like airfreight offices and rent-a-car bureaus. I like dual carriageways. When I see a CCTV camera, I know I'm safe.
J. G. Ballard
I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God, who assisted him, shall be with me and aid me, I must fail; but if the same omniscient mind and almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail - I shall succeed.
Abraham Lincoln
I was just a goofy little funny kid, who was always getting sent to the principal. It wasn't serious because I was smart. I wasn't like a true troublemaker, just rambunctious - like, talkative and trying to be funny. That was me in middle-school.
J. Cole
We all have our painful pasts we have to get through.
Valerie Bertinelli
At school I used to avoid dance lessons. They were the worst.
Kate Winslet
I have chosen this job. If I didn't like it, I would have chosen something else. I can't go out and say that 'I don't like it.'
Disha Patani
La de couverte d'un mets nouveau fait plus pour le bonheur du genre humain que la de couverte d'une e toile. The discoveryof a newdish doesmore for thehappiness of mankind than the discovery of a star.
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
One professor in college told me flat out I wasn't good enough to enter the creative writing program. I saved that letter and promised myself I would send it back to her when my first book came out.
Ellen Potter
Media people should have long noses like an elephant to smell out politicians, mayors, prime ministers and businessmen. We need to know the reality, the good and the bad, not just the appearance.
Dalai Lama
Once we know the plot and its surprises, we can appreciate a book's artistry without the usual confusion and sap flow of emotion, content to follow the action with tenderness and interest, all passion spent. Rather than surrender to the story or the characters - as a good first reader ought - we can now look at how the book works, and instead of swooning over it like a besotted lover begin to appreciate its intricacy and craftmanship. Surprisingly, such dissection doesn't murder the experience. Just the opposite: Only then does a work of art fully live.
Michael Dirda
