"All those words of praise they use for novels – spare, economical. Why should I shell out £17 for economical?"

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“Although I was too young to understand the theory of universal guilt, I was old enough to know which sex suffered migraine and which sex caused it.”

“I'm a Jewish Jane Austen.”

“He was as sentimental as Hitler about applause and crowds.”

“In the highly improbable event of his being asked to nominate the one most un-Jewish thing he could think of, Sefton Goldberg would have been hard pressed to decide between Nature – that's to say birds, trees, flowers, and country walks – and football – that's to say beer, bikies, mud, and physical pain.”

“In the matrimonial life of the Jewish male every day is Yom Kippur.”

Resonant Thoughts

"Let us be honest. Suppose a man came into this city and should meet a funeral procession, and say, “Who is dead?” and they should reply, “The son of a widow; her only support.” Suppose he should say t…"

— Robert G. Ingersoll

Law1833–1899

#family

"I like working with grown-up dancers much better, because there’s somebody to talk to at the airport when you’re delayed. In the middle of class, they hate me for it, but I always say, ‘What are you r…"

— Mark Morris (choreographer)

Entertainment1956

#books

"To limit the press is to insult a nation; to prohibit reading of certain books is to declare the inhabitants to be either fools or slaves: such a prohibition ought to fill them with disdain."

— Claude Adrien Helvétius

Philosophy1715–1771

#books

"I had read in the story-cube that the speed of light was a universal limit; that in a thousand years of experimentation—despite any number of false dawns—no one had ever managed to circumvent it. This…"

— Alastair Reynolds

Literature1966

#philosophy