books

"No, I didn't read the budget. I hired people to read the budget. You read the budget? Well, yeah. It's the difference between somebody who's in Congress and somebody who's a governor."

"If this nation is to be wise as well as strong, if we are to achieve our destiny, then we need more new ideas for more wise men reading more good books in more public libraries. These libraries should…"

"was a quotation of, taken out of Robert Musil's novel 'Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften'; how do you translate it in English? 'The Man without qualities', I think – the most important book of the 20th cent…"

"You could spend a lifetime reading in here."

"I remember reading an article about Frasier when it was going off the air – a very sad obituary from a TV writer who said that Frasier was such a smart show, and it was for the Mensa set. And he gave …"

"I have read your book and its terrible documentation with deepest emotion. I cannot describe the mixed feeling of abhorrence and loathing which has filled my heart while perusing these records of huma…"

"The elaborate argument against the constitutionality of the Act if interpreted as we read it, in accordance with its obvious meaning does not need an elaborate answer."

"Pedagogical Sketchbook, by Paul Klee in texts and images, 1925"

"The idea of a news broadcast once was to find someone with information and broadcast it. The idea now is to find someone with ignorance and spread it around."

"I'm passing through the world invisibly. Even when people see or speak to me it's as if I didn't exist, as if I had no right to exist. I tread across their lands and they don't see me. I act and act a…"

"If none of us ever read a book that was "dangerous," had a friend who was "different," or joined an organization that advocated "change," we would all be just the kind of people Joe McCarthy wants."

"What follows, then? That one had better put on gloves before reading the New Testament. The presence of so much filth makes it very advisable. One would as little choose early Christians for companion…"

"Many of the symbols, word-plays and secret patterns with which the novel abounds seem to be used out of sheer ebullience, as though the author was playing some sort of game with himself and did not mu…"

"Halfway through writing the book, I still had no title. It came wonderfully into being when I complimented my host at a party on his flourishing avocado plant. I said, I’d kept trying and failing with…"

"A good novelist, or so I have been taught in China, should be above all else tse ran, that is, natural, unaffected, and so flexible and variable as to be wholly at the command of the material that flo…"

"The sciences certainly have influenced the arts. To an Aztec, the sunset was an inexplicable event, which he could not cope with or even survive without the imagined aid of his gods. Obvious phenomena…"

"A reader told me recently, in London, said that 'well, I read that you write the last sentence first, so I always read your last sentence first.' And I said, 'oh, no, you're not supposed to do that.'"

"We're already in honk up to, above our ears. You can't continue to run these fiscal deficits. It has to be eliminated!"

"You have failed to consider the ramifications of the solutions and pose a problem that simply would not exist if you did. This taxes my patience, which is already legendary in its general absence."

"Phormio at The Perseus Digital Library"