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What did Scottish poet William Soutar call an "assassin's cloak"?
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
45 times |
| Correct: |
7 times (9.9%) |
| Difficulty: |
really really difficult |
| Incorrect: |
38 times (53.5%) |
| Skipped: |
26 times (36.6%) |
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"It is hot, steamy and wet. It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: After a heavy rainfall, poems titled 'Rain' pour in from across the nation."
Who wrote this?
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
70 times |
| Correct: |
36 times (38.3%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
34 times (36.2%) |
| Skipped: |
24 times (25.5%) |
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Who commented on Marilyn Monroe's suicide with the words:
"The usual overdose. Poor silly creature."
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
421 times |
| Correct: |
160 times (34.6%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
261 times (56.4%) |
| Skipped: |
42 times (9.1%) |
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Who commented on the 1945 Hiroshima bomb drop with the words:
"The papers are full of the atomic bomb which is going to revolutionize everything and blow us all to buggery. Not a bad idea."
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
57 times |
| Correct: |
32 times (39.0%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
25 times (30.5%) |
| Skipped: |
25 times (30.5%) |
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Who wrote this, after a visit to Jane Austen's home?
"I put my hand down on Jane's desk and bring it up covered with dust. Oh that some of her genius might rub off on me! One would have imagined the devoted female custodian going round with her duster at least every other day."
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
76 times |
| Correct: |
18 times (17.6%) |
| Difficulty: |
very difficult |
| Incorrect: |
58 times (56.9%) |
| Skipped: |
26 times (25.5%) |
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Whose impending marriage prompted the following exchange with his mother -- to whom he had just explained that neither she, nor certain other members of his family, had the least clue as to how he ticked inside -- and the subsequent ruminations?
"'So no one understands you,' my mother said. 'I suppose I am a stranger to you too, and your father as well. So we all want only what is bad for you.'
'Certainly, you are all strangers to me, we are related only by blood, but that never shows itself. Of course you don't want what is bad for me.'
Through this and several other observations of myself I have come to believe that there are possibilities in my ever-increasing inner decisiveness and conviction which may enable me to pass the test of marriage in spite of everything, and even to steer it in a direction favorable to my development. Of course, to a certain extent this is a belief that I grasp at when I am already on the window sill."
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
48 times |
| Correct: |
19 times (25.7%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
29 times (39.2%) |
| Skipped: |
26 times (35.1%) |
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Who wrote this?
"(W)hy is poetry wholly an elderly taste? When I was twenty I could not for the life of me read Shakespeare for pleasure; now it lights me as I walk to think I have two acts of King John tonight, and shall next read Richard the Second. It is poetry that I want now -- long poems. I want the concentration and the romance, and the words all glued together, fused, glowing; having no time to waste any more on prose. When I was twenty I liked Eighteenth Century prose; now it's poetry I want, so I repeat like a tipsy sailor in the front of a public house."
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
65 times |
| Correct: |
28 times (30.8%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
37 times (40.7%) |
| Skipped: |
26 times (28.6%) |
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Who celebrated her first successes as published writer with these words?
"1 A.M. Face it kid, you've had a hell of a lot of good breaks. No Elizabeth Taylor, maybe. No child Hemingway, but god, you are growing up. In other words, you've come a long way from the ugly introvert you were only five years ago. Pats on the back in order? O.K., tan, tall, blondish, not half bad. And brains, 'intuitiveness' in one direction at least. You get along with a great many different kinds of people. Under the same roof, close living, even. You have nor real worries about snobbishness, pride, or a swelled head. You are willing to work. Hard, too. You have willpower and are getting to be practical about living -- and also you are getting published. So you got a good right to write all you want. Four acceptances in three months -- $500 Mille, $25, $20 Seventeen, $4.50 Christian Science Monitor (from caviar to peanuts, I like it all the way)."
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
164 times |
| Correct: |
83 times (41.5%) |
| Difficulty: |
medium |
| Incorrect: |
81 times (40.5%) |
| Skipped: |
36 times (18.0%) |
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British journalist Harold Nicolson (the husband of Vita Sackville-West) had this to say about his last day at the newspaper he ceased to work for in 1931:
"I have learnt much in this place. I have learnt that shallowness is the supreme evil. I have learnt that rapidity, hustle and rush are the allies of superficiality. My fastidiousness has been increased and with it a loathing of the uneducated. I have come to believe that the gulf between the educated and the uneducated is wider than that between the classes and the more galling to the opposite side. I have not been popular in the office. I make perfunctory farewells. As I leave the building I shake my shoes symbolically."
Which newspaper was he talking about?
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
37 times |
| Correct: |
20 times (31.3%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
17 times (26.6%) |
| Skipped: |
27 times (42.2%) |
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"Thoughts are impurities. That's why they start up in winter."
Who said this?
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
49 times |
| Correct: |
16 times (21.3%) |
| Difficulty: |
difficult |
| Incorrect: |
33 times (44.0%) |
| Skipped: |
26 times (34.7%) |
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"Proof of the whole book came. It reads better than I expected. Not a bit sensational, but simple and true, for we really lived most of it, and if it succeeds that will be the reason of it. Mr. Niles likes it better now, and says some girls who have read the manuscript say it is 'splendid!' As it is for them, they are the best critics, so I should be satisified."
Who wrote this -- and about what book?
(Hint: The Mr. Niles mentioned in the quote is a publisher.)
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
311 times |
| Correct: |
205 times (48.7%) |
| Difficulty: |
medium |
| Incorrect: |
106 times (25.2%) |
| Skipped: |
110 times (26.1%) |
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Who made this comment on the technical progress enabling people to come up with ever new methods of transportation and travel?
"When they have managed to get travellers comfortably seated inside a cannon so that they can be shot off like bullets in any given direction civilisation will doubtless have taken a great step forward. We are making rapid strides towards that happy time when space will have been abolished; but they will never abolish boredom, especially when you consider the ever increasing need for some occupation to fill in our time, part of which, at least, used to be spent in travelling."
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
55 times |
| Correct: |
11 times (13.9%) |
| Difficulty: |
very difficult |
| Incorrect: |
44 times (55.7%) |
| Skipped: |
24 times (30.4%) |
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Who remarked, upon having read Nicholas Nickleby (albeit on the eve of WWII):
"How unreal Dickens is! Jazz-band sentimentality."
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see if you know the answer
| Answered: |
60 times |
| Correct: |
8 times (8.8%) |
| Difficulty: |
really really difficult |
| Incorrect: |
52 times (57.1%) |
| Skipped: |
31 times (34.1%) |
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