Robin Helweg-Larsen > Robin's Quotes

“The accursed power which stands on privilege( and goes with women, champagne and bridge)
Broke - and democracy resumed her reign ( which goes with bridge and women and champagne.”
― Hilaire Belloc

“Poetry helps us to suffer more efficiently,”
― C.D. Wright, Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.”
― Ira Glass

“What is truth? For the multitude, that which it continually reads and hears.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West, Vol 2: Perspectives of World History

“Through money, democracy becomes its own destroyer, after money has destroyed intellect.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West

“The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West

“Socialism is nothing but the capitalism of the lower classes.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Hour of Decision

“Time, that is intolerant
Of the brave and innocent,
And indifferent in a week
To a beautiful physique,

Worships language, and forgives
Everyone by whom it lives;
Pardons cowardice, conceit,
Lays its honours at his feet.

Time, that with this strange excuse,
Pardons Kipling and his views,
And will pardon Paul Claudel,
Pardons him for writing well.”
― W.H. Auden

“For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length--and there I travel looking, looking breathlessly.”
― Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge