David Smith > David's Quotes

“You seduced a young woman in order to be able to finish your talks with her. You could not do that without living with her. You could not live with her without seducing her; but that was the by-product. The point is that you can't otherwise talk. You can't finish talks at street corners; in museums; even in drawing-rooms. You mayn't be in the mood when she is in the mood – for the intimate conversation that means the final communion of your souls. You have to wait together – for a week, for a year, for a lifetime, before the final intimate conversation may be attained...and exhausted. So that...

That in effect was love.”
― Ford Madox Ford, Parade's End

“So many books, so little time.”
― Frank Zappa

“« Boris Nicolaïevitch, la démocratie, c'est bien, mais sans élections, c'est plus sûr »”
― Emmanuel Carrère, Limonov

“Buy an atlas and keep it by the bed—remember you can go anywhere.”
― Joanna Lumley

“I write because Africans and women and humans who have been considered less than others have always had stories and imaginations to take us out of the impossibility of the situations in which we have found ourselves stranded.”
― Sisonke Msimang, Always Another Country

“It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.”
― Voltaire, The Age of Louis XIV

“Hell is—other people!”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein