Rahul Kanakia > Rahul's Quotes

“Frey, James, How to Write a Damn Good Novel. Helpful emphasis on the three C’s of Premise: character, conflict, and conclusion; useful throughout. One of the damn best books on the subject.”
― Renni Browne, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print

“I left, stifling my generous impulse, for I have often observed that while a charitable act may do no harm to the benefactor, it is death to the one who receives it.”
― Honoré de Balzac, The Human Comedy: Selected Stories

“Stein, Sol, Stein on Writing. Perhaps the best book ever written on the overall craft of fiction. Straightforward, practical, easily absorbed.”
― Renni Browne, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print

“Did he live in a false world, a world that had grown simply to suit him, and was his present slight irritation—in the face now of Jim's silence in particular—but the alarm of the vain thing menaced by the touch of the real?”
― Henry James, The Wings of the Dove + The Ambassadors + What Maisie Knew + The Turn of the Screw:

“I’d imagined that just because he was so good-looking, he must be extra good inside too. See, that’s the thing about our species. We can kind of tell the difference between looks and personality, but only kind of. We’re always getting the two things mixed up in our heads, even when we know better.”
― Sonya Mukherjee, Gemini

“If you're a rational being, don't make such ridiculous excuses. Habit! If I was to get a habit (as you call it) of walking on the ceiling, like the flies, I should hear enough of it, I daresay. It appeared so probable that such a habit might be attended with some degree of notoriety, that Mr Chick didn't venture to dispute the position. 'Bow-wow-wow!”
― Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son

“It would seem as if there never was a book written, or a story told, expressly with the object of keeping boys on shore, which did not lure and charm them to the ocean, as a matter of course.”
― Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son

“When they see some base wretches like themselves ensnaring, enslaving, oppressing, whipping, starving with hunger, and cruelly torturing and murdering some of the poor helpless part of mankind, they would think no harm in it, they would do the same. Perhaps the Greeks and Romans, and other crowds of barbarous nations have done so before; they can make that a precedent, and think no harm in it, they would still do the same, and worse than any barbarous nations ever did before; and if they look backwards and forwards they can find no better precedent, ancient or modern, than that which is wicked, mean, brutish, and base.”
― Quobna Ottobah Cugoano, Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery: And Other Writings

“Every advantage appeared to be on the side of the white faction: the authority of established government; an army of an hundred and twenty thousand soldiers, against a sixth part of that number; and the presence and merit of the caliph Mervan, the fourteenth and last of the house of Ommiyah. Before his accession to the throne, he had deserved, by his Georgian warfare, the honourable epithet of the ass of Mesopotamia;27 and he might have been ranked among the greatest princes, had not, says Abulfeda, the eternal order decreed that moment for the ruin of his family: a decree against which all human prudence and fortitude must struggle in vain.”
― Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 3: 1185-1453

“The luxury of the caliphs, so useless to their private happiness, relaxed the nerves, and terminated the progress, of the Arabian empire. Temporal and spiritual conquest had been the sole occupation of the first successors of Mahomet; and, after supplying themselves with the necessaries of life, the whole revenue was scrupulously devoted to that salutary work. The Abbassides were impoverished by the multitude of their wants and their contempt of œconomy. Instead of pursuing the great object of ambition, their leisure, their affections, the powers of their mind, were diverted by pomp and pleasure; the rewards of valour were embezzled by women and eunuchs, and the royal camp was encumbered by the luxury of the palace.”
― Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 3: 1185-1453

“The discipline of a soldier is formed by exercise rather than by study; the talents of a commander are appropriated to those calm though rapid minds, which nature produces to decide the fate of armies and nations: the former is the habit of a life, the latter the glance of a moment; and the battles won by lessons of tactics may be numbered with the epic poems created from the rules of criticism.”
― Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 3: 1185-1453

“The Christians affirmed that their inalienable title to the promised land had been sealed by the blood of their divine Saviour: it was their right and duty to rescue their inheritance from the unjust possessors, who profaned his sepulchre and oppressed the pilgrimage of his disciples. Vainly would it be alleged that the pre-eminence of Jerusalem and the sanctity of Palestine have been abolished with the Mosaic law; that the God of the Christians is not a local deity; and that the recovery of Bethlehem or Calvary, his cradle or his tomb, will not atone for the violation of the moral precepts of the gospel. Such arguments glance aside from the leaden shield of superstition; and the religious mind will not easily relinquish its hold on the sacred ground of mystery and miracle.”
― Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 3: 1185-1453

“By the Venetians, the use of gunpowder was communicated without reproach to the sultans of Egypt and Persia, their allies against the Ottoman power; the secret was soon propagated to the extremities of Asia; and the advantage of the European was confined to his easy victories over the savages of the new world. If we contrast the rapid progress of this mischievous discovery with the slow and laborious advances of reason, science, and the arts of peace, a philosopher, according to his temper, will laugh or weep at the folly of mankind.”
― Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire 3: 1185-1453

“The knowledge of our own family from a remote period will be always esteemed as an abstract pre-eminence since it can never be promiscuously enjoyed, but the longest series of peasants and mechanics would not afford much gratification to the pride of their descendant. We wish to discover our ancestors, but we wish to discover them possessed of ample fortunes, adorned with honourable titles, and holding an eminent rank in the class of hereditary nobles, which has been maintained for the wisest and most beneficial purposes, in almost every climate of the globe, and in almost every form of political society.”
― Edward Gibbon, Memoirs of My Life

“I do not understand what you mean by “success;”’ said Mr. Knightley. ‘Success supposes endeavour. Your time has been properly and delicately spent, if you have been endeavouring for the last four years to bring about this marriage. A worthy employment for a young lady’s mind! But if, which I rather imagine, your making the match, as you call it, means only your planning it, your saying to yourself one idle day, “I think it would be a very good thing for Miss Taylor if Mr. Weston were to marry her,” and saying it again to yourself every now and then afterwards,—why do you talk of success? where is your merit?—what are you proud of?—you made a lucky guess; and that is all that can be said.”
― Jane Austen, Emma

“Few ideologies have won enough prominence to survive the hard competitive struggle of persuasion, and only two have come out on top and essentially defeated all others: the ideology which interprets history as an economic struggle of classes, and the other that interprets history as a natural fight of races.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“It’s all so simple.’ She referred to a matter that was a perpetual source of bewilderment to her—the extraordinary incapacity of the human race, in a world where the good is so unmistakably divided from the bad, of distinguishing one from the other, and embodying what ought to be done in a few large, simple Acts of Parliament, which would, in a very short time, completely change the lot of humanity.”
― Virginia Woolf, Night and Day

“The success of totalitarian movements among the masses meant the end of two illusions of democratically ruled countries in general and of European nation-states and their party system in particular. The first was that the people in its majority had taken an active part in government and that each individual was in sympathy with one’s own or somebody else’s party. On the contrary, the movements showed that the politically neutral and indifferent masses could easily be the majority in a democratically ruled country, that therefore a democracy could function according to rules which are actively recognized by only a minority. The second democratic illusion exploded by the totalitarian movements was that these politically indifferent masses did not matter, that they were truly neutral and constituted no more than the inarticulate backward setting for the political life of the nation. Now they made apparent what no other organ of public opinion had ever been able to show, namely, that democratic government had rested as much on the silent approbation and tolerance of the indifferent and inarticulate sections of the people as on the articulate and visible institutions and organizations of the country. Thus when the totalitarian movements invaded Parliament with their contempt for parliamentary government, they merely appeared inconsistent: actually, they succeeded in convincing the people at large that parliamentary majorities were spurious and did not necessarily correspond to the realities of the country, thereby undermining the self-respect and the confidence of governments which also believed in majority rule rather than in their constitutions.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

“Sometimes Vinnie wonders why any woman ever gets into bed with any man. To take off all your clothes and lie down beside some unclothed larger person is a terribly risky business. The odds are stacked almost as heavily against you as in the New York state lottery. He could hurt you; he could laugh at you; he could take one look at your naked aging body and turn away in ill-concealed, embarrassed distaste. He could turn out to be awkward, selfish, inept—even totally incompetent. He could have some peculiar sexual hangup: a fixation on your underclothes to the exclusion of you, for instance, or on one sexual variation to the exclusion of all else. The risks are so high that really no woman in her right mind would take such a chance—except that when you do take such a chance you’re usually not in your right mind. And if you win, just as with the state lottery (which Vinnie also plays occasionally) the prize is so tremendous.”
― Alison Lurie, Foreign Affairs

“Though it has given her a livelihood and a reputation, not to mention these happy months in London, Vinnie has a bad conscience about her profession. The success of children’s literature as a field of study—her own success—has an unpleasant side to it. At times she feels as if she were employed in enclosing what was once open heath or common. First she helped to build a barbed-wire fence about the field; then she helped to pull apart the wildflowers that grow there in order to examine them scientifically. Ordinarily she comforts herself with the thought that her own touch is so light and respectful as to do little harm, but when she has to sit by and watch people like Maria Jones and Dr. Smithers dissecting the Queen Anne’s lace and wrenching the pink campion up by its roots, she feels contaminated by association.”
― Alison Lurie, Foreign Affairs

“The thing I learned in boarding school was how to be aesthetically unhappy. We weren’t depressed; we were melancholy, we were angst-ridden, we carried the weight of the world, we read Letters to a Young Poet and thought Rilke was talking to us. That narcissism now seems bizarre. It’s been years since I thought my problems were relevant or interesting to anyone besides myself.”
― Kim Magowan, THE LIGHT SOURCE

“It is only by unremitting effort that we can persist in being individuals in a society, instead of merely members of a disciplined crowd. Yet we remain members of the crowd, even when we succeed in being individuals.”
― T.S. Eliot, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture

“Do you know, I envy you that,’ Sir James said, as they continued walking at the rather brisk pace set by Dorothea. ‘I don’t quite understand what you mean.’ ‘Your power of forming an opinion. I can form an opinion of persons. I know when I like people. But about other matters, do you know, I have often a difficulty in deciding. One hears very sensible things said on opposite sides.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life

“It was too intolerable that Dorothea should be worshipping this husband: such weakness in a woman is pleasant to no man but the husband in question. Mortals are easily tempted to pinch the life out of their neighbour’s buzzing glory, and think that such killing is no murder.”
― George Eliot, Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life

“In American society we have perfected a remarkable form of censorship: to allow every one his political right to say what he believes, but to swamp his little boat with literally thousands of millions of newspapers, mass-circulation magazines, best-selling books, broadcasts, and public pronouncements that disregard what he says and give the official way of looking at things. Usually there is no conspiracy to do this; it is simply that what he says is not what people are talking about, it is not newsworthy.”
― Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society

“At the present moment, art cannot be said to make exigent demands upon the audience. That segment of our culture which is at all responsive to contemporary art is wholly permeable by it. The situation no longer obtains in which the experience of a contemporary work begins in resistance and proceeds by relatively slow stages to a comprehending or submissive admiration. The artist now can make scarcely anything which will prove really exigent to the audience, which will outrage its habitual sensibility. The audience likes or does not like, is pleased or not pleased—the faculty of ‘taste’ has re-established itself at the centre of the experience of art.”
― Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity

“It is the exceptional novelist today who would say of himself, as Henry James did, that he ‘loved the story as story’, by which James meant the story apart from any overt ideational intention it might have, simply as, like any primitive tale, it brings into play what he called ‘the blessed faculty of wonder’. Already in James’s day, narration as a means by which the reader was held spellbound, as the old phrase put it, had come under suspicion. And the dubiety grew to the point where Walter Benjamin could say some three decades ago that the art of story-telling was moribund. T. S. Eliot’s famous earlier statement, that the novel had reached its end with Flaubert and James, would seem to be not literally true; the novel does seem to persist in some sort of life. But we cannot fail to see how uneasy it is with the narrative mode, which once made its vital principle, and how its practitioners seek by one device or another to evade or obscure or palliate the act of telling.”
― Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity

“It is hard to believe that the declaration of antifascism is nowadays any more a mark of sufficient grace in a writer than a declaration against disease would be in a physician or a declaration against accidents would be in a locomotive engineer. The admirable intention in itself is not enough and criticism begins and does not end when the intention is declared.”
― Lionel Trilling, The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent: Selected Essays