PatC > PatC's Quotes

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

“To the eternal “Opinions are like assholes—everybody’s got one,” I just say, “Yeah, but not everybody’s got ten thousand of them.” It distresses me that the wit of this riposte so often fails to impress the asshole I’m talking to.”
― Robert Christgau, Going into the City: Portrait of a Critic as a Young Man – A Love Story and Homage to Rock 'n' Roll's Transformative Power in New York

“One concept the non-old have trouble getting their minds around is the difference between taste and judgment. It's fine not to like almost anything, except maybe Al Green. That's taste, yours to do with as you please, critical deployment included. By comparison, judgment requires serious psychological calisthenics. But the fact that objectivity only comes naturally in math doesn't mean it can't be approximated in art.
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― Robert Christgau

“All lives are interesting – how interesting depends on the telling,”
― Robert Christgau

“His eye was caught by the iridescent back of a beetle that had been standing on the windowsill but that was now advancing steadily into his room. Two reddish purple stripes ran the length of its brilliant oval shell of green and gold. ...In the midst of time's dissolving whirlpool, how absurd that this tiny dot of richly concentrated brilliance should endure in a secure world of its own. ...At that moment, he almost persuaded himself that all its surroundings--leafy trees, blue sky, clouds, tiled roofs--were there purely to serve this beetle which in itself was the very hub, the very nucleus of the universe.”
― Yukio Mishima, Spring Snow

“Kuljeskelen täällä. En kyllästy tähän. Eikä minun pitäisikään - tämä sopii minulle niin hyvin. Jumaloin tätä paikkaa. Minulla ei ole pienintäkään halua luopua tästä. -Teistä olisi siis mieluisaa elää täällä?
-Luullakseni minusta olisi mieluisaa kuolla täällä.”
― Henry James, The Wings of the Dove