Bryan--The Bee’s Knees

“Where misunderstanding serves others as an advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood”
― Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society

“It offends me that a man can master the Devil, but not the Portuguese language.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition

“The right to express our thoughts, however, means something only if we are able to have thoughts of our own; freedom from external authority is a lasting gain only if the inner psychological conditions are such that we are able to establish our own individuality.”
― Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom

“I wonder whether certain dreadful events, of the sort this picture is full of, are not so incalculably rich in the possibilities of moral and aesthetic blackmail that they can never be represented maturely or even un-deceitfully, and so had better not be represented at all...Indeed, few films ever made have so vigorously seized the spectator by the throat and so implacably insisted, with one unprincipled bang over the head after another, that he turn himself into the wildest animal possible, and mistrust and hate with all his might any lingering question which troubles him about his obligations to do so.”
― James Agee, Agee on Film, Vol. 1: Essays and Reviews