The Art of X-Ray Reading Quotes

“Oceanus,”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“dramatis personae,”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“work,”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“view.”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“shouldn’t”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“maelstrom”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“Hagar.”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“monomaniacal”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“WRITING”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“detritus”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“valley”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“BITTERNESS”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“each element in the room is an agent assigned to drive Emma to madness.”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“The stove smokes, the door squeaks, the walls sweat, and the floor is cold and damp.”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“Each part of the room seems noxious, attacking and irritating”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“polysyllables”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“brevity”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“euphony”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“Saul”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“miasma”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“ludic”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“fecundity”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“myopia”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“But some day we may have a genuinely democratic government, a government which will want to tell people what is happening, and what must be done next, and what sacrifices are necessary, and why. —George Orwell, “Propaganda and Demotic Speech”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“Objective consideration of contemporary phenomena compels the conclusion that success or failure in competitive activities exhibits no tendency to be commensurate with innate capacity, but that a considerable element of the unpredictable must invariably be taken into account.”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. —Ecclesiastes 9:11, King James Version”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and, which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. —Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, on what happens to human beings during a state of war”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing

“there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. [justice of the peace] court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal. I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.”
― Roy Peter Clark, The Art of X-Ray Reading: How the Secrets of 25 Great Works of Literature Will Improve Your Writing