“It’s important not to treat children too well–they won’t be able to compete in the real world. If you want your children to become television producers, for instance, or chief executives, it’s no use filling their little heads with ideas of trust and truth-telling and reliability. They’ll just end up being somebody’s secretary.” — Edward St. Aubyn, Mother’s Milk
“Looking after children can be a subtle way of giving up. They become the whole ones, the well ones, the postponement of happiness, the ones who won’t drink too much, give up, get divorced, become mentally ill. The part of oneself that’s fighting against decay and depression is transferred to guarding them from decay and depression. In the meantime one decays and gets depressed.” — Edward St. Aubyn, Mother’s Milk
“Most people wait for their parents to die with a mixture of tremendous sadness and plans for a new swimming pool.” — Edward St. Aubyn, Mother’s Milk
“In general babies live in a democracy of strangeness. Things happen for the first time all the time–what’s surprising is things happening again.” — Edward St. Aubyn, Mother’s Milk
“Once you got words you thought the world was everything that could be described, but it was also what couldn’t be described. In a way things were more prefect when you couldn’t describe anything.” — Edward St. Aubyn, Mother’s Milk
“Neither revenge nor forgiveness change what happened. They’re sideshows, of which forgiveness is the less attractive because it represents a collaboration with one’s persecutors.” – Edward St. Aubyn, Some Hope
“One seldom knows whether perseverance is noble or stupid until it’s too late.” – Edward St. Aubyn, Some Hope
“My experience of love is that you get excited thinking that someone can mend your broken heart, and then you get angry when you realize they can’t.” – Edward St. Aubyn, Some Hope
“I don’t know why people get so fixated on happiness, which always eludes them, when there are so many other invigorating experiences available, like rage, jealousy, disgust, and so forth.” – Edward St. Aubyn, Some Hope
“Perhaps identity was not a building for which one had to find foundations, but rather a series of impersonations held together by a central intelligence, an intelligence that knew the history of the impersonations and eliminated the distinction between action and acting.” – Edward St. Aubyn, Some Hope
“Suffering takes place while somebody else is eating.” – Edward St. Aubyn, Bad News
“Wittgenstein had said that the philosopher’s treatment of a question was like the treatment of a disease. But which treatment? Purging? Leeches? Antibiotics against the infection of language?” – Edward St. Aubyn, Never Mind
“No pain is too small if it hurts, but any pain is too small if it is cherished.” – Edward St. Aubyn, Never Mind
“What charm is: being malicious about everybody except the person you are with, who then glows with the privilege of exemption.” – Edward St. Aubyn, Never Mind
“Just as a novelist may sometimes wonder why he invents characters who do not exist and makes them do things which do not matter, so a philosopher may wonder why he invents cases that cannot occur in order to determine what must be the case.” – Edward St. Aubyn, Never Mind
“I have written books which I have had to write, but I have not yet written a book which others have to read.” – Edward St. Aubyn, Never Mind
“I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control.” – Henry Adams (quoted in Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative)
“There was once a time when there were but two persons in the world, Old Man and Old Woman. One time, when they were traveling about, Old Man met Old Woman, who said, ‘Now, let us come to an agreement of some kind; let us decide how the people shall live.’ ‘Well,’ said Old Man, ‘I am to have the first say in everything.’ To this Old Woman agreed, provided she had the second say. Then Old Man began, ‘The women are to tan the hides. When they do this, they are to rub brains on them to make them soft; they are to scrape them well with scraping tools, etc. But all this they are to do very quickly, for it will not be very hard work.’ ‘No, I will not agree to this,’ said Old Woman. ‘They must tan the hide in the way you say; but it must be made very hard work, and take a long time, so that the good workers may be found out.’ ‘Well,’ said Old Man, ‘let the people have eyes and mouths in their faces; but they shall be straight up and down.’ ‘No,’ said Old Woman, ‘we will not have them that way. We will have the eyes and mouth in the faces, as you say; but they shall all be set crosswise.’ ‘Well,’ said Old Man, ‘the people shall have ten fingers on each hand.’ ‘Oh, no!’ said Old Woman. ‘That will be too many. They will be in the way. There shall be four fingers and one thumb on each hand.’ ‘Well,’ said Old Man, ‘we shall beget children. The genitals shall be at our navels.’ ‘No,’ said Old Woman, ‘that will make childbearing too easy; the people will not care for their children. The genitals shall be at the pubes.’ So they went on until they had provided for everything in the lives of the people that were to be. Then Old Woman asked what they should do about life and death. Should the people always live, or should they die? They had some difficulty in agreeing on this; but finally Old Man said, ‘I will tell you what I will do. I will throw a buffalo chip into the water, and, if it floats, the people die for four days and live again. But, if it sinks, they will die forever.’ So he threw it in, and it floated. ‘No,’ said Old Woman, ‘we will not decide in that way. I will throw in this rock. If it floats, the people will die for four days. If it sinks, the people will die forever.’ Then Old Woman threw the rock out into the water, and it sank to the bottom. ‘There,’ said she, ‘it is better for the people to die forever; for, if they did not die forever, they would never feel sorry for each other, and there would be no sympathy in the world.’ ‘Well,’ said Old Man, ‘let it be that way.’ After a time Old Woman had a daughter, who died. She was very sorry now that it had been fixed so that people died forever. So she said to Old Man, ‘Let us have our say over again.’ ‘No,’ said he, ‘we fixed it once.’” – Clark Wissler and D. C. Duvall, Mythology of the Blackfoot Indians
“A drunken soldier with a musket in one hand and a match in the other is not a pleasant visitor to have about the house on a dark, windy night.” – Major General Henry W. Slocum, 1865 (quoted in Shelby Foote’s The Civil War: A Narrative)
“When Nietzsche lost his faith, he concluded that God is dead. This is not critical thinking. This is narcissism.” — Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish
“If you can write about the wreckage the wreckage is not complete. You are intact.” — Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish
“If tradition is the great punctuator that saves us from ourselves it also usefully cuts us down to size, reminding us that we’re not that special, that our supposed uniqueness is trivial in the grand scheme of things.” — Adam Phillips, “Commanded to Mourn”
“Imposing a pattern or form on experience over long stretches of time tends to make people very impatient because the material is always so recalcitrant. Continuity is always at war with circumstance, and the contingency of events. If a religion wants to be more than a refuge it has to develop, but if it adapts too eagerly it runs the risk of dissolving.” — Adam Phillips, “Commanded to Mourn”
“There is revolution when what is deemed to be ordinary is put into question, when what is considered to be beyond the realm of choice is discovered not to be.” — Adam Phillips, “Commanded to Mourn”
“Most people do not invent themselves. Most of them choose to be what they already are.” — Leon Wieseltier, Kaddish
“One of the things our traditions are there to do is to remind us what the best things about us are.” — Adam Phillips, “Commanded to Mourn”
“The books tell you to open the books so that you can find out beforehand what will be the most significant events in your life.” — Adam Phillips, “Commanded to Mourn”
“When you do not take fortune at her offer you must take her as you can find her.” — Admiral David Farragut, 1864 (quoted in The Civil War: A Narrative, by Shelby Foote)
“Oh, for more faith and clearer sight! How stable is the City of God! How disordered the City of Man!” — Salmon P. Chase, 1864 (quoted in The Civil War: A Narrative, by Shelby Foote)
“If you look at the history of literature, poetry is the one enduring genre from Homer to Ashbery—no other literary form has lasted as long. The novel is only two or three hundred years old…” – Jonathan Galassi (from Nathalie Handal interview in Guernica)