This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
E. B. White, fully Elwyn Brooks White
I have yet to see a piece of writing, political or non-political, that doesn’t have a slant. All writing slants the way a writer leans, and no man is born upright. The beauty of the American free press is that the slants and the twists and the distortions come from so many directions, and the special interests are so numerous, the reader must sift and sort and check and countercheck in order to find out what the score is.
Beauty | Free press | Man | Order | Wisdom | Writing | Beauty |
If we ask what literature is about, we have to answer that it is about the mystery of the human heart and its passage through time.
Heart | Literature | Mystery | Time |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
At the time of writing I never think of what I have said before. My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me [at that] given moment. The result is that I have grown from truth to truth.
Assign someone to be your guardian angel. Give someone in your family, a member who’s smart and attentive, the assignment of writing down and recording everything that’s don’t to and for you… the largest number of adverse events, by far, is caused by medication errors.
Art is revelation. If painting shows only what is there, it is not art. Art like fine music or high literature must carry the beholder beyond this world and all that appears in it, transport him to the shores of the eternal world and enable him to see and hear the things not given to the tongue of man to utter.
Art | Eternal | Literature | Man | Music | Revelation | World | Art |
Faith is the song of life. Woe to him who wishes to rob life of its splendid poetry. The whole mass of prosaic literature and knowledge is of value only when it is founded on the perception of the poetry of life.
Faith | Knowledge | Life | Life | Literature | Perception | Poetry | Wishes | Woe | Value |
In all ages, literature aims at the interpretation of the universe and a deep perception of humanity by means of language.
Aims | Humanity | Language | Literature | Means | Perception | Universe |
Major writing is to say what has been seen, so that it need never be said again.
Françoise Sagan, born Francoise Quoirez
The illusion of art is to make one believe that great literature is very close to life, but the exact opposite is true. Life is amorphous, literature is formal.
Edward Albee, fully Edward Franklin Albee
The act of writing is an act of optimism; you would not take the trouble to do it if you felt that it didn't matter.
David Hare, fully Sir David Hare
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
Elizabeth Kiss (pronounced "quiche")
Where would we be without prophets, visionaries, nonconformists, ironists, and dissenters? The great ethical traditions, both religious and secular, as well as literature and the arts, are filled with eccentrics - complex characters who challenge, inspire, and irritate those around them. They flaunt conventional wisdom, stubbornly champion new and unsettling ideals, love those whom others deem unlovable, or are themselves considered strange and unlovable.
Challenge | Ideals | Literature | Love | Wisdom |
To see what students learn in school, look at how they leave school. If they leave thinking that reading and writing are difficult and pointless, that mathematics is confusing, that history is irrelevant, and that art is a bore, then that is what they have been taught. People learn what is demonstrated to them, and this reality will not change to suit the convenience of politicians and educations administrators.
Art | Change | History | Mathematics | People | Reading | Reality | Thinking | Will | Writing | Art | Learn |
You can never read bad literature too little, nor good literature too much. Bad books are intellectual poison; they destroy the mind.