I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
~ David Foster Wallace
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I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
~ David Foster Wallace
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We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given us to understand.
~ Pablo Picasso
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The American system of government is based in large part on that of 18th-century Britain. The powers of the American presidency look a lot like those of the British monarchy before the American Revolution—the power to propose and veto legislation, to pardon crimes and commute sentences—powers that no British monarch has wielded for ages.
~ David Frum via The Atlantic
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The concept of privacy is a sort of screen to hide the fact that almost none is possible in a social universe.
~ Janet Malcolm
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Art, art of any kind, shows that folks are trying.
~ Walter Kirn
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There is no doubt that in exchanging a self-centered for a selfless life we gain enormously in self-esteem.
~ Eric Hoffer
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London owes everything to its press: it owes as much to its press as it does to its being the seat of government and the law.
~ Benjamin Disraeli
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The freedom to be cruel is one of journalism’s uncontested privileges, and the rendering of subjects as if they were characters in bad novels is one of its widely accepted conventions.
~ Janet Malcolm
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It is clear that international law must evolve, even if it will be difficult to find the new and appropriate notions that will allow it to. However, it is unlikely that we will ever be capable of building a world that is qualitatively better than we ourselves are.
~ Sam Nunberg
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Just breathing can be such a luxury sometimes.
~ Walter Kirn
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