Quotes

It is conceivable that Alexander the Great, in spite of the martial
successes of his early days, in spite of the excellent army that he
had trained, in spite of the power he felt within him to change the
world, might have remained standing on the bank of the Hellespont
and never have crossed it, and not out of fear, not out of indecision,
not out of infirmity of will, but because of the mere weight of his
own body.
                -- Franz Kafka

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This country has no lessons to teach.  It neither promises nor affords
glimpses.  It is satisfied to give, but in abundance.  It is completely
accessible to the eyes, and you know it the moment you enjoy it.  Its
pleasures are without remedy and its joys without hope.  Above all, it
requires clairvoyant souls--that is, without solace.  It insists upon
one's performing an act of lucidity as one performs an act of faith.
...  It is not surprising that the sensual riches granted to a sensitive
man of these regions should coincide with the most extreme destitution.
No truth fails to carry with it its bitterness.
                -- Albert Camus, "Summer in Algiers"

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The true way goes over a rope which is not stretched at any great height
but just above the ground.  It seems more designed to make people stumble
than to be walked upon.
		-- Franz Kafka

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Ma gavte la nata.
                -- Umberto Eco, "Foucault's Pendulum"

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There must be a connection between the lust for power and impotentia
coeundi.  I liked Marx, I was sure that he and his Jenny had made love
merrily.  You can feel it in the easy pace of his prose and in his humor.
On the other hand, ... if you screwed Krupskaya all the time, you'd end
up writing a lousy book like "Materialism and Empiriocriticism."  
		-- Umberto Eco, "Foucault's Pendulum"

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I was born an original sinner, 
I was born from original sin, 
and if I had a dollar bill for all the things I've done, 
there'd be a mountain of money piled up to my chin. 
		-- Eurythmics, "Missionary Man"

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Why Lou Reed.

"Okay, I'll tell you why Lou Reed...  Imagine Mike D. of the Beastie Boys
walking down the street. He's got beautiful new $300 sunglasses on. The
exact right flat vintage Pumas.  The big pants. He has beautiful vintage
sound equipment he picked up in England. OK, so here comes Lou Reed down
the street. He's wearing lizard-skin boots, tight, acid-washed black
jeans, a leather jacket with elastic around the waist, a mullet hairstyle
all short in the front and long in the back and carrying a brand new,
state-of-the-art Japanese electric guitar. Now Mike D. might say, 'Hey,
Lou, why are you so wack?' and Lou would be able so say, 'I don't need
to do anything. I'm Lou Reed.' And it would be absolutely true."

		-- Cintra Wilson, "Of cock rock kings and other dinosaurs"

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Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.  My sin, my soul.
Lo-lee-ta:  the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps
down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth.  Lo.  Lee.  Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in
one sock.  She was Lola in slacks.  She was Dolly at school.  She was
Dolores on the dotted line.  But in my arms she was always Lolita.
	        -- Vladimir Nabokov, "Lolita"

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... When asked how her name occurred to him, Nabokov replied,
"For my numphet I needed a diminutive with a lyrical lilt to it.
One of the most limpid and luminous letters is `L.'  The suffix
`-ita' has a lot of Latin tenderness, and this I required too.
Hence:  Lolita.  However, it should not be pronounced as ... most
Americans pronounce it: Low-lee-ta, with a heavy, clammy `L' and
a long `O.'  No, the first syllable should be as in `lollipop,'
the `L' liquid and delicate, the `lee' not too sharp.  Spaniards
and Italians pronounce it, of course, with exactly the necessary
note of archness and caress.  Another consideration was the welcome
murmur of its source name, the fountain name: those roses and tears
in `Dolores'.  My little girl's heart-rending fate had to be taken
into account together with the cuteness and limpidity.  Dolores also
provided her with another, plainer, more familiar and infantile
diminutive:  Dolly, which went nicely with the surname `Haze,' where
Irish mists blend with a German bunny---I mean a small German hare [= hase]".

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... there seems something else in life besides time, something which
may conveniently be called "value," something which is measured not
by minutes or hours but by intensity, so that when we look at our 
past it does not stretch back evenly but piles up into a few notable 
pinnacles, and when we look at the future it seems sometimes a wall,
sometimes a cloud, sometimes a sun, but never a chronological chart.

		-- E.M. Forster, "Aspects of the Novel"
		   as quoted by Jon Kleinberg, 
		   "Bursty and Hierarchical Structure in Streams"

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In this paper, we want to contribute .. by analyzing a new collaboration
network, that is artificial, but mimics real-life networks: the Marvel
Universe collaboration network.  In it, the nodes correspond to Marvel
Comics characters, and two nodes are linked when the corresponding 
characters have jointly appeared in the same Marvel comic book. ...
A paradigm of the Marvel Universe could be Quicksilver, who appeared
first as a member of Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in the early
issues of Uncanny X-Men, then he became a member of the Avengers and
later of X-Factor, to end as the leader of the Knights of Wundagore;
he is also the son of Magneto, the twin brother of the Scarlet Witch,
and he married Crystal, a former fiancee of Fantastic Four's Human 
Torch and a member of the Inhumans (as well as of the Fantastic Four
as a substitute of the Invisible Woman when she took her "maternal
leave").

	-- R. Alberich, J. Miro-Julia, F. Rossello,
	   "Marvel Universe looks almost like a real social network"

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The Jean-Paul Sartre cookbook is worth a read, too.






Jewels from My Fortune Program

This is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.  And now you know why.

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I had a feeling once about mathematics -- that I saw it all.  Depth beyond
depth was revealed to me -- the Byss and the Abyss.  I saw -- as one might
see the transit of Venus or even the Lord Mayor's Show -- a quantity passing
through infinity and changing its sign from plus to minus.  I saw exactly
why it happened and why tergiversation was inevitable -- but it was after
dinner and I let it go.
                -- Winston Churchill

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Come, every frustum longs to be a cone,
And every vector dreams of matrices.
Hark to the gentle gradient of the breeze:
It whispers of a more ergodic zone.
                -- Stanislaw Lem, "Cyberiad"

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To see the butcher slap the steak, before he laid it on the block,
and give his knife a sharpening, was to forget breakfast instantly.  It
was agreeable, too -- it really was -- to see him cut it off, so smooth
and juicy.  There was nothing savage in the act, although the knife was
large and keen; it was a piece of art, high art; there was delicacy of
touch, clearness of tone, skilful handling of the subject, fine shading. 
It was the triumph of mind over matter; quite.
                -- Dickens, "Martin Chuzzlewit"

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I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the
whole field to private industry.
                -- Joseph Heller

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If you have received a letter inviting you to speak at the dedication of a
new cat hospital, and you hate cats, your reply, declining the invitation,
does not necessarily have to cover the full range of your emotions.  You must
make it clear that you will not attend, but you do not have to let fly at cats.
The writer of the letter asked a civil question; attack cats, then, only if
you can do so with good humor, good taste, and in such a way that your answer
will be courteous as well as responsive.  Since you are out of sympathy with
cats, you may quite properly give this as a reason for not appearing at the
dedication ceremonies of a cat hospital.  But bear in mind that your opinion
of cats was not sought, only your services as a speaker.  Try to keep things
straight.
                -- Strunk and White, "The Elements of Style"

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I appreciate the fact that this draft was done in haste, but some of the
sentences that you are sending out in the world to do your work for you
are loitering in taverns or asleep beside the highway.
                -- Dr. Dwight Van de Vate, Professor of Philosophy,
                   University of Tennessee at Knoxville

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Shopping at this grody little computer store at the Galleria for a
totally awwwesome Apple.  Fer suuure.  I mean Apples are nice you know?
But, you know, there is this cute guy who works there and HE says that
VAX's are cooler!  I mean I don't really know, you know? He says that he
has this totally tubular VAX at home and it's stuffed with memory-to-the-max!
Right, yeah.  And he wants to take me home to show it to me.  Oh My God!
I'm suuure.  Gag me with a Prime!

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Most people can't understand how others can blow their noses differently
than they do.
		-- Turgenev

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Commitment, n.:
	[The difference between involvement and] Commitment can be
	illustrated by a breakfast of ham and eggs.  The chicken was
	involved, the pig was committed.

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By all means marry.  If you get a good wife, you'll be happy.
If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher.
		-- Socrates

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I owe the public nothing.
                -- J.P. Morgan