Sunday, April 30, 2006
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It is said that if you have mastered the art of learning, a single letter of the alphabet will teach you more than a thousand classics.
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There is only one way to get even with detractors and that’s by using them as sources of inspiration.
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An Armenian was presented with a Japanese samurai sword so sharp that it would slice an apple by simply touching it, as if by magic. The Armenian returned the gift with the words: “Thanks, but I have no use for it. My tongue is sharper.”
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I have understood the nature of radical evil not by observing it in others but by analyzing it in myself.
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Two of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century were Heidegger and Sartre – the first supported Hitler, the second Mao.
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Wisdom is not a commodity that you look for and, if you are lucky, you find. Wisdom is something that you never find.
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Searching for wisdom is like peeling an onion. After you have peeled off all the layers of prejudice, ignorance, stupidity, evil, and fear, you end up with nothing.
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Monday, May 01, 2006
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Some of our most fundamental assumptions and certainties have been foisted on us at a time when we could not yet think for ourselves. There you have the source of most conflicts.
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We all want the same thing, to be happy; and we all behave as though the only way to be happy is by making others miserable.
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All our problems stem from the fact that narrow tribal interests are placed above national interests; and all international problems stem from the fact that national interests are placed above the interests of mankind. Result? War and massacre.
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Killing a patriotic act? That’s like saying rape is an act of compassion.
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Cruelty parading as wit – that’s how Freud defined humor. If true, humor must be one of the most civilized ways of disarming aggression.
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TODAY’S QUOTATIONS
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On Karajan (a German of Greek descent): “…despite being narcissistic, nasty and Nazi, he was a superb conductor.”
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Saint-Beuve: “Speaking the truth is the best revenge.”
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Vassily Grossman (Russian writer): “We are not people. We are shit.”
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Lenin: “The capitalist is so greedy that he will buy even the rope with which we will hang him.”
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Tuesday, May 02, 2006
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One reason vegetarians in the animal kingdom are perennial victims of carnivores is that they develop a consensus only to run away.
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A career criminal in today’s paper: “I find the outside more scary than being inside.” He ought to know. The outside is at the mercy of people like him. Need I add that some of the worst serial child molesters have been Catholic priests, and some of the most dangerous serial killers have been statesmen?
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Benefactors share their money, writers their ideas. As a community, or a collection of tribes, we respect both money and ideas in equal measure, and the idea we respect most is that money is infinitely more important than ideas.
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What do we know about benefactors? Only how much they give. They are an extension of their capital. I once heard a benefactor deliver a short cliché-ridden speech in which he emphasized the importance of identity and culture. The same benefactor to a poet: “Desert people like Arabs may need poets. We don’t!” And to a writer: “I hire and fire people like you.”
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Wednesday, May 03, 2006
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Turgenev to Dostoevsky: “Russia’s only contribution to civilization has been the samovar and the knout – and even they were invented by somebody else.” Elsewhere ( I think in SMOKE), one of his characters says, if Russia were to disappear tomorrow, no one would miss it – and to think that he was talking about the Russia of Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky…. But Turgenev being Turgenev, I am interested in anything he has to say, even when what he says is against my own convictions. Because I for one would miss Russia, and if not Russia than Russian literature, including Turgenev’s intensely Russian novels, especially FATHERS AND SONS.
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Speaking of Pushkin: Reading him in English, including Nabokov’s English, is like viewing a cadaver. It has been a mystery to me why so many Russian writers worship him. Today I read a few of his lines in a Greek translation and I saw the light and felt the magic – the cadaver came to life, and what life! So much so that I am now planning to teach myself Russian.
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Joe Queenan: “A good percentage of the British population are vulgar dimwits who care about nothing but shopping, alcohol, football and Posh Spice’s navel.”
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Armenian writers don’t dare to speak freely about their fellow Armenians except in private conversations, correspondence and diaries. As a result the average Armenian continues to cling to such clichés as first nation this and first nation that….
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