11 quotes
We are all — so to speak — intellectuals about something.
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)
If wishes were stories, beggars would read...
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)
Most people don’t listen to classical music at all, but to rock-and-roll or hillbilly songs or some album named Music To Listen To Music By...
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)
When we read what Goethe says about men we are ashamed of what we have said; when we read what he says about painting and statues we are ashamed of what Goethe has said.
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)
...in this world, often, there is nothing to praise but no one to blame...
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)
Reality is what we want it to be or what we do not want it to be, but it is not our wanting or our not wanting that makes it so.
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)
...our quarrels with the world are like our quarrels with God: no matter how right we are, we are wrong.
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)
We always tend to distrust geniuses about genius, as if what they say didn’t arouse much empathy in us, or as if we were waiting till some more reliable source of information came along...
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)
...when General Eisenhower defined an intellectual as “a man who takes more words than is necessary to tell more than he knows”, he was speaking not as a Republican but as an American.
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)
Critics disagree about almost every quality of a writer’s work; and when some agree about a quality, they disagree about whether it is to be praised or blamed, nurtured or rooted out. After enough criticism the writer is covered with lipstick and bruises, and the two are surprisingly evenly distributed.
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)
I shook myself; I was dreaming. As I went to bed the words of the eighth-grade class’s teacher, when the class got to Evangeline, kept echoing in my ears: “We’re coming to a long poem now, boys and girls. Now don’t be babies and start counting the pages.” I lay there like a baby, counting the pages over and over, counting the pages.
A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables (1962)