Wish I'd written that: The trouble with developing taste

A critical faculty is a terrible thing. When I was eleven there were no bad films, just films that I didn’t want to see, there was no bad food, just Brussels sprouts and cabbage, there were no bad books—everything I read was great. Then suddenly, I woke up in the morning and all that had changed. How could my sister not hear that David Cassady was not in the same class as Black Sabbath? Why on earth would my English teacher think that The History of Mr Polly was better than Ten Little Indians by Agatha Christie? And from that moment on, enjoyment has been a much more elusive quality."

Nick Hornby
Fever Pitch

Wish I'd written that: How religion dies with a whimper

T

here was no fanaticism or intolerance in [Pastor] Lund. Like a long line of Lutheran ministers I had known before him, he was well-meaning if somewhat narrow in his views and comfortable in his faith without being smug. At the same time, it had always impressed me that in the hands of men like Lund, the strange, bloody, and wonderous Christian story inevitably turned rather drab.”

Siri Hustvedt, The Sorrows of an American

Wish I'd written that: a warning for the future

V
on Tschammer und Osten said that all Roman Catholic and Protestant youth organizations are, like all Jewish organizations, to be expressly forbidden to pursue any sport. As far as the Nazis are concerned, people are going to have to make a choice between religion and sport. The point being that all sports training is to be done under Nazi auspices. He actually said that the Nazis are conducting a cultural war against the church.”

“He said that?”

“Any Catholic or Protestant athletes who don’t join Nazi sports clubs will lose their chance of representing Germany.”

I shrugged. “So let them. Who cares about a few idiots running around a track anyway?”

“You’re missing the point, Gunther. They’ve purged the police. Now they’re purging sports. If they succeed, there will be no aspect of German life in which they won’t be able to exert their authority. In all aspects of German society, Nazis will be preferred. If you want to get on in life, you will have to become a Nazi.”

- Philip Kerr, If the Dead Rise Not

Wish I'd written that: how tough was it?

I wouldn’t say we lived in a tough neighborhood, but when I was growing up we still called a story with a happy ending an alibi.”

- Philip Kerr, If the Dead Rise Not

Wish I'd written that: what happens when the grid breaks down

All those signal grids, evenly beating in the night sky. Think what would happen if we didn’t fill the grids. People. Pause and think. If the grids break down. Think how empty it would be. Suddenly nothing. Would be dark. Would be bleak. All the words that end in the letter k. What is out there? Who are we? Would be infinite winter in our rooms.

-Don DeLillo, Valparaiso

Wish I'd written that: on entertainment as pain

I’d been to public entertainments before, of course; I’d been to the cinema and the pantomime and to see my mother sing in the chorus of the White Horse Inn at the Town Hall. But that was different. The audiences I had hitherto been a part of had paid to have a good time, and though occasionally one might spot a fidgety child or a yawning adult, I hadn’t ever noticed faces contorted by rage or despair or frustration. Entertainment as pain was an idea entirely new to me, and it seemed to be something I’d been waiting for.

- Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch

Wish I'd written that

W
hat a city it was for its public buildings, as immense as grey granite mountains. They built them big just to remind you of the importance of the state and the comparative insignificance of the individual. That just shows you how this whole business of National Socialism got started. It’s hard not to be overawed by a government, any government, that is accommodated in such grand buildings. And the long wide avenues that ran straight from one district to another seemed to have been made for nothing else but columns of marching soldiers."

— Philip Kerr, The Pale Criminal

Wish I'd written that

Vince was a grown-up. A lot of guys my age sported hair twice the length of mine, wore chokers of faux jade and faux teak, and favored bracelets carved from rhinoceros bone. Vince wore a watch. A thick, heavy, expensive watch. If he were ever kidnapped, he could turn that watch over to his captors and walk free, and they'd probably give him twenty dollars for cab fare home."

— Rupert Holmes, Where the Truth Lies

Wish I'd written that

A mystery is something that is beyond human knowledge and comprehension, which means that I should be wasting my time in even trying to investigate it. No, this case is nothing more than a puzzle, and I happen to like puzzles."

- Philip Kerr, March Violets

Wish I'd written that

I think it’s time the NBA just skips the National Anthem. I’d rather not hear it at all if I have hear a complete rewrite. Last year it was (Stacey Ferguson) and I thought that was horrible, but I am shocked that (Anthony Hamilton) would even dare to rewrite the entire song. I could barely recognise the most recognisable song in America. Francis Scott Key would not be happy."

-- Heather Payne, former Point of Grace singer, on Anthony Hamilton's performance of the National Anthem at the NBA All-Star Game at the Spectrum in Charlotte.

That's a new member of the Star Mangled Banner Club.

Wish I'd written that

Liberals can understand everything but people who don't understand them."

- Lenny Bruce

Flashback Friday - On owning your soul

Until you guys own your own souls you don't own mine.  Until you guys can be trusted every time and always, in all times and conditions, to seek the truth out and find it and let the chips fall where they may - until that time comes, I have the right to listen to my conscience, and protect my client the best way I can.  Until I'm sure you won't do him more harm than you'll do the truth good.  Or until I'm hauled before somebody who can make me talk.

- Raymond Chandler, The High Window

Originally published September 15, 2014

Wish I'd written that...

Life is hard. It's even harder when you're stupid."

- Attributed to John Wayne, but actually from George V. Higgins in The Friends of Eddie Coyle. It just sounds like something The Duke would have said.

Wish I'd written that

In a world of fugitives, the person taking the opposite direction will appear to run away”

- T.S. Eliot, The Family Reunion

Throwback Thursday: Wish I'd written that

Whenever you read a good book, it's like the author is right there, in the room, talking to you - which is why I don't like to read good books.

- Jack Handey

Not really - I read good books all the time.  I just like the smartass way it sounds.

Originally published April 17, 2015

What's wrong with this sentence?

Rousey’s longtime friend and fellow MMA fighter-turned-wrestling-queen Shayna Baszler (now a WWE performer as well, wrestling in NXT) was getting set to headline against Heidi Lovelace at Our Lady of Mount Carmel School."

Am I the only one who thinks this reads like a scenario from one of Christopher Buckley's satiric novels?

Wish I'd written that

F
or myself, I feel a profound cleavage between my own generation and that of young adults today: I do not understand, and do not really like, their tastes, their ambitions, their enjoyments, their sorrows, their opinions, or even their humor. But then I could say that of my own generation also: I never really belonged to it, or wanted to belong to it. I have always been a fish out of water, ever since I can remember."

- Theodore Dalrymple, from this article.

Wish I'd written that

The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine—but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight."

- Hilaire Belloc

Wish I'd written that

I wish I'd been born in Obscurity. Every famous person gets plucked from there.

- Carlos Lozada

Throwback Thursday: On telling the truth

When I think of postmodernism I think of people who want to deny truth: There is no such thing as absolute truth. There’s relative truth, subjective truth … or like my friend Werner Herzog would call it, ‘ecstatic truth.’ … I have my own way of describing ‘ecstatic truth.’ I call it ‘lying.’”

Errol Morris, 2010 (H/T Grantland)

Originally published March 3, 2015