Stephen Vizinczey Quotes

We think of ourselves as failures, rather than renounce our belief in the possibility of perfection. We hang on to the hope of eternal love by denying even its temporary validity. It´s less painful to think 'I'm shallow', 'She's self centred', 'We couldn't communicate', 'It was all just physical', than to accept the simple fact that love is a passing sensation, for reasons beyond our control and even beyond our personalities. But who can reassure himself with his own rationalizations? No argument can fill the void of a dead feeling -- that reminder of the ultimate void, our final inconstancy. We're untrue even to life.

The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person's name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.

To be great is to assume great concerns.

When you close your eyes to tragedy, you close your eyes to greatness.

Strange as it seems, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and higher education positively fortifies it.

I suppose it's more unnerving to be a boy than a girl,' she conceded.'It's the boys who have to make fools of themselves.

The truth is that our race survived ignorance; it is our scientific genius that will do us in.

Consistency is a virtue for trains.

Whenever you hear the word "inevitable", watch out! An enemy of humanity has identified himself.

Most bad books get that way because their authors are engaged in trying to justify themselves. If a vain author is an alcoholic, then the most sympathetically portrayed character in his book will be an alcoholic. This sort of thing is very boring for outsiders.

Private Eye continued to report that the stench in the Houses of Parliament was just as strong as it had been on the day when the birds flew away and the rodents fled.

The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I'd call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America's whole culture-aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn't part of the local atmosphere.

We now have a whole culture based on the assumption that people know nothing and so anything can be said to them.

Great writers are not those who tell us we shouldn't play with fire, but those who make our fingers burn.

Art experts are unfailingly opposed to Art for the simple reason that they are interested in Art - but Art is not interested in Art. Art is interested in life.

As a rule, the most dangerous ideas are not the ones that divide people but those on which they agree.

Is it possible that I am not alone in believing that in the dispute between Galileo and the Church, the Church was right and the centre of man's universe is the earth?

Powerful men in particular suffer from the delusion that human beings have no memories. I would go so far as to say that the distinguishing trait of powerful men is the psychotic certainty that people forget acts of infamy as easily as their parents birth

I made a resolution I would throw myself into the Danube if I didn't ask you to make love with me today.

To state a lie firmly, categorically and with great authority, undeterred by the fact that all concerned know it to be a lie, is one of the principal activities defined by the term practising law.

Like all wage slaves, he had two crosses to bear: the people he worked for and the people he worked with

Perhaps in a book review it is not out of place to note that the safety of the state depends on cultivating the imagination.