Acclaim Quotes

Draw your own moral from this, Sparky. And remember at the center of the cult of personality called stardom there is just a big empty hole. Awards don't matter. Acclaim doesn't matter. Only your craft matters. ~ John Varley

Love casts out fear; but conversely fear casts out love. And not only love. Fear also casts out intelligence, casts out goodness, casts out all thought of beauty and truth. What remains in the bum or studiedly jocular desperation of one who is aware of the obscene Presence in the corner of the room and knows that the door is locked, that there aren't any windows. And now the thing bears down on him. He feels a hand on his sleeve, smells a stinking breath, as the executioner's assistant leans almost amorously toward him. "Your turn next, brother. Kindly step this way." And in an instant his quiet terror is transmuted into a frenzy as violent as it is futile. There is no longer a man among his fellow men, no longer a rational being speaking articulately to other rational beings; there is only a lacerated animal, screaming and struggling in the trap. For in the end fear casts out even a man's humanity. And fear, my good friends, fear is the very basis and foundation of modern life. Fear of the much touted technology which, while it raises out standard of living, increases the probability of our violently dying. Fear of the science which takes away the one hand even more than what it so profusely gives with the other. Fear of the demonstrably fatal institutions for while, in our suicidal loyalty, we are ready to kill and die. Fear of the Great Men whom we have raised, and by popular acclaim, to a power which they use, inevitably, to murder and enslave us. Fear of the war we don't ~ Aldous Huxley

After you have done your work - challenging as it may have been to complete - and released it in the marketplace, be not concerned with sales, reviews, critical acclaim, or anything else of the like... After you've written and published a book, you're now an AUTHOR. And that great honor can NEVER be taken away from you, no matter what. ("My Book Place," 2018) ~ Cat Ellington

How many people similarly spent their lives searching for their own spells - some gratuitous benefit such as a silver tree or political power or undeserved acclaim - when all they really needed was to be satisfied with what they already had? Sometimes what they had was better than what they thought they wanted. ~ Piers Anthony

To a large degree, since the beginning of time, charisma or the lack of it has impacted upon those in quest of acclaim. As media expands, this has become ever more vital. Thus, demeanor if unappealing, can defeat one's likelihood of success, causing the death of prospects whilst they are still embryonic. ~ John Donne

I can tell you there are rewards that go far beyond money and public acclaim and awards. ~ Michael Jackson

As I've reflected back on both, I realize that my neighborhood was just like The Wire. We had the drug dealing, the police brutality, the murders. Well, it was /almost/ a perfect match. We had everything The Wire had except for universal critical acclaim and the undying love of white people who saw it. ~ Baratunde R. Thurston

A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Real writers write because they love to write. They don't write for public acclaim. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

He thinks that, even if you have a great idea, there have to be trials and tribulations, errors and failures, a dark night of the soul, a slog, a time in the desert, a fallow period, a period of quiet, a period of silent and earnest and frustrated toiling before emerging, victorious, into the sunshine and acclaim. ~ Charles Yu

As we see from the Scriptures, it had become a common and proverbial expression that if someone wanted to refer to a prophet, he called him a "fool." So in the history of Jehu (2 Kings 9:11), they said of a prophet: "Why did this mad fellow come to you?" And Isaiah shows (Is. 57:4) that they opened their mouths and put out their tongues against him. But all they accomplished by this was to become a terrible stench and a curse, while the dear prophets and saints have honor, praise, and acclaim throughout the world and are ruling forever with Christ, the Lord. ~ Martin Luther

Did you ever stop to think that a great man in life who has won great acclaim and great reputation is the very man who is willing to share and give the honor to others in the doing of things that made him great? ~ Charles M. Schwab

And I refused to make any sacrifices; for nothing on earth seemed more valuable than my peace of mind, my pleasure and my acclaim. ~ George Sand

You work really hard to make it, and maybe you get some acclaim, but then you realize there are certain limitations as an actor. ~ James Franco

Write for the love of storytelling, not the acclaim. ~ Airam

Every author believes, when his first book is published, that those that acclaim it are his personal friends or impersonal peers, while its revilers can only be envious rogues and nonentities. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Space opera, as every reader doubtless knows, is a pejorative term often applied to a story that has an element of adventure. Over the decades, brilliant and talented new writers appear, receiving great acclaim, and each and every one of them can be expected to write at least one article stating flatly that the day of space opera is over and done, thank goodness, and that henceforth these crude tales of interplanetary nonsense will be replaced by whatever type of story that writer happens to favor - closet dramas, psychological dramas, sex dramas, etc., but by God important dramas, containing nothing but Big Thinks. Ten years late, the writer in question may or may not still be around, but the space opera can be found right where it always was, sturdily driving its dark trade in heroes. ~ Leigh Brackett

A KING WHO PLACED MIRRORS IN HIS PALACE

There lived a king; his comeliness was such
The world could not acclaim his charm too much.
The world's wealth seemed a portion of his grace;
It was a miracle to view his face.
If he had rivals,then I know of none;
The earth resounded with this paragon.
When riding through his streets he did not fail
To hide his features with a scarlet veil.
Whoever scanned the veil would lose his head;
Whoever spoke his name was left for dead,
The tongue ripped from his mouth; whoever thrilled
With passion for this king was quickly killed.
A thousand for his love expired each day,
And those who saw his face, in blank dismay
Would rave and grieve and mourn their lives away-
To die for love of that bewitching sight
Was worth a hundred lives without his light.
None could survive his absence patiently,
None could endure this king's proximity-
How strange it was that man could neither brook
The presence nor the absence of his look!
Since few could bear his sight, they were content
To hear the king in sober argument,
But while they listened they endure such pain
As made them long to see their king again.
The king commanded mirrors to be placed
About the palace walls, and when he faced
Their polished surfaces his image shone
With mitigated splendour to the throne.

If you would glimpse the beauty we r ~ Attar Of Nishapur

We can have traders, without them being traitors.

We can trade, without trading others.

We can trade our traits, and not our worst ones, with others.

We can trade our traitors for better traders, or they can become better traders themselves.

Let the market trade this way. ~ Justin K. McFarlane Beau

They also bring to mind what sometimes seems to be a rapt predilection of small but influential cults of intellectuals or esthetes for what is generally regarded as perverse dispirited or distastefully unintelligible. The award of a Nobel Prize in literature to Andre Gide who in his work fervently and openly insists that pederasty is the superior and preferable way of life for adolescent boys furnishes a memorable example of such judgments. Renowned critics and some professors in our best universities reverently acclaim as the superlative expression of genius James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake a 628page collection of erudite gibberish indistinguishable to most people from the familiar word salad produced by hebephrenic patients on the back wards of any state hospital. ~ Hervey M. Cleckley

What I like so much about photography is precisely the moment that cannot be anticipated; one must be constantly on the alert, ready to acclaim the unexpected. ~ Martine Franck

Just think of the acclaim! The feelings of satisfaction! The vastly increased dating opportunities! ~ Chris Baty

His songs were soon curled on the lips of the world, they had earned him the highest acclaim. And yet his greatest desire was the simple warmth of love's fire, cause it's cold on the dark side of fame. ~ Waylon Jennings

Hitler appeared, a man with limited intellectual abilities and unfit for any useful work, bursting with envy and bitterness against all whom circumstance and nature had favored over him ... In his desperate ambition for power he discovered that his speeches, confused and pervaded with hate as they were, received wild acclaim by those whose situation and orientation resembled his own. He picked up this human flotsam on the streets and in the taverns and organized them around himself. This is the way he launched his political career. ~ Albert Einstein

It's rigged - everything, in your favor.
So there is nothing to worry about.

Is there some position you want,
some office, some acclaim, some award, some con, some lover,
maybe two, maybe three, maybe four - all at once,

maybe a relationship
with
God?

I know there is a gold mine in you, when you find it
the wonderment of the earth's gifts
you will lay aside
as naturally as does
a child a
doll.

But, dear, how sweet you look to me kissing the unreal:
comfort, fulfill yourself,
in any way possible - do that until
you ache, until you ache,

then come to me
again. ~ Jalaluddin Rumi

The intelligent employer encourages challenge, questioning
not blind acceptance and "our Leader knows best" acclaim. ~ Mary Barnett Gilson

When we experience inner impoverishment, love for another too easily becomes hunger: for reassurance, for acclaim, for affirmation of our worth. ~ Sharon Salzberg

I learned in the last few years that it's really unhappy and really unsustainable to try and base your well being on something as arbitrary as record sale and critical acclaim and the interests of the public. All of those things are so fickle. So my approach now to music is I want to make records that I love, and I hope that other people love them, then that's OK. ~ Moby

The coaching profession has lost one of its true legends. Though he was best known for winning more football games than any other coach when he retired, Eddie Robinson's impact on coaching and the game of football went far beyond wins and losses. He brought a small school in northern Louisiana from obscurity to nationwide, if not worldwide, acclaim and touched the lives of hundreds and hundreds of young men in his 57 years at Grambling. That will be his greatest legacy. ~ Grant Teaff

I want away. I want escape. I want a life lived to the fullest - filled with strawberries and chocolate torte and music. And acclaim. Acceptance. I cannot find that here. ~ S. Jae-Jones

Fatherhood, to me, isn't something you do for awards or acclaim. It's a privilege and a huge responsibility ~ Dwyane Wade

And so," he said, "in the end, what must we determine? Is it the intellect of a genius that we revere? If it were their artistry, the beauty of their mind, would we not laud it regardless of whether we've seen their product before?
"But we don't. Given two works of artistic majesty, otherwise weighted equally, we will give greater acclaim to the one who did it first. It doesn't matter what you create. It matters what you create before anyone else.
"So it's not the beauty itself we admire. It's not the force of intellect. It's not invention, aesthetics, or capacity itself. The greatest talent that we think a man can have?" He plucked one final string. "Seems to me that it must be nothing more than novelty. ~ Brandon Sanderson

There are so many things to think about when you make an album. Like, who am I trying to impress? Am I going to get respect, critical acclaim? Or am I going to sell lots of records? ~ Ellie Goulding

Despite their rising international acclaim, Sachal Studios remains virtually unknown in Pakistan. The ensemble is faced with a daunting task: to reclaim and reinvigorate an art that has lost its space in Pakistan's narrowing cultural sphere. ~ Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

I am not alone in this. I only let him do to me what men have ever done to women: march off to empty glory and hollow acclaim and leave us behind to pick up the pieces. The broken cities, the burned barns, the innocent injured beasts, the ruined bodies of the boys we bore and the men we lay with.
The waste of it. I sit here, and I look at him, and it is as if a hundred women sit beside me: the revolutionary farm wife, the English peasant woman, the Spartan mother-'Come back with your shield or on it,' she cried, because that was what she was expected to cry. And then she leaned across the broken body of her son and the words turned to dust in her throat. ~ Geraldine Brooks

The artist who is after success lets himself be influenced by the public. Generally such an artist contributes nothing new, for the public acclaims only what it already knows, what it recognizes. ~ Andre Gide

There is a special mystique to Texas. Texans represent many things to the uninitiated: We are bigger than life in our boots and Stetsons, rugged individualists whose two-steppin' has achieved world-wide acclaim, and we were the first to define hospitality. ~ Ann Richards

We took 'BFF' around to try and take it somewhere else because we were really proud of it, and it had gotten all that critical acclaim, and Twitter fans were going crazy about it. ~ Lennon Parham

Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation - oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty. ~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Fight for peace, not power.
Fight for freedom, not fame.
Fight for truth, not titles.
Fight for justice, not money.
Fight for equailty, not wealth.
Fight for love, not acclaim.
Fight for honor, not glory.
Fight for family, not possessions.

Fight for destiny, not for fortune.
Fight for dignity, not for reputation.
Fight for character, not for prominence.
Fight for country, not for position.
Fight for virtue, not for evil.
Fight for humanity, not for acclaim.
Fight for tomorrow, not for yesturday.
Fight for all, not for some. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

Italian-Americans in New York had not been in much of a flag-waving mood prior to DiMaggio's arrival. By the All-Star break, the rookie had established himself as a wonderful player (.358, 10HR, 60 RBIs), fully justifying the acclaim. But Gehrig was even better (.399, 20 HR, 61 RBIs). He was leading the league in nearly every category, including invisibility. ~ Jonathan Eig

Throughout history, megalomaniacs and tyrants have used such epithets - "father of the nation," "dear leader" - but the terms usually have a hollow ring. Modern experience suggests that the titles are more about brainwashing and subjugation than the expression of popular acclaim. And yet, when it comes to ancient Egypt, scholars still balk at such an interpretation. ~ Toby A.H. Wilkinson

Science Fiction: Any scientific acclaim that omits God. ~ Johnny Hart

Scientists who become icons must not only be geniuses but also performers, playing to the crowd and enjoying public acclaim. ~ Freeman Dyson

In the 1890s, when Freud was in the dawn of his career, he was struck by how many of his female patients were revealing childhood incest victimization to him. Freud concluded that child sexual abuse was one of the major causes of emotional disturbances in adult women and wrote a brilliant and humane paper called "The Aetiology of Hysteria." However, rather than receiving acclaim from his colleagues for his ground-breaking insights, Freud met with scorn. He was ridiculed for believing that men of excellent reputation (most of his patients came from upstanding homes) could be perpetrators of incest.
Within a few years, Freud buckled under this heavy pressure and recanted his conclusions. In their place he proposed the "Oedipus complex," which became the foundation of modern psychology. According to this theory any young girl actually desires sexual contact with her father, because she wants to compete with her mother to be the most special person in his life. Freud used this construct to conclude that the episodes of incestuous abuse his clients had revealed to him had never taken place; they were simply fantasies of events the women had wished for when they were children and that the women had come to believe were real. This construct started a hundred-year history in the mental health field of blaming victims for the abuse perpetrated on them and outright discrediting of women's and children's reports of mistreatment by men.
Once abuse was denied in this way, the st ~ Lundy Bancroft

The second hugely seductive move is to signal that we view the other person with a mixture of tenderness and realism. It's often imagined that it'll be seductive to convey an air of adoration, to hint that the other strikes us as exceptionally attractive or accomplished. But surprisingly, it is deeply worrying to be obviously adored, because everyone, from the inside, knows very well that they don't deserve intense acclaim, are often disappointing and sometimes quite simply pitiful.
So seduction involves suggesting both that one likes the other person a lot – and yet can see their frailty quite clearly, that one cope with it and forgive it with gentle indulgence. One might, towards the end of the evening drop in a small warm tease that alludes to our understanding of some less than perfect side of them: 'I suppose you stayed under the duvet feeling a bit sorry for yourself after that?' we might ask, with a benign smile.
Such a gesture implies that we like another person not under a mistaken notion that they are flawless but with a full and unfrightened appreciation of their frailties. That ends up being powerfully seductive because it is, first and foremost, reassuring. It suggests the ideal way that we would like someone to view us within the testing conditions of a real relationship. We crave not admiration, but to be properly known and yet still liked and forgiven. ~ Alain De Botton

But it was right that it should be so; my eyes and heart acclaim it. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace, to hear Om again, to sleep deeply again and to awaken refreshed again. I had to become a fool again in order to find Atman in myself. I had to sin in order to live again. Whither will my path yet lead me? ~ Hermann Hesse

I became a war hero before going on to critical acclaim as a professional victim. ~ Dave Pelzer

If you don't concentrate on counting the money, people soon realize that money is not the focus of your consciousness, so they give you everything other than money: kudos, acclaim, praise, etc., etc. And sooner or later you'll be in trouble. ~ Stuart Wilde

One paradox of professional writing is that books written solely for money and/or acclaim will almost never be good enough to garner either. ~ David Foster Wallace

Is success just about winning? Acclaim? Trophies? Wealth? Our personal happiness or satisfaction? I have been blessed to experience some of these over the years, and I can answer without batting an eye: No. Accomplishments, applause, awards and fortune are rewards that often come as the result of hard work and a determined spirit, but there is something bigger. Something better. Something that will outlast the winningest season, the plushest corner office, the heftiest bonus and the loudest cheers. That something can only be found when we look beyond the final score. ~ Tom Osborne

Li Tao had caught a single glimpse of her the first time he had been to the palace. The hunger that had gripped him had been immediate and all-consuming. He had been a young man then and had hungered for many things: acclaim, respect and power. The sight of her now, more than a decade later, stirred nothing but a faint echo of that forgotten desire. ~ Jeannie Lin

In broad outline and in detail, the life of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels corresponds to the worldwide Mythic Hero Archetype in which a divine hero's birth is supernaturally predicted and conceived, the infant hero escapes attempts to kill him, demonstrates his precocious wisdom already as a child, receives a divine commission, defeats demons, wins acclaim, is hailed as king, then betrayed, losing popular favor, executed, often on a hilltop, and is vindicated and taken up to heaven. ~ Robert M. Price

If I were to go the major route, again, attention would probably be the first and foremost. You want attention, you want support, you want to be treated properly, and I don't wanna have to go anywhere and teach people how to treat me. As far as money, acclaim and fame, those things are a plus - accolades - they're all great. ~ Joe Budden

He, in his love songs, and his tales in prose,
was without peer
and if fools claim Limoges
produced a better, there are always those
who measure worth by popular acclaim,
ignoring principles of art and reason
to base their judgments on the author's name. ~ Dante Alighieri

What'd you think?" Dan asked as we buckled into the Acclaim after another Sunday under the big top.

"I wonder if they realize their worship songs include both amillennial and premillennial theology," I said with a sigh. "Also, what's this business from the preacher about Moses writing Numbers? I mean, everyone knows Moses didn't actually write the book of Numbers. It originated from a combination of written and oral tradition and was assembled and edited by Jewish priests sometime during the postexilic period as an exercise in national self-definition. You can look that up on Wikipedia. And, while we're at it, a bit more Christology applied to the Old Testament text would be nice."

"Um, Rach, the sermon today was about humility."

Lord, have mercy.

See, I've got this coping mechanism thing where, when I'm feeling frightened or vulnerable or over my head, I intellectualize the situation to try and regain a sense of control. . . . In some religious traditions, this particular coping mechanism is known as pride.

I confess I preened it. I scoffed at the idea of being taught or led. Deconstructing was so much safer than trusting, so much easier than letting people in. I knew exactly what type of Christian I didn't want to be, but I was too frightened, or too rebellious, or too wounded, to imagine what might be next. Like a garish conch shell, my cynicism protected me from disappointment, or so I believed, so I expected the w ~ Rachel Held Evans

Penny wanted this kind of attention from the world. She wanted people everywhere to know her name and to love her. There, she'd admitted it aloud. But she couldn't do anything that would justify such massive public acclaim. She just needed a mentor, a teacher, someone to discover her. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

For what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim. ~ Amor Towles

Something had been confirmed: I was worth giving a shit about; I was getting to be a successful sick person. Sick is when they say something. Of course, I had been sick for five years. But now, now maybe I was really sick. Maybe I wasgetting good at this, good enough to scare people. Maybe I would almost die, and balance just there, at the edge of the cliff, wavering while they gasped and clutched one another's arms, and win acclaim for my death-defying stunts. ~ Marya Hornbacher

Who's to say what will one day appear to have been trendsetting? Sometimes artists who receive breathless acclaim initially, seem to conk out. Other artists who don't register so keenly at the time, prove to be trailblazers. ~ Charles Saatchi

You're not going out there to make a living out of it by selling records. You want acclaim and you want to know people are listening. ~ Kevin Drew

That we can come here today and in the presence of thousands and tens of thousands of the survivors of the gallant army of Northern Virginia and their descendants, establish such an enduring monument by their hospitable welcome and acclaim, is conclusive proof of the uniting of the sections, and a universal confession that all that was done was well done, that the battle had to be fought, that the sections had to be tried, but that in the end, the result has inured to the common benefit of all. ~ William Howard Taft

no genius that ever won acclaim did so without a measure of indulgence. Name me any man you like who had a celebrated reputation, and I'll tell you what the age he lived in forgave him, what it turned a blind eye to in his work. ~ Seneca.

The currencies of science are discoveries and ideas; the rewards are the excitement of going where nobody has been before and, if one is inclined to such things, the kudos of peer acclaim, plus funds to do more research. ~ John Sulston

Relativistic twins? When one looks at the paths that Newton and Einstein followed while pursuing their theories of gravity, one is struck by the many similarities: the unexplained data on orbits, the sudden insight about falling objects, the need for a new mathematics, the calculational difficulties, the retroactive agreements, the controversy, the problem-plagued expeditions, and the final triumph and acclaim.. Both men had worked in the same eccentric and lonely way, divorced from other scientists, armed with a great feeling of self-reliance while struggling with new concepts and difficult mathematics, and both produced earth-shaking results. One can't help but wonder if these two greatest of scientists, born 237 years apart, were "relativistically related", conceived as twins in some ethereal plane in a far-off galaxy and sent to earth to solve a matter of some gravity. ~ Rodney A. Brooks

I think Paul Weitz is a really amazing director, obviously with tons of acclaim and stuff, but I still think he is underrated. And I think he's amazing to work with, so I was super lucky. ~ Nat Wolff

But hell can endure for only a limited period, and life will begin again one day. History may perhaps have
an end; but our task is not to terminate it but to create it, in the image of what we henceforth know to be
true. Art, at least, teaches us that man cannot be explained by history alone and that he also finds a reason
for his existence in the order of nature. For him, the great god Pan is not dead. His most instinctive act of
rebellion, while it affirms the value and the dignity common to all men, obstinately claims, so as to satisfy
its hunger for unity, an integral part of the reality whose name is beauty. One can reject all history and yet
accept the world of the sea and the stars. The rebels who wish to ignore nature and beauty are condemned
to banish from history everything with which they want to construct the dignity of existence and of labor.
Every great reformer tries to create in history what Shakespeare, Cervantes, Moliere, and Tolstoy knew
how to create: a world always ready to satisfy the hunger for freedom and dignity which every man
carries in his heart. Beauty, no doubt, does not make revolutions. But a day will come when revolutions
will have need of beauty. The procedure of beauty, which is to contest reality while endowing it with
unity, is also the procedure of rebellion. Is it possible eternally to reject injustice without ceasing to
acclaim the nature of man and the beauty of the world ~ Albert Camus

The more narrow-minded a system is the more it will please worldly-wise people. Thus the system of the materialists, the doctrine of Helvetius and also Locke has recieved the most acclaim amongst his class. Thus Kant even now will find more followers than Fichte. ~ Novalis

I've a long time trying to love
a brother whose only way of touching me is pain.
A long time escaping into music.
Practice, lessons, rehearsals that protect me
from the hurting parts of life.
I've been winning awards, applause,
acclaim for my trumpets since I was in grade school.
But love?
The word catches in my throat.
Do I love anything?
Have i forgotten how? ~ Stasia Ward Kehoe

what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim." "If ~ Amor Towles

Eric Roberts, for all the criticism he gets, is at least having fun with the script. His decision to devour large swaths of scenery locate him firmly in the tradition of Graham Crowden and Joseph Furst. Which is to say that he's not destined for fan acclaim, but he's easy to like if you're of the mind to. ~ Phillip Sandifer

I start reading every Elizabeth Wurtzel essay with optimism, like maybe finally she put her talent to writing about something than herself, and by the end of paragraph three that optimism has fled. So maybe you know Wurtzel has written an essay for New York Magazine? Probably you know, because for whatever reason, Wurtzel provokes a deep need in people to talk about how much they hate Wurtzel. So the comments are hundreds deep, Twitter is ablaze, and here I am, writing this blog post.

And actually, she reminds me of Mary MacLane. She was a 19-year-old girl who wrote a memoir called I Await the Devil's Coming in 1901 and it was an instant success. I wrote the introduction to the upcoming reissue, and there I talk about what a deeply interesting book it was. Not only "for its time," but also it's just kind of visceral and nasty and snarling, yet elegantly written.

I kept thinking about MacLane, after the introduction got handed in and things went off to press. But this time, it wasn't her writing that interested me, it was the way she never wrote anything very interesting ever again. She got stunted, somehow, winning all of that acclaim for being a young, sour thing. And I wondered if it was the fame that stunted her, because she spent the rest of her career spitting out copies of the memoir that made her famous. And it worked, until it didn't. ~ Jenna Crispin

It is certainly true that cooking is therapeutic, creative and all those other faintly creepy self-helpish words. I would love to tell you that learning to cook was part of my journey toward actualization. I would love to tell Oprah this. I would love to tell Oprah this while weeping. But I learned to cook for a much simpler reason: in the abject hope that people would spend time with me if I put good things in their mouth. It is, in other words (like practically everything else I do), a function of my desperation for emotional connection and acclaim. ~ Steve Almond

It doesn't matter who you are, how many awards you've won, how popular you are, or how much critical acclaim you've had. ~ David Guterson

The whole world might know you and acclaim you, but someone in the past, forever unreachable, forever unknowing, spoils it all. ~ Isaac Asimov

To have an inner life, to think, to juggle and leap, to become a tightrope walker in the world of ideas. To attack, to riposte, to refute, what a contest, what acclaim. To understand. The most generous word of all. Memory. To retain, a geyser of felicity. Intelligence. The agonizing poverty of my mind. Words and ideas flitting in and out like butterflies. My brain a dandelion seed blown in the wind. ~ Violette Leduc

Deception is nowhere more common than in religion. And the persons most easily and damningly deceived are the leaders. Those who deceive others are first themselves deceived, for not many, I think, begin with evil intent. The devil, after all, is a spiritual being. His usual mode of temptation is not an obvious evil but to an apparent good. The commonest forms of devil-inspired worship do not take place furtively at black masses with decapitated cats but flourish under the bright lights of acclaim and glory, in a swirl of organ music. ~ Eugene H. Peterson