Paul West Quotes

Work often gets in the way of more important things, like writing. ~ Paul West

fiction must be different from reportage; painting from photography. And this difference should be reflected in the language of the work ~ Paul West

Language is the thing that exceeds us all, being not merely conduit or message, but a placeless frieze of timeless resonance, a maze of etymology in which its ancient users and misusers whisper to us with dead glottises. ~ Paul West

Memory, therefore, not simply as the resurrection of one's private past, but an immersion in the past of others, which is to say: history - which one both participates in and is a witness to, is a part of and apart from. Everything, therefore, is present in his mind at once, as if each element were reflecting the light of all the others, and at the same time emitting its own unique and unquenchable radiance. ~ Paul Auster

In Southern West Virginia we live in a war zone. Three and one-half million pounds of explosives are being used every day to blow up the mountains. Blasting our communities, blasting our homes, poisoning us, trying to intimidate us. I don't mind being poor. I mind being blasted and poisoned. There ARE no jobs on a dead planet. ~ Judy Bonds

We think in youth that our bodies are identical to ourselves and have the same interests, but discover later in life that they are heartless companions who have been accidentally yoked with us, and who are as likely as not, in our extreme sickness or old age, to treat us with less mercy than we would have received at the hands of the worst bandits. ~ Rebecca West

Paul and Lori had cuddled the rest of the night in her bed after showering. He decided that if they didn't mate soon, he wasn't going to last. How would it sound for an alpha SEAL wolf to beg? ~ Terry Spear

We're saying no changes for Medicare for people above the age of 55. And in order to keep the promise to current seniors who've already retired and organized their lives around this program, you have to reform it for the next generation. ~ Paul Ryan

How about a new game show called 'Battle Begala?' Contestants would pick any obscure bad thing that happened anywhere in the world, and Paul would have 10 seconds to explain why it is President Bush's fault, ~ Ann Coulter

You don't know anything about me."
"Everything I need to know is written all over your face."
"Right now the only thing my face should be conveying is that it thinks you're a jerk."
He bowed his head as if to say, exactly. ~ Kasie West

An economy cannot long remain prosperous by government's taxing and spending more, now absorbing national output at a rate equal to the entire income of every American living west of the Mississippi. If this trend continues, America will gradually sink into the status of a Third World nation - more unemployment, more shackles on production, more poverty. ~ John Hospers

The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning. ~ Paul Hellyer

The culture and educational system of the contemporary West are based almost exclusively upon the training of the reasoning brain and, to a lesser degree, of the aesthetic emotions. Most of us have forgotten that we are not only brain and will, senses and feelings; we are also spirit. Modern man has for the most part lost touch with the truest and highest aspect of himself; and the result of this inward alienation can be seen all too plainly in his restlessness, his lack of identity and his loss of hope. ~ Kallistos Ware

It is striking how many spiritual writers react to the specificity of real prayer. It runs deeper than Greek Neoplatonism and the influence of Buddhist spirituality. Frankly, God makes us nervous when he gets too close. We don't want a physical dependence on him. It feels hokey, like we are controlling God. Deep down we just don't like grace. We don't want to risk our prayer not being answered. We prefer the safety of isolation to engaging the living God. To embrace the Father and thus prayer is to accept what one pastor called "the sting of particularity."4 Our dislike of asking is rooted in our desire for independence. ~ Paul E. Miller

Dancing is to music what a beloved wife is to her husband. Both of them are so in love, you can't separate them. ~ Paul Bamikole

Politics isn't about big money or power games, it's about the improvement of people's lives. Paul Wellstone ~ Amy E. Black

Paul Otremba's remarkable first book, The Currency, is an intriguing foray into lyric epistemology that tries to come to ter ms with the implacable, paradox-ridden nature of knowledge and experience. These are deeply felt, deeply meditated poems guided by a sensibility highly attenuated to the physical world. In their openness to friendship and love and in their fearless directness, they remind me of the work of Larry Levis and Jon Anderson. Like Levis and Anderson, Otremba promises to be an influential and important voice for his generation. ~ Michael Collier

After all, it's rather difficult to achieve the exact minimum, and it involves risks. ~ Paul Klee

The summer I finished my first novel 'Ghana Must Go,' I drove across west Africa: from Accra to Lome to Cotonou to the deliciously named Ouagadougou. ~ Taiye Selasi

Great things are accomplished by those who do not feel the impotence of man. This is a precious gift. ~ Paul Valery

When you try to learn everything about something, you end up learning something about everything. ~ Paul Acampora

Faced with the widespread destruction of the environment, people everywhere are coming to understand that we cannot continue to use the goods of the earth as we have in the past ... [A] new ecological awareness is beginning to emerge which rather than being downplayed, ought to be encouraged to develop into concrete programs and initiatives. ~ Pope John Paul II

As your congressman, I hold the Holy Bible as being the major directions to me of how I vote in Washington D.C. ~ Paul Broun

I think everybody focuses on race, but it's about a ton of things, and I just see these things as all interrelated and all interwoven in a weird way. ~ Paul Beatty

It's so hard to do anything that doesn't owe some kind of debt to what Stanley Kubrick did with music in movies. Inevitably, you're going to end up doing something that he's probably already done before. It always seem like we're falling behind whatever he came up with. 'Singin' in the Rain' in Clockwork Orange - that was the first time I became so aware of music in movies. So no matter how hard you try to do something new, you're always following behind. ~ Paul Thomas Anderson

We are not an inferior class. I am inferior to no man. None of us are. It is a myth. A manmade creation. It can be unmade, and it should be, and it will be. ~ Michael Paul Michaud

Subtlety sometimes eludes me. Why not just hit the nail on the head? ~ Paul Levine

The next day, Magellan gave the order to weigh anchor. The ships fired a salvo of cannon that reverberated among the splendid dark green mountains, gray ravines, and azure glaciers of the strait, and the armada set sail once again, heading west, always west. ~ Laurence Bergreen

A man is involved in life, leaves his impress on it, and outside of that there is nothing. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Since I am a great sinner, I cannot reject those who have been, provided they have good will. ~ Vincent De Paul

Men command fewer words than they have ideas to express, and language, as Jean Paul said, is a dictionary of faded metaphors. ~ Walter Lippmann

I'm going to make a statement that you might not believe; you might even find it offensive. Fortunately, its not just my opinion; I got it from the apostle Paul who picked it up from Jesus - so don't get upset with me! Here it is: You haven't fully preached the Gospel of Christ if you haven't done it with miracles, signs, and wonders. ~ Todd Bentley

What matters, instead, is whether we are able to help her develop a very different set of qualities, a list that includes persistence, self-control, curiosity, conscientiousness, grit, and self-confidence. Economists refer to these as noncognitive skills, psychologists call them personality traits, and the rest of us sometimes think of them as character. ~ Paul Tough

But why do we keep all that crap inside?' Mack asked.
'Because we believe it's safer there. And, sometimes, when you;re a kid trying to survive, it really is safer there. Then you grow up on the outside, but on the inside you're still that kid in the dark cave surrounded by monsters, and out of habit you keep adding to your collection. We all collect things we value, you know? ~ Wm. Paul Young

In a man like Friedrich von Schlegel the courage to be as an individual self produced complete neglect of participation, but it also produced, in reaction to the emptiness of this self-affirmation, the desire to return to a collective. Schlegel, and with him many extreme individualists in the last hundred years, became Roman Catholics. The courage to be as oneself broke down, and one turned to an institutional embodiment of the courage to be as a part. ~ Paul Tillich

War is a defeat for humanity. ~ Pope John Paul II

One can be very fertile without having to work too much. Three hours in the morning. Three hours in the evening. This is my only rule. - Jean-Paul Sartre ~ Mason Currey

That feeling in the dressing room after you win - nothing comes close to that. You can't get that in any other career. Maybe in the stock market back in the '80s when people were making tons of money, maybe they felt something similar. Maybe. But look at the market now. Nothing gives you that emotion like sports. Nothing. Am I wrong? ~ Paul Coffey

The temptation to use mathematics is irresistible for economists. It appears to convey the appropriate air of scientific authority and precision to economists' musings. ~ Paul Ormerod

Don't be an art critic. Paint. There lies salvation. ~ Paul Cezanne

The Church and the world have a great need of eucharistic worship. Jesus waits for us in this sacrament of love. Let us be generous with our time in going to meet Him in adoration and in contemplation that is full of faith and ready to make reparation for the great faults and crimes of the world. May our adoration never cease ~ Pope John Paul II

Ornette Coleman wasn't sure whether he was going to continue with Charlie Haden-Charlie had some personal problems. I said "You've got to be kidding! There's no one on the globe who will be able to accompany you" and no one ever did. [Scott LaFaro] was playing atonally and certainly Ornette was not an atonal player. Jimmy Garrison was a tonal player. He wasn't even polytonal or atonal. ~ Paul Bley

Let each of us accept the truth of the following statement and try to make it our most fundamental principle: Christ's teaching will never let us down, while worldly wisdom always will. Christ Himself said that this sort of wisdom was like a house with nothing but sand as its foundation, while His own was like a building with solid rock as its foundation. ~ Vincent De Paul

Somewhere along the line, Made in China began to sound like a bargain. (...)
When an importer told a retail buyer that an item was quoted at 65¢ and made in the USA, the buyer figured it could be purchased somewhere cheaper.

When the same product was quoted at 65¢ and was said to have been made in China the buyer figured it could not be found for any less. ~ Paul Midler

I used to sing with my father's jazz band and then when I was ten years old a musician friend of his suggested that I try out for the first west coast production of Annie. ~ Molly Ringwald

Look at me, I'm getting defensive about something that happened so many years ago, somebody said. I'll have to find out who that was and if he's still alive. ~ Paul Reubens