Quotes by Academics - Page 4

Masculinity is part of a binary and requires its opposite, since, in the absence of femininity, masculinity would have no meaning.
Sheila Jeffreys
If a woman tells a man the god favor him, everybody says she's far-minded.' The broom halted mid-sweep and the slave turned to Hild. 'But let a woman do what the gods tell her, without asking a man's permission first? Then she's possessed.' Unwen punctuated her words with her broom, jabbing it into the corner.
Rebecca Barnhouse
Living on through loss seems by contrast as bad or worse; it means experiencing environmental deterioration, steady decline in human well-being, and increasing constraint on future human action consciously and slowly while realizing that they are likely to continue for generations after one is gone.
Frederick Buell
George's hand lifted and fell away again. It seemed an insult to imply that anything so small as a touch could stop the raw feeling in Sir Stephen's suddenly dark and haunted eyes.
Mette Ivie Harrison
Despite the growing clinical and research interest in dissociative symptoms and disorders, it is also true that the substantial prevalence rates for dissociative disorders are still disproportional to the number of studies addressing these conditions. For example, schizophrenia has a reported rate of 0.55% to 1% of the normal population (Goldner, Hus, Waraich, & Somers, more or less similar to the prevalence of DID. Yet a PubMed search generated 25,421 papers on research related to schizophrenia, whereas only 73 publications were found for DID-related research.
Paul H. Blaney
The lifetime prevalence of dissociative disorders among women in a general urban Turkish community was 18.3%, with 1.1% having DID (ar, Akyüz, & Doan, 2007). In a study of an Ethiopian rural community, the prevalence of dissociative rural community, the prevalence of dissociative disorders was 6.3%, and these disorders were as prevalent as mood disorders (6.2%), somatoform disorders (5.9%), and anxiety disorders (5.7%) (Awas, Kebede, & Alem, 1999). A similar prevalence of ICD-10 dissociative disorders (7.3%) was reported for a sample of psychiatric patients from Saudi Arabia (AbuMadini & Rahim, 2002).
Paul H. Blaney
I've always thought of wholeness and integration as necessary myths. We're fragmented beings who cement ourselves together, but there are always cracks. Living with the cracks is part of being, well, reasonably healthy
Siri Hustvedt
In my lap I had my dear little pug, the smell of whose ears will always be sweeter to me than all the perfumes of Araby and the scent of heliotrope combined.
Kathryn Davis
I am your friend,” Gous said. “I drank with you, didn’t I?”Kline tried to nod but nothing happened. He could see the wrappings around Gous’ hand staining with blood.“Besides,” said Gous, “friendship is one thing, God another.
Brian Evenson
The idea that any art is achieved 'intuitively' is a dehumanization of the brains, effort, and the traditions of the artist, and a classification of said artist as subhuman. It is those supposed incapable of intelligence, training, or connection with a tradition who are described as working by instinct or intuition.
Joanna Russ
It encapsulates so neatly the lesson of expectation and reality that it could serve as a parable. The fact that tomatoes are good is beside the point. If you think you're getting an apple, a tomato will revolt you. That New York should be nicknamed the Big Apple, that an apple is the fruit of humankind's first error and the expulsion from paradise, that America and paradise have been linked and confused ever since Europeans first hit its shores, makes the story reverberate as myth.
Siri Hustvedt
If not violently overthrown, expectation can have a power in itself, can invest a place with what literally isn't there.
Siri Hustvedt
I had never seen anything like New York, and its newness held the promise of my future: dense with the experience I craved - romantic, urbane, intellectual. Looking back on that moment, I believe I was saved from disappointment by the nature of my "great expectations." I honestly wasn't burdened with conventional notions of finding security and happiness. At that time of my life, even when I was "happy," it wasn't because I expected it. That was for characters less romantic than myself. I didn't expect to be rich, well fed, and kindly treated by all. I wanted to live deeply and fully, to embrace whatever the city held for me.
Siri Hustvedt
It isn’t time that folds, it’s space.
Kathryn Davis
Nothing means anything but you still have to follow the rules.
Scarlett Thomas
We cannot understand the Higher Wisdom. Later, well after the event, we may see the lesson contained in the event, and be truly grateful. We must, however, submit to what happens, accepting all that unfolds gracefully. This is the key. All your tragedies in life and in the theatre come about because of non-acceptance of the will of the Gods. Not my petty little ant-like will, but the Gods omnipotent will, let that will be done, I say. This is the beginning and end of the virtuous life.
Alan Jacobs
Not untill all babies are born from glass jars will the combat cease between mother and son. But in a totalitarian future that has removed procreation from woman's hands, there will also be no affect and no art. Men will be machines, without pain but also without pleasure. Imagination has a price, which we are paying every day. There is no escape from the biologic chains that bind us.
Camille Paglia
Criticism at its best is re-creative, not spirit-killing.
Camille Paglia
The American critic Dale Peck, author of Hatchet Jobs (2004), argues that reviewing finds its true character in critical GBH such as Fischer's [review of Martin Amis's Yellow Dog]. It represents a return to the prehistoric origins of reviewing in Zoilism - a kind of pelting of pretentious literature with dung, lest the writers get above themselves; it is to the novelist what the gown of humiliation was to the Roman politician - a salutary ordeal. Less grandly, bad reviews are fun, so long as you are not the author. There is, it must be admitted, a kind of furtive blood sport pleasure in seeing a novelist suffer. You read on. Whereas most of us stop reading at the first use of the word 'splendid' or 'marvellous' in a review.
John Sutherland
For obvious reasons, the relationship between novelists, the reviewing establishment and critics in general is chronically, and often acutely, edgy. A kind of low-intensity warfare prevails, with outbreaks of savagery. It is partly an ownership issue. Who, other than its creator, is to say what a work of fiction means or is worth? It can take years to write a novel and only a few hours for a critic, or a reviewer rushing for a tight deadline, to trash it.
John Sutherland
This book is dedicated to Israel's constructive and nuanced critics, whose rational voices are too often drowned out by the exaggerations, demonizations, and hate-filled lies put forth by Israel's enemies. Criticism is the lifeblood of democracy and a sure sign of admiration for an imperfect democracy seeking to improve itself.
Alan Dershowitz
Sometimes we have to do the work even though we don't yet see a glimmer on the horizon that it's actually going to be possible.
Angela Y. Davis
One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more 'normal' girls' activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes.
Scarlett Thomas
By following what they believe are stick orders from the top, many typical managers tend to concentrate on working within budget and resource constraint --- thereby developing a boxed-in, "can't do" mindset.
Sumantra Ghoshal
God may save all, but human rescue is only for a few.
Saul Bellow
About Anna Faktorovich's "Romances of George Sand": “What a read! Not lacking in action and very imaginative.
Belinda Jack
What do we do if we come across trouble, sir?' Cahill asked, slapping at a fly. 'As much as I enjoy giving the rebel turds a walloping, it should be down to the Militia to keep the buggers in check.''They are doing their job,' Mullone said, glancing at a free-standing Celtic Cross that had once been a prominent feature beside the road, but was now strangled with weeds, besieged with dark moss and deeply pitted with age.'If you call plundering, fighting and torture work, sir.''You don't have much faith in the peace talks then, Seán?''No, sir. There's more chance of me taking holy orders and becoming the Pope than there is of peace,' Cahill replied. 'The negotiations that spout from the politicians mouths are nothing but wet farts.
David Cook
I want to be a good man, a good writer.""Be one or the other, Ernest, not both.
Naomi Wood
No man should be asked to live with so much sadness, and with so little promise of relief.
Naomi Wood
Ernest chose to go, she finally thinks, watching the fire turn the papers black. He loved her but he could not live anymore.
Naomi Wood
Martha thanks Sylvia, gesturing with the book. "Just remember not to try to hard with understanding it, " Sylvia says. "Like people, they're best not to be too thoroughly understood.
Naomi Wood
The longer I don't write, the more I hurt.
Naomi Wood
No one ever tells you that: that there’s no method. Writing’s a lawless place.
Naomi Wood
Page 158: 'Architecture is team work,' said Sinan. 'Apprenticeship is not.''Why don't you want us to look at each other's drawings? ' Jahan once asked.'Because you'll compare. If you think you are better than the others, you'll be poisoned by hubris. If you think another's better, poisoned by envy. Either way, it is poison.
Elif Şafak
…I came to understand that while many of us might default to measuring our lives by summary statistics, such as number of people presided over, number of awards, or dollars accumulated in a bank, and so on, the only metrics that will truly matter to my life are the individuals whom I have been able to help, one by one, to become better people.
Clayton M. Christensen
Deary me, boys, why? Why would someone with so much going for him have... have... ended it all in the way he appears to have done? 'Oh father, you see, it could be for any number of reasons ,' Andy said, serious and fluent, as if he was an expert on the subject. 'Personally I think it's a miracle that any of us survives.' What do you mean? said the Priest.'I mean' continued Andy, 'there's this one moment as you're growing up when the world suddenly feels more or less pointless- when the terribleness of reality lands on you, like something falling from the sky.''Something falling? Like what? asked Father Frank, trying his best.'Something big, like a piano, say, or a fridge. And when that happens, there's no going back to the time when it hadn't landed on you.'‘But what about the pleasures and the joy and the purpose, like sport, music, girls and the like?’ Father Frank was nearly pleading now.‘Fiction,’ sighed Andy. ‘Mirages in the desert of life, to make people feel like it might be worth it.’ ‘Oh,’ said Father Frank. ‘Oh I see, and do all you youngsters get this feeling?’‘Yes, I think so,’ said Andy, not even asking anyone else for their opinion, but most of us learn to live with it.’‘Well that’s a relief, I suppose.
Sarah Moore Fitzgerald
One quarter of Medicare beneficiaries have five or more chronic conditions, sees an average of 13 physicians each year, and fills 50 prescriptions per year.
Clayton M. Christensen
I once laughed at the vanity of women of thirty or forty who whitened their ruddy old skin with lead, but now I know such salves are not disguises for old crones who wish to catch a young husband. Instead they are only a mask we wear so that we can, for a little while, still recognize ourselves.
Rebecca Johns
The author relates that the word "OBSCENE" springs from the concept in Greek drama that certain actions would be performed outside the scene or off the stage. He clarifies that the Greeks did not shy away from shocking actions, but they knew that portraying them in the audience's view would drown out the emotional subtlety of the character development and ethical dilemmas.
Gene Edward Veith Jr.
Your respect for people does not mean you need themThis is your morality, even if they do not deserve it.
Waciny Laredj
A woman hath nine lives like a cat.
John B. Heywood
Raise the bar and set yourself some new challenges. You can accomplish more than you think.
Rebecca Gordon
It's like they've forgotten everything important, isn't it? I mean, forgotten things like cats and dancing exist.
Katherine Rundell
Emancipation resulting in madness. Unlimited freedom to choose and play a tremendous variety of roles with a lot of coarse energy.
Saul Bellow
Madness, genius, originality - it's all the same thing; it's a breaking of our normal value structure and the substitution of another one.
Malcolm Bradbury
I am a bomb but I mean you no harm. That I still am here to tell this, is a miracle: I was deployed on May 15, 1957, but I didn’t go off because a British nuclear engineer, a young father, developed qualms after seeing pictures of native children marveling at the mushrooms in the sky, and sabotaged me. I could see why during that short drop before I hit the atoll: the island looks like god’s knuckles in a bathtub, the ocean is beautifully translucent, corals glow underwater, a dead city of bones, allowing a glimpse into a white netherworld. I met the water and fell a few feet into a chromatic cemetery. The longer I lie here, listening to my still functioning electronic innards, the more afraid I grow of detonating after all this time. I don’t share your gods, but I pray I shall die a silent death.
Marcus Speh
The flesh would shrink and go, the blood would dry, but no one believes in his mind of minds or heart of hearts that the pictures do stop.
Saul Bellow
It was probably no accident that it was the cripple Hephaestus who made ingenious machines; a normal man didn't have to hoist or jack himself over hindrances by means of cranks, chains and metal parts. Then it was in the line of human advance that Einhorn could do so much.
Saul Bellow
The stories and pictures I make for the lives of the people closest to me are the forms of my empathy.
Siri Hustvedt
The Paraclete and "Book of Martha" narratives were ultimately versions of the dream of "fixing" of the human species that had driven (and stymied) the Parables books: "On the one hand," she writes in her journal, "I want to write fix-the-world scenario. I seem to need to write them. The fact that I don't believe in them--don't believe humanity is fixable--does create a problem
Gerry Canavan
In females, the author has found the application of pure carbolic acid to the clitoris an excellent means of allaying the abnormal excitement.
Ben Goldacre
This process of professionalising the obvious fosters a sense of mystery around science, and health advice, which is unnecessary and destructive. More than anything, more than the unnecessary ownership of the obvious, it is disempowering.
Ben Goldacre
Patrick opens his arms about three feet wide and, with one finger pointing up on each hand, tries to show the scope of this thing. I notice that he doesn’t look at his hands as he does this, but at the wall behind me. It suddenly occurs to me that when people describe size this way, they’re relying on perspective to help them. He’s not saying ‘It’s this big.’ He’s saying ‘It would look this big from here if it was over there.
Scarlett Thomas
Children can be disgusting, and often they can develop extraordinary talents, but I’m yet to meet any child who can stimulate his carotid arteries inside his ribcage.
Ben Goldacre
Brian knows the affair is wrong. He's known from the moment Wendy first undressed in his office. But with her hot, wet tongue in his ear, and her taut, pink nipples straining against his starched white shirt, and with Mick Jagger's strident voice squawking about satisfaction on the tiny transistor radio, Brian's body refuses to obey.Instead of shoving Wendy out the door, he shoves her onto the unmade bed.
Alison Lurie
Curiosity is a terrible thing, he was thinking. How is it possible to stop oneself from needing to know?
Brian Evenson
Bringing people into the here-and-now. The real universe. That's the present moment. The past is no good to us. The future is full of anxiety. Only the present is real--the here-and-now. Seize the day.
Saul Bellow
Work is the undoing of nature.
Paul Majkut
a detestable, viscous place populated by slugs
Paul Majkut
When I have my interview with my God, our conversation will focus on the individuals whose self-esteem I was able to strengthen, whose faith I was able to reinforce, and whose discomfort I was able to assuage—a doer of good, regardless of what assignment I had. These are the metrics of that matter in measuring my life. This realization, which occurred nearly fifteen years ago, guided me every day to seek opportunities to help people in ways tailored to their individual circumstances. My happiness and my sense of worth has been immeasurably improved as a result.
Clayton M. Christensen