Quotes by Professors - Page 6

Now, Woolf calls her fictional bastion of male privilege Oxbridge, so I'll call mine Yarvard. Even though she cannot attend Yarvard because she is a woman, Judith cheerfully applies for admission at, let's call it, Smithcliff, a prestigious women's college. She is denied admission on the grounds thatthe dorms and classrooms can'taccommodate wheelchairs, that her speech pattern would interfere with her elocution lessons, and that her presence would upset the other students. There is also the suggestion that she is not good marriage material for the men at the elite college to which Smithcliff is a bride-supplying "sister school." The letter inquires as to why she hasn't been institutionalized.When she goes to the administration building to protest the decision, she can't get up the flight of marble steps on the Greek Revival building. This edifice was designed to evoke a connection to the Classical world, which practiced infanticide of disabled newborns.

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson

Why else do we write and write except to move our readers?

Jerome Charyn

Laboratory research suggests that how we look and act in the virtual affect our behavior in the real.

Sherry Turkle

But to find out the truth about how dreams die, one should never take the word of the dreamer.

Toni Morrison

In general, silence often reflects ambiguity on the part of the listener as the observer wishes to understand the other's experience.

Sandra Leanne Bosacki

It is useful to study different traditions in order to be free of attachment to any one way of expressing what is beyond expression. (x)

Ravi Ravindra

As every writer knows... there is something mysterious about the writer's ability, on any given day, to write. When the juices are flowing, or the writer is 'hot', an invisible wall seems to fall away, and the writer moves easily and surely from one kind of reality to another... Every writer has experienced at least moments of this strange, magical state. Reading student fiction one can spot at once where the power turns on and where it turns off, where the writer writes from 'inspiration' or deep, flowing vision, and where he had to struggle along on mere intellect.

John Gardner

I can speak of you now to anyone because I’ve stopped wanting anything like what I once wanted from you.

Carol Guess

I hear many young women say they can't find well-known feminists with whom they identify. That can be disheartening, but I say, let us (try to) become the feminists we would like to see moving through the world.

Roxane Gay

Clearly, naming the major figures in the tradition had become a tradition in itself.

Gregory Woods

What was attraction if not a form of telepathy? The wild luck of two people feeling the exact same thing at the exact same time. That word again: purpose.

Claire Vaye Watkins

But just because you love something, I added to myself, doesn't mean you'll ever be great. Not if you don't work. Most people stink at the things they love.

Amy Chua

One desire, my friends, one: to kill yourself. You must desire this. You must feel that a voyage of discovery is more important than all the little trips which the normal consumer self wants to buy.

Luke Rhinehart

Lately it's started to seem to me that here in America our fetishization of self-reliance has taken a wrong turn and has helped enable us to jettison compassion as a national value while still maintaining a vision of ourselves as essentially well-meaning. It hasn't taken a whole lot of common sense, given the evidence of the last few years, to puzzle out the heartlessness of unregulated capitalism, and yet our political class has embraced even more fervently the notion of every man for himself, even given the ever-growing numbers such a philosophy leaves behind.

Jim Shepard

How I admired people who talked about their vices as though they were distant relatives they'd learn to put up with because they couldn't quite disown them.

André Aciman

I needed them, sure, and we can all argue about the moment when the balance tipped and I needed them so much that I would hurt. But you can't pretend they didn't need me too, each in his or her way. They wouldn't necessarily have admitted it - except Reza - but you can't tell me they didn't love me. The heart knows. The body knows. When I was with Sirena, or Reza, or Skandar, the air moved differently between us; time passed differently; words or gestures meant more than themselves. If you've never had this experience-but who has not been visited by love, laughing?-then you can't understand. And if you have, you don't need me to say another word.

Claire Messud

All storytelling is a form of travel. All of the things you know you should do when traveling this world apply in Elfland as well. The Charms will open the doors to strange and wondrous lands, so some travel tips and runic etiquette may be in order: Be polite. Don't take anything without asking. Laugh at their jokes. Remember, humor is sacred: so is hospitality. Beware of the dark woods at night. Do not trust the wolf in winter. Take notes. Sing for your supper. Pack extra sandwiches. Bring fine gifts. Always tell a story when asked. Listen as if your life depended on it. Start early. Walk the land. Keep your eyes open. Travel wisely and well. Come back safe and sound.

Ari Berk

No matter how bad things are, you can always make things worse.

Randy Pausch

in my experience, the words “now just calm down” almost inevitably have the opposite effect on the person you are speaking to.

Elyn R. Saks

Designing well-written tests still remains a challenging task. Some complex questions may lose clarity causing difficulties in providing meaningful answers. Basically, questions should be designed in such a way that each well-prepared student can easily give a correct answer.

Eraldo Banovac

Philosophers say man forms himself in dialogue.

Anne Carson

Because different cultures see a particular animal as representing a certain human virtue or vice, the use of animal imagery also allows for more colorful commentary on the human condition.

Larry Herzberg

A true entrepreneur doesn't see an obstacle and thinks how long its going to take to conquer, they look at it and figure out how high they are going to jump and jump over it.

Frederick E. Owen Jr.

That anybody white could take your whole self for anything that came to mind. Not just work, kill, or maim you, but dirty you so bad you forgot who you were and couldn't think it up. And though she and others lived through and got over it, she could never let it happen to her own.

Toni Morrison

Just as television didn't put an end to radio or the movies (to say nothing of books), I don't think e-books will put an end to hard copies, even for someone like me who loves technology and does not fetishize the physical medium of books. ~ Steven Pinker, author of The Lauguage Instinct, How the Mind Works The Blank Slate and The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature.

Leah Price

His cigarettes helped mark the passage of time, especially on days that seemed all sun and sky...The dependable dwindling of his cigarette supply reassured him that he hadn't been left out here, that eventually he would have to ride into town and things would still be there, that the world hadn't stopped whirling.

Claire Vaye Watkins

It’s not enough to say it; you would need to take it out of your mouth, you would need to become it. You would need to become what you were born to be.

Chris Campanioni

I was ashamed of myself for being ashamed of myself. I didn't like feeling like that.

Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Chris is a little ashamed of having once fallen for him: it makes him sad how everything changes, how ruthless the heart can be.

Paul Russell

Human history seems to me to be one long story of people sweeping down—or up, I suppose—replacing other people in the process.

Alexander McCall Smith

In the context of physics, 137 is equal to the integer part of the inverse of the fine structure constant ... The fine structure constant α is the key to the physicist’s quest for a Grand Unified Theory ... The number 137 has intrigued numerous prominent theoretical physicists ... All told, we believe that it is much easier, and more motivating, to remember a number that has deep significance in numerous disciplines, ... with the following terse ode to 137:Bethe was mischievous with 137Bohr was intrigued by 137Born was mystified by 137Fermi was frisky with 137Feynman was mesmerized by 137Heisenberg was fascinated by 137Lederman was enchanted by 137Pauli was consumed by 137Turing was matched by 137

Leon O Chua

One thinks of the failure of representation since 9/11, the proliferation of novels, the media glut, the surfeit of images that somehow slide too easily into a banal repertoire, commodified shock.

Maureen N. McLane

Brrr, who had never admired books particularly...didn't remember that a mere book might reek of sex, possibility, fecundity. Yet a book has a ripe furrow and a yielding spine, he thought, and the nuances to be teased from its pages are nearly infinite in their variety and coquettish appeal. And what new life can emerge from a book. Any book, maybe.

Gregory Maguire

Their drift away from others produced a selfish privacy and they had lost the refuge and the consolation of a clan. Baptists, Presbyterians, tribe, army, family, some encircling outside thing was needed. Pride, she thought. Pride alone made them think that they needed only themselves, could shape life that way, like Adam and Eve, like gods from nowhere beholden to nothing except their own creations. She should have warned them, but her devotion cautioned against impertinence. As long as Sir was alive it was easy to veil the truth: that they were not a family-not even a like-minded group. They were orphans, each and all.

Toni Morrison

We become slaves the moment we hand the keys to the definition of reality entirely over to someone else, whether it is a business, an economic theory, a political party, the White House, Newsworld or CNN.

B.W. Powe

I grip Colin harder, kissing him longer, unwilling to let him go. This is what I want; this is what I’ve wanted since his damn phone interrupted us this morning, his mouth, his body claiming mine. I’m on fire, every muscle in my body attuned to his, my groin clenching with delicious need. When the voices grow louder his hold loosens. “Don’t stop, please,” I beg into his mouth. Diving into me once more his tongue slays me, erases every thought of the outside world until the passion has left us breathless and we have to break away if only to live. His forehead presses to mine as we gasp together, the cold air barely cooling the heat raging between us. -Midnight, A McKenna Chronicle

Elizabeth Miller

Consumers presented with six choices on an item were twice as likely to buy as consumers overwhelmed with 24 varieties of the same item.

Sheena Iyengar

Organizing the books was a fun afternoon. We decided to put the thick hardback books, mostly intro. to philosophy textbooks and Norton literature anthologies, on the top shelves where they looked good but stayed out of reach since there's no reason for opening them ever again. Then we went by genre: mysteries, cozies, modernists, mountains, sci-fi, beloved childhood volumes, books we bought abroad, books required in school we couldn't sell back, books bought for us we'll read soon, books bought for us we have no intention of reading, books we want to read but are too long for a commitment with our current schedules...We're not really done with this organization, and I doubt we ever will be, but that's one great part about it.

Joshua Isard

In class I was out of place because I could so easily be distracted from concepts by metaphors and facts. Clearly, I was less intelligent than I had hoped, and I felt frustrated by an inarticulate notion that something was wrong if old material was processed as if the immediate past and the uncertain future had no bearing on it.

Ruth Klüger

Having an open mind is the most important precondition for creatingnew ideas.

Eraldo Banovac

What I love is how seamless everything is. You walk throw a forest and come out in a village; and there’s no difference, no division. You aren’t in nature one minute and in civilization the next. The houses are made out of mud and stone and wood, drawn from the land around. Nothing stands out, nothing jars.

Jamie Zeppa

Nostalgia is powerful. It is natural, human to long for the past, particularly when we can remember our histories as better than they were.

Roxane Gay

She was everything he'd ever wanted in a woman, and nothing he'd ever thought to find in a lady.

Eloisa James

I do lend my books, but I have to be a bit selective because my marginalia are so incriminating.” --Alison Bechdel

Leah Price

I hereby grant you permission to write crap. The more the better. Remember, crap makes the best fertilizer.

Pat Pattison

Have you ever considered what Adam and Eve were doing when they got into so much trouble? As I read the story, they were shopping. The forbidden fruit was not scattered throughout the garden, not in many places, not in multiple locations, but one place, one site, one location and one location only. Perhaps they just came upon it, “Oh, look, the forbidden fruit…” or, perhaps, they were looking for something, searching, shopping. Somewhere in their dissatisfaction they thought, “If only we had something more…

David W. Jones

Is that true," I asked, "that song?""It is a metaphor," said Mrs. Davis, "it has metaphorical truth.""And the end of the mechanical age," I said, "is that a metaphor?""The end of the mechanical age," said Mrs. Davis, "is in my judgment an actuality straining to become a metaphor. One must wish it luck, I suppose. One must cheer it on. Intellectual rigor demands that we give these damned metaphors every chance, even if they are inimical to personal well-being and comfort. We have a duty to understand everything, whether we like it or not–a duty I would scant if I could." At that moment the water jumped into the boat and sank us.

Donald Barthelme

Night was falling. Birds were singing. Birds were, it occurred to me to say, enacting a frantic celebration of day's end. They were manifesting as the earth's bright-colored nerve endings, the sun's descent urging them into activity, filling them individually with life nectar, the life nectar then being passed into the world, out of each beak, in the form of that bird's distinctive song, which was, in turn, an accident of beak shape, throat shape, breast configuration, brain chemistry: some birds blessed in voice, others cursed; some squeaking, others rapturous.

George Saunders

There are many sadnesses in the hearts of men who are far away from their countries.

Alexander McCall Smith

In our busy lives, intimacy often becomes a set piece—we sit down and make time for discussions, for togetherness, for sharing. But sometimes the most intimate parts of ourselves—our desires, our fears, our needs and sensitivities—are revealed most strongly in the course of our mundane routines.

Mathew N. Schmalz

More it hurt more better it is. Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.

Toni Morrison

Success is relative, but happiness is absolute.

Eraldo Banovac

Just two people in love.

Christopher Barzak

Living together/ is one move closer/ to living apart

Kristi Maxwell

Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification.

Karl R. Popper

Deep down, where my boys don't know me, I'm an optimist.

Junot Díaz

Teachers were not allowed to beat children as they did in the past, although, Mma Ramotswe reflected, there were some boys-and indeed some young men-who might have been greatly improved by moderate physical correction. The apprentices, for example: would it help if Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni resorted to physical chastisement-nothing severe, of course-but just an occasional kick in the seat of the pants while they were bending over to change a tyre or something like that? The thought made her smile. She would even offer to administer the kick herself, which she imagined might be oddly satisfying, as one of the apprentices, the one who still kept on about girls, had a largeish bottom which she thought would be quite comfortable to kick. How enjoyable it would be to creep up behind him and kick him when he was least expecting it, and then to say: Let that be a lesson! That was all one would have to say, but it would be a blow for women everywhere.

Alexander McCall Smith

If a story is no good, being based on Hamlet won't save it.

Thomas C. Foster

The Genie declared that in his time and place there were scientists of the passions who maintained that language itself, on the one hand, originated in 'infantile pregenital erotic exuberance, polymorphously perverse,' and that conscious attention, on the other, was a 'libidinal hypercathexis' -- by which magic phrases they seemed to mean that writing and reading, or telling and listening, were literally ways of making love.

John Barth

Increasingly, people feel as though they must have a reason for taking time alone, a reason not to be available.

Sherry Turkle

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