Category Archives: Quotations

Things people said.

Looking Through Viral Writing

Posted on January 24, 2019 by JMN

The lesson here is really to question, what is the genuine source of this content and how is it being frames [sic]. And then, how is that framing elevated by the the news media that you’re looking through?” said Louis … Continue reading →

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In Search Of

Posted on January 20, 2019 by JMN

… In the actual history of the human race “traditional masculinity” as a single coherent category simply does not exist. To pluck only Western examples, there is no single “traditional” model that can encompass strong, silent types and romantic poets, … Continue reading →

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Colette

Posted on January 18, 2019 by JMN

static01.nyt.com/images/2018/10/03/arts/03colette1/merlin_143890539_b04f8a07-099a-46e2-9af4-3de2e7185111-articleLarge.jpg Another great strength of Chéri is its domestic accuracy, especially about the shifting sands between two people alone in a room, the vanity and careless cruelty, the weird dance between love and clarity – “You never laugh except unkindly … Continue reading →

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Traduced in Translation

Posted on January 12, 2019 by JMN

m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BOTc1MjY0ODA4MF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMjQyNTQ3NjM@._V1_.jpg In the film, set in Mexico City in the 1970s, the actors speak Mexican Spanish and the indigenous Mixtec language. For that Spanish, Netflix added subtitles in Castilian, Spain’s main dialect, for the release in that country. On Wednesday, … Continue reading →

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Old English “Kennings”

Posted on January 5, 2019 by JMN

s3.amazonaws.com/libapps/accounts/35417/images/sutton_hoo_bigger.jpg There are ways of expressing feeling in the Old English kennings that do not exist in the formal English of today. Even if I were to dream up some delicious new portmanteau here — some melding of “history,” “poignant” … Continue reading →

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Spot On

Posted on January 4, 2019 by JMN

i.pinimg.com/236x/af/0a/5e/af0a5e1f54ce7bd39bdacda274b78d97–iris-murdoch-irish-people.jpg Dame Iris Murdoch had been a philosophy don at Oxford before she became a novelist, and as far as I was concerned, her philosophy of life was spot on, as someone in a British novel might say. (Susan Scarf … Continue reading →

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Muriel Spark

Posted on December 21, 2018 by JMN

Perhaps it is that particular literary quality, her poet’s rigorous understanding of what another modernist, D. H. Lawrence, called “the jump of words along the line”—when set against the easy-to-read “Miss Jean Brodie,” with its mass-market appeal—that has confused her … Continue reading →

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*Affectedly Quaint

Posted on December 18, 2018 by JMN

Following Dr. [Donald] Knuth’s doctrine helps to ward off moronry. He is known for introducing the notion of “literate programming,” emphasizing the importance of writing code that is readable by humans as well as computers — a notion that nowadays … Continue reading →

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Adrienne Rich

Posted on December 12, 2018 by JMN

http://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/books/review/adrienne-rich-essential-essays-selected-poems-1950-2012.html I don’t mean to claim some instant, magic woke-ness upon reading these books. But Rich offers me a powerful and necessary reminder of the continuous self-reflection required to fight ignorance — one’s own and others’. We need to reread … Continue reading →

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“Something Like America”

Posted on December 10, 2018 by JMN

http://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/books/review/political-poetry.html Wordsworth’s description of “emotion recollected in tranquillity” is sometimes cited as shorthand for what poets refer to as the lyric “I,” the poet’s vehicle for private, meditative reflection. So what becomes of the lyric “I” if poems are not … Continue reading →

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