Friday, November 04, 2005
Plagiarism as Blogging 101
I recently finished reading All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, and rather than actually expending effort on a post today, I thought I'd pull out a few quotes I really liked for all you crazy kids. It's one of the few books I've enjoyed enough to add to my Friendster favorites in the past few years, even if it did take me two months to read, since I have a real job now. So think of this as your kultural edukation. And not as sheer laziness. Perish the thought.
"[A] man's virtue may be but the defect of his desire, as his crime may be but a function of his virtue."
"You meet somebody at the seashore or on a vacation and have a wonderful time together. Or in a corner at a party, while the glasses clink and somebody beats on a piano, you talk with a stranger whose mind seems to whet and sharpen your own and with whom a wonderful new vista of ideas is spied. Or you share some intense or painful experience with somebody, and discover a deep communion. Then afterward you are sure that when you meet again, the gay companion will give you the old gaiety, the brilliant stranger will stir your mind from its torpor, the sympathetic friend will solace you with the old communion of spirit. But something happens, or almost always happens, to the gaiety, the brilliance, the communion. You remember the individual words from the old language you spoke together, but you have forgotten the grammar. You remember the steps of the dance, but the music isn't playing any more. So there you are."
"Perhaps the only answer, I thought then, was that by the time we understand the pattern we are in, the definition we are making for ourselves, it is too late to break out of the box. We can only live in terms of the definition, like the prisoner in the cage in which he cannot lie or stand or sit, hung up in justice to be viewed by the populace. Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves."
"The person who loves you has picked you out of the great mass of uncreated clay which is humanity to make something out of, and the poor lumpish clay which is you wants to find out what it has been made into. But at the same time, you, in the act of loving somebody, become real, cease to be a part of the continuum of the uncreated clay and get the breath of life in you and rise up."
Make sure to watch for the major motion picture with Sean Penn and Jude Law! Because Hollywood has never bungled the adaptation of a classic novel!
I recently finished reading All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, and rather than actually expending effort on a post today, I thought I'd pull out a few quotes I really liked for all you crazy kids. It's one of the few books I've enjoyed enough to add to my Friendster favorites in the past few years, even if it did take me two months to read, since I have a real job now. So think of this as your kultural edukation. And not as sheer laziness. Perish the thought.
"[A] man's virtue may be but the defect of his desire, as his crime may be but a function of his virtue."
"You meet somebody at the seashore or on a vacation and have a wonderful time together. Or in a corner at a party, while the glasses clink and somebody beats on a piano, you talk with a stranger whose mind seems to whet and sharpen your own and with whom a wonderful new vista of ideas is spied. Or you share some intense or painful experience with somebody, and discover a deep communion. Then afterward you are sure that when you meet again, the gay companion will give you the old gaiety, the brilliant stranger will stir your mind from its torpor, the sympathetic friend will solace you with the old communion of spirit. But something happens, or almost always happens, to the gaiety, the brilliance, the communion. You remember the individual words from the old language you spoke together, but you have forgotten the grammar. You remember the steps of the dance, but the music isn't playing any more. So there you are."
"Perhaps the only answer, I thought then, was that by the time we understand the pattern we are in, the definition we are making for ourselves, it is too late to break out of the box. We can only live in terms of the definition, like the prisoner in the cage in which he cannot lie or stand or sit, hung up in justice to be viewed by the populace. Yet the definition we have made of ourselves is ourselves."
"The person who loves you has picked you out of the great mass of uncreated clay which is humanity to make something out of, and the poor lumpish clay which is you wants to find out what it has been made into. But at the same time, you, in the act of loving somebody, become real, cease to be a part of the continuum of the uncreated clay and get the breath of life in you and rise up."
Make sure to watch for the major motion picture with Sean Penn and Jude Law! Because Hollywood has never bungled the adaptation of a classic novel!
