Clifford Quotes

And also don’t forget, the reason opportunity is often missed is that it usually comes disguised as hard work.

If they tell you that she died of sleeping pills you must know that she died of a wasting grief, of a slow bleeding at the soul.

When you're in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks.

Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun.

Here lies one from a distant star, but the soil is not alien to him, for in death he belongs to the universe.

Any idiot can face a crisis—it’s day to day living that wears you out.

This sentence is made of lead (and a sentence of lead gives a reader an entirely different sensation from one made of magnesium). This sentence is made of yak wool. This sentence is made of sunlight and plums. This sentence is made of ice. This sentence is made from the blood of the poet. This sentence was made in Japan. This sentence glows in the dark. This sentence was born with a caul. This sentence has a crush on Norman Mailer. This sentence is a wino and doesn't care who knows it. Like many italic sentences, this one has Mafia connections. This sentence is a double Cancer with a Pisces rising. This sentence lost its mind searching for the perfect paragraph. This sentence refuses to be diagrammed. This sentence ran off with an adverb clause. This sentence is 100 percent organic: it will not retain a facsimile of freshness like those sentences of Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe et al., which are loaded with preservatives. This sentence leaks. This sentence doesn't look Jewish... This sentence has accepted Jesus Christ as its personal savior. This sentence once spit in a book reviewer's eye. This sentence can do the funky chicken. This sentence has seen too much and forgotten too little. This sentence is called "Speedoo" but its real name is Mr. Earl. This sentence may be pregnant. This sentence suffered a split infinitive - and survived. If this sentence has been a snake you'd have bitten it. This sentence went to jail with Clifford Irving. This sentence went to Woodstock. And this little sentence went wee wee wee all the way home.

My queerness is not a vice, is not deliberate, and harms no one.

Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

On Valentine's Day, the Spirit Club plastered the school with red streamersand pink balloons and red and pink hearts. It looked like Clifford the Big Red Dog ate a flock of flamigoes and then barfed his guts up.

Just because I don't know how to work a toy, doesn't mean I don't want it in my toy box.

One of the most significant facts about humanity may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to a live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one

Once there had been joy, but now there was only sadness, and it was not, he knew, alone the sadness of an empty house; it was the sadness of all else, the sadness of the Earth, the sadness of the failures and the empty triumphs.

I want you to close your eyes. I want you to fall asleep first." "Why?" She asked suddenly afraid he would slip out of the room as soon as she did. "Because I'll be here in the morning.

A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

It may be in the cultural particularities of people — in their oddities — that some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be generically human are to be found.

I can't go back," said Towser. "Nor I," said Fowler. "They would turn me back into a dog," said Towser. "And me," said Fowler, "back into a man.

The water's not even blue, jackass.

It's all in your head -- you just have no idea how big your head is.

Man's inability to understand and appreciate the thought and viewpoint of another man would be a stumbling block which no amount of mechanical ability could overcome.

It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents, except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.

That was the way with Man; it had always been that way. He had carried terror with him. And the thing he was afraid of had always been himself.

Most virtue is a demand for greater seduction.

He's a..." "Pain in the ass.

Just wanted to make sure the number wasn't a fake," Az said. She couldn't help her bitter laugh. "Well, you can go ahead and erase it. A bit of advice? Either kiss a girl or don't. Never stop halfway through.

A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing those conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.

What we call our data are really our own constructions of other people’s constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to.

It's the way you fall you. Gotta let yourself go.

The bitch-goddess, as she is called, of Success, roamed, snarling and protective, round the half-humble, half-defiant Michaelis’ heels, and intimidated Clifford completely: for he wanted to prostitute himself to the bitchgoddess, Success also, if only she would have him.

He noticed her giving him the once-over and smiled in a way no gay boy in history had ever smiled at a girl.

It was a dark and stormy night...

Above all, for his merciless, contemptuous treatment of Clifford Chatterley, blown to bits in Flanders in 1918, Lawrence can be damned to hell. Damned but not banned.

Understanding a people's culture exposes their normalness without reducing their particularity...It renders them accessible: setting them in the frame of their own banalities, it dissolves their opacity.

Yeah, go ahead and get the forbidden garden comment out of your system. And no matter what witty snake joke you're considering? Trust me, I've heard it.

Jenkins tried to say goodbye, but he could not say goodbye. If he could only weep, he thought, but robots could not weep.

So, this is what it feels like when Heaven leaves you.

You are not a better or wiser person simply because you’ve ceased to care.

When thinking about what to do next with your life, don’t ask yourself what you would succeed at, but what you would most enjoy failing at.

There is an Indian story -- at least I heard it as an Indian story -- about an Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, asked (perhaps he was an ethnographer; it is the way they behave), what did the turtle rest on? Another turtle. And that turtle? 'Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down

If we wanted home truths, we should have stayed at home.

Im a scientist, once I do something, I want to do something else.

There was nothing now but this empty treadmill of what Clifford called the integrated life, the long living together of two people, who are in the habit of being in the same house with one another. Nothingness! To accept the great nothingness of life seemed to be the one end of living. All the many busy and important little things that make up the grand sum-total of nothingness!

You're seriously suggesting this?" Az interrupted, his face full of disbelief. "That I what, dump her so she kills herself? That's fucked up.

I would think if you were going to quote Whitman you'd go for something not taken from Leaves Of Grass. Especially if you're going to pull the fancy cultured bitch card.

It's necessary to use suffering. Otherwise, one is used by it.

The tyrant’s formula for every genocide since the beginning of time: differentiate, divide, destroy.

It's packed in there already and we're fifteen minutes early. My theory, proven once again," Kristen said, climbing the stairs. "What theory would that be?" "Everyone adores a tragedy.

He looked back at the mirror. "I know it's completely ridiculous, but I can't keep quiet about it any longer. Your closet looks like it was put together by a blind nun, and your brother acts like a cross between a monkey and a go-kart, and you have the social skills of a rock. But I like you, Amy. Quite—quite a bit." He paused. "So, congratulations.

Ninja Assasins Incorporated, Dan Cahill speaking. Who would you like offed today?

And yet he had learned to submerge that sense of horror, to disregard the outward appearance of it, to regard all life as brother life, to meet all things as people.

Man was engaged in a mad scramble for power and knowledge, but nowhere is there any hint of what he meant to do with it once he had attained it. He

Why is it drug addicts and computer aficionados are both called users?

There stood Dan alone, with a ninja mask pulled over his face. Fifteen hissing bottle rockets were pointed right them. "Screaming bottle of death-jutsu!" Dan yelled.

Ian Kabra had charm, wealth, and stunning good looks. But he couldn't move one stubborn cow out of the middle of the road.

Time engraves our faces with all the tears we have not shed.

The best way to deal with 'Change' is to lead it!

Suffering just to pander to underage cheerleaders. Clearly a winner.

Your boyfriend’s heartstrings make such a lovely melody when they snap.

Real bands save fans, real fans save bands.

He needed sun and soil and wind to remain a man.

Vaguely she knew herself that she was going to pieces in some way. Vaguely she knew she was out of connection: she had lost touch with the substantial and vital world. Only Clifford and his books, which did not exist... which had nothing in them. Void to void. Vaguely she knew. But it was like beating her head against a stone.

It seems to happen sudden—a fighter gets good. He gets easy and graceful. He learns how to save himself—no energy wasted... he slips and slides— he travels with the punch. . . . Oh, sure, I like the way you're shaping up.

Come on," she said, smiling for the first time since she'd stepped on the plane. "We need to get to the bus before Ian plugs his iPod into the speakers." Dan shuddered. "I'd rather face a thousand Vespers than listen to Beethoven.

In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous. The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.

‏ﺇﻧﻪ ﻳﺤﺒﻬﺎ ﺃﻛﺜﺮ ﻣﻦ ﻛﻞ ﺍﻷﺧﺮﻳﺎﺕ، ﻭ ﻟﻜﻨﻪ ﻳﺤﺘﺎﺝ ﺇﻟﻰ ﺍﻷﺧﺮﻳاﺕ ﻟﻜﻲ ﻳﻔﻄﻦ ﺇﻟﻰ ﺫﻟﻚ

To breathe is to live, but to write unimpeded is to breathe eternal.

After all, delusions of grandeur are the most entertaining of toys.

When she lowers her eyes she seems to hold all the beauty in the world between her eyelids; when she raises them I see only myself in her gaze.

Never give up on your dreams. Keep sleeping

These are the stories that the Dogs tell when the fires burn high and the wind is from the north. Then each family circle gathers at the hearthstone and the pups sit silently and listen and when the story's done they ask many questions: "What is Man?" they'll ask. Or perhaps: "What is a city?" Or: "What is a war?

For it was authority that turned men suspicious and stern-faced. Authority and responsibility which made them not themselves, but a sort of corporate body that tried to think as a corporate body rather than a person.

Ouch!" Amy yelped, causing Hamilton to release her. "Sorry," she said, smiling as she rubbed her shoulder. "I'm just a little sore." Madison nodded gravely. "Smart peole books are pretty heavy.

At first, when an idea, a poem, or the desire to write takes hold of you, work is a pleasure, a delight, and your enthusiasm knows no bounds. But later on you work with difficulty, doggedly, desperately. For once you have committed yourself to a particular work, inspiration changes its form and becomes an obsession, like a love-affair… which haunts you night and day! Once at grips with a work, we must master it completely before we can recover our idleness.

I'm going to hang up now," she said quietly. "Fine." "Good-bye, Ian," she said. He paused again. She thought she heard something like a sniff or a choke, but it was probably the sound of him tearing up his plane ticket. "Good-bye, Amy." She hung up the phone: Dan and Nellie were quiet. "Well, think about it," said Dan. "Did you really want Natalie Kabra as a sister-in-law?

You still could go to some industry or some university or the government and if you could persuade them you had something on the ball—why, then, they might put up the cash after cutting themselves in on just about all of the profits. And, naturally, they'd run the show because it was their money and all you had done was the sweating and the bleeding.

I was so tired but I wouldn’t let my eyes close because I was afraid he wouldn’t be there when I woke up, that I just dreamed him.

Race preservation is a myth … a myth that you all have lived by—a sordid thing that has arisen out of your social structure. The race ends every day. When a man dies the race ends for him—so far as he’s concerned there is no longer any race.

Visual communication of any kind, whether persuasive or informative, from billboards to birth announcements, should be seen as the embodiment of form and function; the integration of the beautiful and useful." – Paul Rand

I'm throwing out this bottle rocket." "No, wait!" Dan said, reaching for it. "It hasn't been set off yet. Don't waste it, Amy. And we don't have company coming—we have Ian Kabra coming. And I know you want to totally impress him and take him to the movies and stare dreamily into his eyes—" "I do not," Amy said, too quickly. "Oh, Ian," Dan said, pressing his lightsaber to his chest and batting his eyes. "Tell me again about your shiny, shiny shoes.

A million years ago there had been no river here and in a million years to come there might be no river – but in a million years from now there would be, if not Man, at least a caring thing. And that was the secret of the universe, Enoch told himself – a thing that went on caring.

The world always said to just be yourself, but it turned out when Evelyn was herself, no guys were at all interested, so she was left with games of make-believe, expressing enthusiasm for whatever the men wanted to do, be it rock climbing or going to a cheese-beer pairing or a Knicks game.

We thought all the time that we were passing through time when we really weren't, when we never have. We've just been moving along with time. We said, there's another second gone, there's another minute and another hour and another day, when, as a matter of fact the second or the minute or the hour was never gone. It was the same one all the time. It had just moved along and we had moved with it.

Hierarchical organization in biological systems thus is characterized by an exquisite array of delicately and intricately interlocked order, steadily increasing in level and complexity and thereby giving rise neogenetically to emergent properties.

Where'd you get that lighter?" she demanded. "Frida," Dan said, closing it. "She left it behind. Remember how she was always talking about outdoorsy stuff? She said she kept a water-resistant lighter on her at all times, in case she needed emergency fire." There was a short beat of silence in the dumpster. "Huh," said Dan. "Except probably now.

Well,” said Winslowe, moving over to plant himself behind the wheel, “it don’t matter much what any of us are, just so we get along with one another. If some of the nations would only take a lesson from some small neighborhood like ours—a lesson in how to get along—the world would be a whole lot better.

Grace has way weirder people than me coming in and out all the time," Dan said. "You, on the other hand, are as boring as it gets. If Grace is worried about anyone cramping her style, I'd point to the gloomy nerd reading about Chucklesky." "Tchaikovsky. He composed the score for the ballet The Nutcracker." Dan thre his hands up. "How am I supposed to get any better at making you sound like a loser if you just do all the work for me?

I claim that this bookless library is a dream, a hallucination of on-line addicts; network neophytes, and library-automation insiders...Instead, I suspect computers will deviously chew away at libraries from the inside. They'll eat up book budgets and require librarians that are more comfortable with computers than with children and scholars. Libraries will become adept at supplying the public with fast, low-quality information. The result won't be a library without books--it'll be a library without value.

The need of one human being for the approval of his fellow humans, the need for a certain cult of fellowship - a psychological, almost physiological need for approval of one's thought and action. A force that kept men from going off at unsocial tangents, a force that made for social security and human solidarity, for the working together of the human family. Men died for that approval, sacrificed for that approval, lived lives they loathed for that approval. For without it man was on his own, an outcast, an animal that had been driven from the pack. It had led to terrible things, of course - to mob psychology, to racial persecution, to mass atrocities in the name of patriotism or religion. But likewise it had been the sizing that held the race together, the thing that from the very start had made human society possible. And Joe didn't have it. Joe didn't give a damn. He didn't care what anyone thought of him. He didn't care whether anyone approved or not.

It's just a bow and arrow, but it's not a laughing matter. It might have been at one time, but history takes the laugh out of many things. If the arrow is a joke, so is the atom bomb, so is the sweep of disease laden dust that wipes out whole cities, so is the screaming rocket that arcs and falls then thousand miles away and kills a million people.

It was a hopeless thing, he thought, this obsession of his to present the people of the Earth as good and reasonable. For in many ways they were neither good nor reasonable; perhaps because they had not as yet entirely grown up. They were smart and quick and at times compassionate and even understanding, but they failed lamentably in many other ways.

Dorms?" Amy heard Natalie call from behind her. "You're joking, right?" "Don't worry," Hamilton said as he raced ahead, carrying both his and Natalie's suitcases. "Madison doesn't sleepwalk anymore." "Bring that back!" Natalie shouted as she ran after him. "I'm going to stay at the Ritz-Carlton!" "Is that where they make the crackers?" Madison asked. "I'm coming, too!

The notion that someone who does not hold your views holds the reciprocal of them, or simply hasn't got any, has, whatever its comforts for those afraid reality is going to go away unless we believe very hard in it, not conduced to much in the way of clarity in the anti-relativist discussion, but merely to far too many people spending far too much time describing at length what it is they do not maintain than seems in any way profitable.

It's like coming home," said Webster and he wasn't talking to the dog. "It's like you've been away for a long, long time and then you come home again. And it's so long you don't recognize the place. Don't know the furniture, don't recognize the floor plan. But you know by the feel of it that it's an old familiar place and you are glad you came." "I like it here," said. Ebenezer and he meant Webster's lap, but the man misunderstood. "Of course, you do," he said. "It's your home as well as mine. More your home, in fact, for you stayed here and took care of it while I forgot about it.

But man had changed. He had lost the old knowledge and old skills. His mind had become a flaccid thing. He lived from one day to the next without any shining goal. But he still kept the old vices—the vices that had become virtues from his own viewpoint and raised him by his own bootstraps. He kept the unwavering belief that his was the only kind, the only life that mattered—the smug egoism that made him the self-appointed lord of all creation.

Hi!" she said, a bit louder than she meant to. Ian raised one eyebrow and Amy felt the beginnings of a blush. She started to give Ian a hug, but he had already bent forward to kiss her on the cheek. Her sudden movement three him off, and they ended up bumping foreheads. "Sorry," Amy said, turning away so Ian wouldn't see that her face had turned bright red. "Quite all right. I had forgotten you do things differently across the pond." He took a step back to look at Amy. "I take it jeans are the latest in evening wear here in the wild west?" He made an exaggerated show of narrowing her eyes. "Is that a juice stain on your blouse? How fetching.

Dan opened the Zippo and lit the fuse. It hissed for half a seconds, then the rocket shot screaming away. Crack! "Over there!" One of the kidnappers shouted. Amy started to rise. "Let's go!" "Wait," Dan said, aiming the second rocket. "It's a two-part plan." He lit the fuse and the rocket shot off in the direction of the would-be kidnappers. "Auuuurrrrgghh!" "Run now!" Dan said. Amy and Dan burst from the dumpster and scrambled for the entrance of the lot. Looking behind him, Dan saw that one of the kidnappers was frantically fanning his butt, which was smoking slightly. "Part two was completely unnecessary, wasn't it?" Amy yelled as they ran. "Yup!

Having to amuse myself during those earlier years, I read voraciously and widely. Mythic matter and folklore made up much of that reading—retellings of the old stories (Mallory, White, Briggs), anecdotal collections and historical investigations of the stories' backgrounds—and then I stumbled upon the Tolkien books which took me back to Lord Dunsany, William Morris, James Branch Cabell, E.R. Eddison, Mervyn Peake and the like. I was in heaven when Lin Carter began the Unicorn imprint for Ballantine and scoured the other publishers for similar good finds, delighting when I discovered someone like Thomas Burnett Swann, who still remains a favourite. This was before there was such a thing as a fantasy genre, when you'd be lucky to have one fantasy book published in a month, little say the hundreds per year we have now. I also found myself reading Robert E. Howard (the Cormac and Bran mac Morn books were my favourites), Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and finally started reading science fiction after coming across Andre Norton's Huon of the Horn. That book wasn't sf, but when I went to read more by her, I discovered everything else was. So I tried a few and that led me to Clifford Simak, Roger Zelazny and any number of other fine sf writers. These days my reading tastes remain eclectic, as you might know if you've been following my monthly book review column in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I'm as likely to read Basil Johnston as Stephen King, Jeanette Winterson as Harlan Ellison, Barbara Kingsolver as Patricia McKillip, Andrew Vachss as Parke Godwin—in short, my criteria is that the book must be good; what publisher's slot it fits into makes absolutely no difference to me.

YORK. She-wolf of France, but worse than wolves of France, Whose tongue more poisons than the adder's tooth, How ill-beseeming is it in thy sex To triumph, like an Amazonian trull, Upon their woes whom fortune captivates! But that thy face is, vizard-like, unchanging, Made impudent with use of evil deeds, I would assay, proud queen, to make thee blush. To tell thee whence thou cam'st, of whom deriv'd, Were shame enough to shame thee, wert thou not shameless. Thy father bears the type of King of Naples, Of both the Sicils and Jerusalem, Yet not so wealthy as an English yeoman. Hath that poor monarch taught thee to insult? It needs not, nor it boots thee not, proud queen; Unless the adage must be verified, That beggars mounted run their horse to death. 'T is beauty that doth oft make women proud; But, God he knows, thy share thereof is small. 'T is virtue that doth make them most admir'd; The contrary doth make thee wond'red at. 'T is government that makes them seem divine; The want thereof makes thee abominable. Thou art as opposite to every good As the Antipodes are unto us, Or as the south to the Septentrion. O tiger's heart wrapp'd in a woman's hide! How couldst thou drain the life-blood of the child, To bid the father wipe his eyes withal, And yet be seen to bear a woman's face? Women are soft, mild, pitiful, and flexible; Thou stern, obdurate, flinty, rough, remorseless. Bid'st thou me rage? why, now thou hast thy wish: Wouldst have me weep? why, now thou hast thy will; For raging wind blows up incessant showers, And when the rage allays the rain begins. These tears are my sweet Rutland's obsequies, And every drop cries vengeance for his death, 'Gainst thee, fell Clifford, and thee, false Frenchwoman.

To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. If a man, holding a belief which he was taught in childhood or persuaded of afterwards, keeps down and pushes away any doubts which arise about it in his mind, purposely avoids the reading of books and the company of men that call into question or discuss it, and regards as impious those questions which cannot easily be asked without disturbing it — the life of that man is one long sin against mankind. […] Inquiry into the evidence of a doctrine is not to be made once for all, and then taken as finally settled. It is never lawful to stifle a doubt; for either it can be honestly answered by means of the inquiry already made, or else it proves that the inquiry was not complete. “But,” says one, “I am a busy man; I have no time for the long course of study which would be necessary to make me in any degree a competent judge of certain questions, or even able to understand the nature of the arguments.” Then he should have no time to believe.