“
Chance is perhaps the pseudonym of God when he does not want to sign.
”
”
Théophile Gautier
“
Only bad books have good endings.
If a book is any good, it's ending is always bad - because you don't want the book to end.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Books can also provoke emotions. And emotions sometimes are even more troublesome than ideas. Emotions have led people to do all sorts of things they later regret-like, oh, throwing a book at someone else.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Generally speaking, books don't cause much harm. Except when you read them, that is. Then they cause all kinds of problems.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
USE COMMON SENSE. If somebody offers you a thousand dollars for this book, chances are their motives are not pure. Then again, a thousand dollars is a lot of money. Take the money and run.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (This Isn't What It Looks Like (Secret, #4))
“
But remember what I said about forgetting what I said?
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Being an author, is being a dictator. (in a good way)
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch
“
Very little in this world makes sense.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (If You're Reading This, It's Too Late (Secret, #2))
“
It was like walking into a treasure trove of books, hoarded by pirate librarians.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Not all novelists are power-hungry madman. Some are power-hungry madwomen.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Q: Why do you like chocolate so much?
A: The answer, clearly, is because I've tasted chocolate.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch
“
This book will not harm you unless someone throws it at you which is a possibilty never to be discounted.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
*Appendix usually means "small outgrowth from large intestine," but in this case it means "additional information accompanying main text." Or are those really the same things? Think carefully before you insult this book.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Who needs to go somewhere when you can read about it.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Oh, talking is not so bad as that," said the Jester. "True, most people say only silly things when they speak. But it's easier to ignore them if you're saying silly things yourself.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (If You're Reading This, It's Too Late (Secret, #2))
“
Some secrets are meant to be known- but once known you can never forget them.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Please be SILENT and LISTEN.
I am the SCHOOLMASTER
and you are in the CLASSROOM.
Just like ELEVEN PLUS TWO equals
TWELVE PLUS ONE,
And even a FUNERAL can be REAL FUN,
You will find my DICTIONARY
is quite INDICATORY.
If you want to read my story, just look...
THEN UNREAD.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Why did so many grown-ups want to be young, she wondered, when it took so long to grow old? It was like going on a million-mile road trip then wanting to turn around without getting out of the car.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
I ate him," said the homunculus, biting into his sausage.
The kids couldn't hide their looks of horror.
He smiled, sausage juice running down his chin. "Oh, don't worry - I cooked him first. I'm not a barbarian.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (If You're Reading This, It's Too Late (Secret, #2))
“
Better to cry wolf over and over than never to cry wolf at all.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
I suggest to my students that they write under a pseudonym for a week. That allows young men to write as women, and women as men. It allows them a lot of freedom they don't have ordinarily.
”
”
Joyce Carol Oates
“
Death is like an old dog. He always knows when you are at his door.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (This Book Is Not Good for You (Secret, #3))
“
If it’s not already written, I want to write a book called, “The Art of Raw.” But instead of using my real name, I’ll use the pseudonym, “Sun Tzushi.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (I Want Two apply for a job at our country's largest funeral home, and then wear a suit and noose to the job interview.)
“
Before we do, I suggest you take a break. If you need to go to the bathroom, this is a good time. If you're sleepy, go to bed and save the next chapter for tomorrow. For the magician's story, you must have all your wits about you. No wandering minds allowed.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
WARNING:
DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS PAGE!
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Le hasard, c'est peut-être le pseudonyme de Dieu quand il ne veut pas signer.
”
”
Théophile Gautier (The Cross of Berny or Irene's Lovers)
“
The name of this book is mysterious.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch
“
...books were better than travel.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Despite my vanity, I fear for my sanity.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (This Isn't What It Looks Like (Secret, #4))
“
Right. I’ve been missing Nutty McFang anyway.”
“Stop making up names for him.”
“What about Count Crackula?”
“Just stop.
”
”
Rachel Caine (Last Breath (The Morganville Vampires, #11))
“
Cassandra, when you want to speak to me, you should say 'Excuse me, Mrs. Johnson.' Then wait until you get my attention."
"Excuse me, Mrs. Johnson. Do I have your attention now?
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
One dictionary defines denouement as "a final part in which everything is made clear and no questions or surprises remain." By that definition, it is exactly the wrong word to describe this chapter. This chapter will make nothing clear; it will raise many questions; and it may even contain a surprise or two. But I say we call it the denouement anyway because the words sounds so sophisticated and French.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Whether it’s chocolate or socks, the rule is the same; the darker the better.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (This Isn't What It Looks Like (Secret, #4))
“
One of the most amazing and perplexing features of mainstream Christianity is that seminarians who learn the historical-critical method in their Bible classes appear to forget all about it when it comes time for them to be pastors. They are taught critical approaches to Scripture, they learn about the discrepancies and contradictions, they discover all sorts of historical errors and mistakes, they come to realize that it is difficult to know whether Moses existed or what Jesus actually said and did, they find that there are other books that were at one time considered canonical but that ultimately did not become part of Scripture (for example, other Gospels and Apocalypses), they come to recognize that a good number of the books of the Bible are pseudonymous (for example, written in the name of an apostle by someone else), that in fact we don't have the original copies of any of the biblical books but only copies made centuries later, all of which have been altered. They learn all of this, and yet when they enter church ministry they appear to put it back on the shelf. For reasons I will explore in the conclusion, pastors are, as a rule, reluctant to teach what they learned about the Bible in seminary.
”
”
Bart D. Ehrman (Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible & Why We Don't Know About Them)
“
You know, people always warn children about taking candy from strange adults. But they never warn us adults about taking candy from strange children.
All those sweet-looking kids who sell boxes of candy bars on the street to help pay for schooling - how do we know what's in those bars? And don't even get me stated on that nefarious institution designed to lure unsuspecting customers into buying mysterious frosted goodies: the bake sale.
Adults, be warned: if a child wanted to poison you it would be a piece of cake! Literally a piece of cake.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (This Book Is Not Good for You (Secret, #3))
“
You must have your wits about you. No wandering minds allowed.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
If this was a normal cover for a normal book,I would tell it's FANTASTIC!GRIPPING!
(according to all book covers they're fantastic and gripping)
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
My name is not Mara Dyer, but my lawyer told me I had to choose something. A pseudonym. A nom de plume, for all of us studying for the SATs. I know that having a fake name is strange, but trust me—it’s the most normal thing about my life right now. Even telling you this much probably isn’t smart. But without my big mouth, no one would know that a seventeen-year-old who likes Death Cab for Cutie was responsible for the murders. No one would know that somewhere out there is a B student with a body count. And it’s important that you know, so you’re not next.
”
”
Michelle Hodkin (The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer (Mara Dyer, #1))
“
I detest mediocrity.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (This Isn't What It Looks Like (Secret, #4))
“
Friends don't have to have a lot of things in common. But there's one thing friends usually do have in common - a sense of humor. That doesn't mean they find all the same things funny. Sometimes, they might even laugh at each other. But at the end of the day, friends can always laugh with each other.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (You Have to Stop This (Secret, #5))
“
This new condition, this unwilled silence, had fallen over him ten days ago. The day Cass had gone into the hospital. The day she had fallen into a coma.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (This Isn't What It Looks Like (Secret, #4))
“
The first expert said he had attention deficit disorder. The second expert said the first was out of order. One said he was autistic, another that he was artistic. One said he had Tourette's syndrome. One said he had Asperger's syndrome. And one said the problem was that his parents had Munchausen syndrome. Still another said all he needed was a good old-fashioned spanking.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Veronica ran out to tell Amber the shocking news - and returned in less than a minute with another message for Yo-Yoji: "Amber says she was watching and she knows you got in detention on purpose," she said breathlessly. "Because you have a crush on Cass!"
Cass's ears instantly turned red.
Max-Ernest looked like he'd been hit by a truck.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (If You're Reading This, It's Too Late (Secret, #2))
“
If I do find out the Secret,I won't be able to tell it to you-you know that right?And that doesn't mean I don't trust you.It's just because I can't.Sometimes even best friends have to keep secrets from each other."
-Cass
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (This Book Is Not Good for You (Secret, #3))
“
...we are going to understand all about the difference between people and pieces of paper in a file, and the difference between doing your job and getting jobbed...
”
”
Richard Bachman (Rage)
“
No wandering minds allowed.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Your problem, it is not here' - he pointed the pen at Max-Ernest's throat - 'it is here' - he pointed the pen at Max-Ernest's chest. 'My heart is heavy, too. But you must be strong. This situation, it is very serious. It is not only Cass's life that is at stake. If she dies, the Secret, it will die too.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (This Isn't What It Looks Like (Secret, #4))
“
What kind of person is so lonely, they wold willingly text someone with a pseudonym? The one desperate to be loved back.
”
”
Lauren Asher (The Fine Print (Dreamland Billionaires, #1))
“
Coincidence is a pseudonym for God, when he does not want to leave his signature”. Whenever
”
”
Vadim Zeland (Reality Transurfing Steps I-V)
“
If my name were Mark Twain, I’d write under the pseudonym “Samuel Clemens.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Who Moved My Choose?: An Amazing Way to Deal With Change by Deciding to Let Indecision Into Your Life)
“
But,' I ducked the subject, 'don't heaps of artists use pseudonyms?'
'Who?'
'Um . . .' Only Cliff Richard and Sid Vicious came to mind.
”
”
David Mitchell (Black Swan Green)
“
I detest mediocrity.
- Benjamin Blake
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (You Have to Stop This (Secret, #5))
“
Only bad books have good endings.if a book is any good, its ending is always bad_because byou don't want the book to end.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch
“
The prolific Hamilton was now writing pseudonymous commentaries on his own pseudonymous essays.
”
”
Ron Chernow (Alexander Hamilton)
“
When I was younger, I loved graveyards. They weren't spooky so much as mysterious. Each tombstone another story to uncover. Another life to learn about.
Now that I'm older - I won't say how old - I hate graveyards. The only life - or rather death - I see in the tombstones is my own.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (If You're Reading This, It's Too Late (Secret, #2))
“
Q: What is dark chocolate?" "A: Heaven on Earth
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (This Book Is Not Good for You (Secret, #3))
“
Unfortunately, oppression does not automatically produce only meaningful struggle. It has the ability to call into being a wide range of responses between partial acceptance and violent rebellion. In between you can have, for instance, a vague, unfocused dissatisfaction; or, worst of all, savage infighting among the oppressed, a fierce love-hate entanglement with one another like crabs inside the fisherman's bucket, which ensures that no crab gets away. This is a serious issue for African-American deliberation.
To answer oppression with appropriate resistance requires knowledge of two kinds: in the first place, self-knowledge by the victim, which means awareness that oppression exists, an awareness that the victim has fallen from a great height of glory or promise into the present depths; secondly, the victim must know who the enemy is. He must know his oppressor's real name, not an alias, a pseudonym, or a nom de plume!
”
”
Chinua Achebe (The Education of a British-Protected Child: Essays)
“
I am often asked why I use a variety of pen names. The answer is that this way readers always know which of my three worlds they will be entering when they pick up one of my books.
”
”
Jayne Ann Krentz
“
Sometimes when we are at our lowest points, we make the greatest discoveries.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (You Have to Stop This (Secret, #5))
“
Never let a pickpocket bump into you if you can help it
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (Bad Magic (Bad, #1))
“
I think we all have a dark side if we're truly honest with ourselves. If we don't acknowledge it then it's just a predator waiting to attack in the darkest moments.
”
”
Emilyann Allen
“
An ordinary woman
Took my unique place
Used my real name
Left me a pseudonym
”
”
Anna Akhmatova (Poem Without a Hero & Selected Poems)
“
Nothing damages a relationship more than lies, and only love and truth have any chance of healing them.
”
”
Ima pseudonym
“
Happily, you don’t know how to find me. If you did, I’ve no doubt, you would try to bribe me to finish the story. I know how you are. I know how I am, too. I am very susceptible to bribes. As you’ve probably noticed, I have no self-control whatsoever. I like chocolate best. But I also have a fondness for cheese.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Sometimes when we are at our lowest points, we make our greatest discoveries.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (You Have to Stop This (The Secret Series Book 5))
“
* If mind control sounds appealing to you, congratulations - you're well on your way to being a writer!
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (Bad Luck (Bad, #2))
“
Dance like the whole world is your stage and every day is your debut.
”
”
Emilyann Allen
“
Healing is painful. It means disinfecting deep wounds. It means experiencing the pain for a season in order to put in the past for a lifetime.
”
”
Emilyann Allen
“
If only the devil were feminine - perhaps he (she) was; no one had ever seemed to think of that - he would readily believe that her pseudonym was Daisy Morrison.
”
”
Mary Balogh (Lady with a Black Umbrella)
“
Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 – October 19, 1745) was an Irish cleric, satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for Whigs then for Tories), and poet, famous for works like Gulliver's Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, The Drapier's Letters, The Battle of the Books, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is probably the foremost prose satirist in the English language, although he is less well known for his poetry. Swift published all of his works under pseudonyms — such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, M.B. Drapier — or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of 2 styles of satire; the Horatian and Juvenalian styles. Source: Wikipedia
”
”
Jonathan Swift (Gulliver's Travels (Signet Classics))
“
The Bible is filled with discrepancies, many of them irreconcilable contradictions. Moses did not write the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament) and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John did not write the Gospels. There are other books that did not make it into the Bible that at one time or another were considered canonical—other Gospels, for example, allegedly written by Jesus’ followers Peter, Thomas, and Mary. The Exodus probably did not happen as described in the Old Testament. The conquest of the Promised Land is probably based on legend. The Gospels are at odds on numerous points and contain nonhistorical material. It is hard to know whether Moses ever existed and what, exactly, the historical Jesus taught. The historical narratives of the Old Testament are filled with legendary fabrications and the book of Acts in the New Testament contains historically unreliable information about the life and teachings of Paul. Many of the books of the New Testament are pseudonymous—written not by the apostles but by later writers claiming to be apostles. The list goes on.
”
”
Bart D. Ehrman (Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don't Know About Them))
“
In describing the honourable mission I charged him with, M. Pernety informed me that he made my name known to you. This leads me to confess that I am not as completely unknown to you as you might believe, but that fearing the ridicule attached to a female scientist, I have previously taken the name of M. LeBlanc in communicating to you those notes that, no doubt, do not deserve the indulgence with which you have responded.
{Explaining her use of a male pseudonym in a letter to Carl Friedrich Gauss, 1807}
”
”
Sophie Germain
“
If you’re sleepy, go to bed and save the next chapter for tomorrow.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Your real name is a mortal name. Now you need one that is immortal, the one that takes the high stage and plays above the rest. You can't be immortal and mortal at the same time.
”
”
Keith Buckley (Scale)
“
Life handed me lemons, so I made lemonade, lemon cake, lemon drops, and I even used the rinds to make lemon art. So, the joke is on you, life, haha!
”
”
Emilyann Allen
“
Yet I admire Phemius, who helped me to smooth out incidents in which the Goddess Athene had not been particularly helpful. For safety’s sake, on his advice, I have consigned to oblivion all the names of my living characters, giving them pseudonyms—as I also do here, with only four exceptions. I retain my own as a personal signature; Phemius retains his as a reward for the collaboration; I allow Odysseus to call himself “Aethon son of Castor” and tell Aethon’s life story in one of his many fictions; and (as I decided halfway through the poem) Eurycleia deserves to be immortalized for urging Aethon and me to marry.
”
”
Robert Graves (Homer's Daughter)
“
We must confess these three strange names struck us; and it immediately occurred to us that they were but pseudonyms, under which d'Artagnan had disguised names perhaps illustrious, or else that the bearers of these borrowed names had themselves chosen them on the day in which, from caprice, discontent, or want of fortune, they had donned the simple Musketeer's uniform.
”
”
Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers)
“
Sanity:
You can go through your whole life telling yourself that life is logical, life is prosaic, life is sane. Above all, sane. And I think it is. I've had a lot of time to think about that...
I think; therefore I am. There are hairs on my face; therefore I shave. My wife and child have been critically injured in a car crash; therefore I pray. It's all logical, it's all sane.
...there's a Mr. Hyde for every happy Jekyll face, a dark face on the other side of the mirror... You turn the mirror sideways and see your face reflected with a sinister left-hand twist, half mad and half sane.
...No one looks at that side unless they have to, and I can understand that.
...I'm the sane one.
”
”
Richard Bachman (Rage)
“
And the day came when the risk to remain closed in a bud became more painful that the risk it took to blossom. [likely not Anaïs Nin; look under "Disputed quotes" on the Wikiquote page for her]
”
”
Lassie Benton (pseudonym of Elizabeth Appell)
“
The two of us wrote Anti-Oedipus together. Since each of us was several, there was already quite a crowd. Here we have made use of everything that came within range, what was closest as well as farthest away. We have assigned clever pseudonyms to prevent recognition. Why have we kept our own names? Out of habit, purely out of habit. To make ourselves unrecognizable in turn. To render imperceptible, not ourselves, but what makes us act, feel and think. Also because it’s nice to talk like everybody else, to say the sun rises, when everybody knows it’s only a manner of speaking. To reach, not the point where one no longer says I, but the point where it is no longer of any importance whether one says I. We are no longer ourselves. Each will know his own. We have been aided, inspired, multiplied.
”
”
Gilles Deleuze
“
The humanitarian philosophies that have been developed (sometimes under some religious banner and invariably in the face of religious opposition) are human inventions, as the name implies - and our species deserves the credit. I am a devout atheist - nothing else makes any sense to me and I must admit to being bewildered by those, who in the face of what appears so obvious, still believe in a mystical creator. However I can see that the promise of infinite immortality is a more palatable proposition than the absolute certainty of finite mortality which those of us who are subject to free thought (as opposed to free will) have to look forward to and many may not have the strength of character to accept it.
Thus I am a supporter of Amnesty International, a humanist and an atheist. I believe in a secular, democratic society in which women and men have total equality, and individuals can pursue their lives as they wish, free of constraints - religious or otherwise. I feel that the difficult ethical and social problems which invariably arise must be solved, as best they can, by discussion and am opposed to the crude simplistic application of dogmatic rules invented in past millennia and ascribed to a plethora of mystical creators - or the latest invention; a single creator masquerading under a plethora of pseudonyms. Organisations which seek political influence by co-ordinated effort disturb me and thus I believe religious and related pressure groups which operate in this way are acting antidemocratically and should play no part in politics. I also have problems with those who preach racist and related ideologies which seem almost indistinguishable from nationalism, patriotism and religious conviction.
”
”
Harry W. Kroto
“
when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (You Have to Stop This (The Secret Series Book 5))
“
Whether it’s chocolate or socks, the rule is the same: the darker the better.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (This Isn't What It Looks Like (The Secret Series Book 3))
“
a nurse threatened to put their child up for adoption if they didn’t reach a decision.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
But there were other, vaguer, harder-to-pin-down feelings, like: a pit in the stomach that means something is either really good or really bad or both. A feeling of being old and young at once. A sense of beginnings and endings happening at the same time. A certainty that your life is changing, but an uncertainty about how it's changing and whether you want it to.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
There was a funny little guy we knew who – in keeping with the flower-power mood of the times – had changed his name to Hans Christian Anderson. The aura of fairy tale otherworldliness conjured by this pseudonym was slightly punctured when he opened his mouth and a thick Lancashire accent came out. Eventually he changed his first name back to Jon and became the lead singer of Yes.
”
”
Elton John (Me)
“
Henry Gerber, writing in 1932 under the pseudonym Parisex, responded to an article in The Modern Thinker that condemned homosexuality. "Is not the psychiatrist again putting the cart before the horse in saying that homosexuality is a symptom of the neurotic style of life?" he insisted. "Would it not sound more natural to say that the homosexual is made neurotic because his style of life is beset by thousands of dangers?
”
”
George Chauncey (Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940)
“
I HAVE A SECRET I CAN’T TELL NOR INK;
THOUGH IT HAS NO SCENT, IT DOES OFTEN STINK.
THOUGH IT MAKES NO SOUND, IT CAN MAKE YOU ROAR;
WHEN IT’S TASTELESS, I LIKE IT ALL THE MORE.
THOUGH IT HAS NO SHADE, IT LACKS NOT COLOR;
THOUGH IT HAS NO SHAPE, NO CAUSE FOR DOLOR.
IF YOU THINK YOU KNOW IT, YOU’RE INCORRECT,
AND FROM YOU THE SECRET I WILL PROTECT.
THE SECRET OF LIFE IS NOT STONE NOR CENTS,
FOR THE SECRET SENSE IS BUT A NONSENSE.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (If You're Reading This, It's Too Late (Secret, #2))
“
People give me looks of pity and ask me why I want to wallow in my disconnection from a very connected world. It is simple. The world seems way too connected to me now. It seems to be ruining the lives of teenagers and bringing out the bestial cruelty in those who can hide their vileness under the mask of some idiotic pseudonym. I like to sit alone and think about things. Solitude is as precious as coin silver and it takes labor to attain it.
”
”
Pat Conroy (A Lowcountry Heart: Reflections on a Writing Life)
“
These words on the screen represented her latest project, an attempt at a series of commercial, discreetly feminist crime novels. She had read all of Agatha Christie at eleven years old, and later lots of Chandler and James M.Cain. There seemed no reason why she shouldn't try writing something in between, but she was discovering once again that reading and writing were not the same-you couldn't just soak it up then squeeze it out again. She found herself unable to think of a name for her detective, let alone a cohesive original plot, and even her pseudonym was poor: Emma T. Wilde? She wondered if she was doomed to be one of those people who spend their lives trying things. She had tried being in a band, writing plays and children's books, she had tried acting and getting a job in publishing. Perhaps crime fiction was just another failed project to place alongside trapeze, Buddhism and Spanish. She used the computer's word counter feature. Thirty-five words, including the title page and her rotten pseudonym. Emma groaned, released the hydraulic lever on the side of her office chair and sank a little closer to the carpet.
”
”
David Nicholls (One Day)
“
The llama was wearing a bridle with a rope attached where you might expect to find reins. A greeting card was hanging from his neck:
'Hola Como se llama? Yo me llamo C. Llama.'
During his preschool years, Clay's favorite cartoon had featured a Spanish-speaking boy naturalist who was always saving animals with his girl cousin, and Clay still knew enough of the language to translate:
'Hello. How do you call yourself? I call myself Como C. Llama.'
The llama's name is What is your name?
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (Bad Magic (Bad, #1))
“
The only one of the early investigators who carried the exploration of hysteria to its logical conclusion was Breuer's patient Anna O. After Breuer abandoned her, she apparently remained ill for several years. And then she recovered. The mute hysteric who had invented the "talking cure" found her voice and her sanity, in the women's liberation movement. Under a pseudonym, Paul Berthold, she translated into German the classic treatise by Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, and authored a play, Women's Rights. Under her own name, Bertha Papenheim became a prominent feminist social worker, intellectual, and organizer. In the course of a long and fruitful career she directed an orphanage for girls, founded a feminist organization for Jewish women and traveled throughout Europe and the Middle East to campaign against the sexual exploitation of women and children. Her dedication, energy and commitment were legendary. In the words of a colleague, 'A volcano lived in this woman... Her fight against the abuse of women and children was almost a physically felt pain for her.' At her death, the philosopher Martin Buber commemorated her: 'I not only admired her but loved her, and will love her until the day I die. There are people of spirit and there are people of passion, both less common than one might think. Rarer still are the people of spirit and passion. But rarest of all is a passionate spirit. Bertha Pappenheim was a woman with just such a spirit.
”
”
Judith Lewis Herman (Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror)
“
She is a wonderful nerd, and he hopes this won't change. He'd be distressed if she were cool-- it'd be as if his flesh and blood had grown up to be purple...
...She has been looking for a pseudonym, not for any purpose but because it took her fancy. "What about Zeus?" she asks.
"Taken, I'm afraid. Though he's been gone long enough that there'd be little room for confusion..."
...Then she swoops back, plunges her fingers into his, and looks up, nostrils swelling with mischief.
"What?"
"Frog."
"I forbid it," he says. "Frog is a boy's name.
”
”
Tom Rachman (The Imperfectionists)
“
Unlike my predecessor, I intended to use email. To avoid being deluged, I needed a pseudonym. Andy Jester, an IT specialist for the Board, suggested Edward Quince. He had noticed the word “Quince” on a software box and thought “Edward” had a nice ring. It seemed fine to me, so Edward Quince it was. The Board phone book listed him as a member of the security team. The pseudonym remained confidential while I was chairman. Whenever we released my emails—at congressional request or under the Freedom of Information Act, for example—we blacked out the name.
”
”
Ben S. Bernanke (The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath)
“
The best description of this book is found within the title. The full title of this book is:
"This is the story my great-grandfather told my father, who then told my grandfather, who then told me about how The Mythical Mr. Boo, Charles Manseur Fizzlebush Grissham III, better known as Mr. Fizzlebush, and Orafoura are all in fact me and Dora J. Arod, who sometimes shares my pen, paper, thoughts, mind, body, and soul, because Dora J. Arod is my pseudonym, as he/it incorporates both my first and middle name, and is also a palindrome that can be read forwards or backwards no matter if you are an upright man in the eyes of God or you are upside down in a tank of water wearing purple goggles and grape jelly discussing how best to spread your time between your work, your wife, and the toasted bread being eaten by the man you are talking to who goes by the name of Dendrite McDowell, who is only wearing a towel on his head and has an hourglass obscuring his “time machine”--or the thing that he says can keep him young forever by producing young versions of himself the way I avert disaster in that I ramble and bumble like a bee until I pollinate my way through flowery situations that might otherwise have ended up being more than less than, but not equal to two short parallel lines stacked on top of each other that mathematicians use to balance equations like a tightrope walker running on a wire stretched between two white stretched limos parked on a long cloud that looks like Salt Lake City minus the sodium and Mormons, but with a dash of pepper and Protestants, who may or may not be spiritual descendents of Mr. Maynot, who didn’t come over to America in the Mayflower, but only because he was “Too lazy to get off the sofa,” and therefore impacted this continent centuries before the first television was ever thrown out of a speeding vehicle at a man who looked exactly like my great-grandfather, who happens to look exactly like the clone science has yet to allow me to create
”
”
Jarod Kintz (This is the story my great-grandfather told my father, who then told my grandfather, who then told me about how The Mythical Mr. Boo, Charles Manseur Fizzlebush Grissham III, better known as Mr. Fizzlebush, and Orafoura are all in fact me...)
“
WARNING: DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS PAGE!
Good.
Now I know I can trust you.
You’re curious. You’re brave. And you’re not afraid
to lead a life of crime.
But let’s get something straight: if, despite my
warning, you insist on reading this book, you can’t
hold me responsible for the consequences.
And, make no bones about it, this is a very
dangerous book.
No, it won’t blow up in your face. Or bite your head
off. Or tear you limb from limb.
It probably won’t injure you at all. Unless
somebody throws it at you, which is a possibility that
should never be discounted.
Generally speaking, books don’t cause much harm.
Except when you read them, that is. Then they cause
all kinds of problems.
Books can, for example, give you ideas. I don’t
know if you’ve ever had an idea before, but, if you
have, you know how much trouble an idea can get
you into.
Books can also provoke emotions. And emotions
sometimes are even more troublesome than ideas.
Emotions have led people to do all sorts of things
they later regret – like, oh, throwing a book at someone else.
But the main reason this book is so dangerous is
that it concerns a secret.
A big secret.
”
”
Pseudonymous Bosch (The Name of This Book Is Secret (Secret, #1))
“
Love has many positionings. Cordelia makes good progress. She is sitting on my lap, her arm twines, soft and warm, round my neck; she leans upon my breast, light, without gravity; the soft contours scarcely touch me; like a flower her lovely figure twines about me, freely as a ribbon. Her eyes are hidden beneath her lashes, her bosom is dazzling white like snow, so smooth that my eye cannot rest, it would glance off if her bosom were not moving. What does this movement mean? Is it love? Perhaps. It is a presentiment of it, its dream. It still lacks energy. Her embrace is comprehensive, as the cloud enfolding the transfigured one, detached as a breeze, soft as the fondling of a flower; she kisses me unspecifically, as the sky kisses the sea, gently and quietly, as the dew kisses a flower, solemnly as the sea kisses the image of the moon.
I would call her passion at this moment a naive passion. When the change has been made and I begin to draw back in earnest, she will call on everything she has to captivate me. She has no other means for this purpose than the erotic itself, except that this will now appear on a quite different scale. It then becomes a weapon in her hand which she wields against me. I then have the reflected passion. She fights for her own sake because she knows I possess the erotic; she fights for her own sake so as to overcome me. She herself is in need of a higher form of the erotic. What I taught her to suspect by arousing her, my coldness now teaches her to understand but in such a way that she thinks it is she herself who discovers it. So she wants to take me by surprise; she wants to believe that she has outstripped me in audacity, and that makes me her prisoner. Her passion then becomes specific, energetic, conclusive, dialectical; her kiss total, her embrace without hesitation.—In me she seeks her freedom and finds it the better the more firmly I encompass her. The engagement bursts. When that has happened she needs a little rest, so that nothing unseemly will emerge from this wild tumult. Her passion then composes itself once more and she is mine.”
—from_Either/Or: A Fragment of Life_, (as written by his pseudonym Johannes the Seducer)
”
”
Søren Kierkegaard
“
In his work Maladies and Remedies of the Life of the Flesh, published in Leiden under the pseudonym Christianus Democritus, he claimed to have discovered the Elixir of Life—a liquid counterpart to the Philosopher’s Stone—which would heal any ailment and grant eternal life to the person who drank it. He tried, but failed, to exchange the formula for the deed to Frankenstein Castle, and the only use he ever made of his potion—a mixture of decomposing blood, bones, antlers, horns and hooves—was as an insecticide, due to its incomparable stench. This same quality led the German troops to employ the tarry, viscous fluid as a non-lethal chemical weapon (therefore exempt from the Geneva Convention), pouring it into wells in North Africa to slow the advance of General Patton and his men, whose tanks pursued them across the desert sands. An ingredient in Dippel’s elixir would eventually produce the blue that shines not only in Van Gogh’s Starry Night and in the waters of Hokusai’s Great Wave, but also on the uniforms of the infantrymen of the Prussian army, as though something in the colour’s chemical structure invoked violence: a fault, a shadow, an existential stain passed down from those experiments in which the alchemist dismembered living animals to create it, assembling their broken bodies in dreadful chimeras he tried to reanimate with electrical charges, the very same monsters that inspired Mary Shelley to write her masterpiece, Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, in whose pages she warned of the risk of the blind advancement of science, to her the most dangerous of all human arts.
”
”
Benjamín Labatut (When We Cease to Understand the World)
“
In the same essay, Said (who is reviewing Peter Stansky and William Abrams, co-authors obsessed with the Blair/Orwell distinction) congratulates them on their forceful use of tautology:
‘Orwell belonged to the category of writers who write.’ And could afford to write, they might have added. In contrast they speak of George Garrett, whom Orwell met in Liverpool, a gifted writer, seaman, dockworker, Communist militant, ‘the plain facts of [whose] situation—on the dole, married and with kids, the family crowded into two rooms—made it impossible for him to attempt any extended piece of writing.’ Orwell’s writing life then was from the start an affirmation of unexamined bourgeois values.
This is rather extraordinary. Orwell did indeed meet Garrett in Liverpool in 1936, and was highly impressed to find that he knew him already through his pseudonymous writing—under the name Matt Lowe—for John Middleton Murry’s Adelphi. As he told his diary:
I urged him to write his autobiography, but as usual, living in about two rooms on the dole with a wife (who I gather objects to his writing) and a number of kids, he finds it impossible to settle to any long work and can only do short stories. Apart from the enormous unemployment in Liverpool, it is almost impossible for him to get work because he is blacklisted everywhere as a Communist.
Thus the evidence that supposedly shames Orwell by contrast is in fact supplied by—none other than Orwell himself! This is only slightly better than the other habit of his foes, which is to attack him for things he quotes other people as saying, as if he had instead said them himself. (The idea that a writer must be able to ‘afford’ to write is somewhat different and, as an idea, is somewhat—to use a vogue term of the New Left—‘problematic’. If it were only the bourgeois who were able to write, much work would never have been penned and, incidentally, Orwell would never have met Garrett in the first place.)
”
”
Christopher Hitchens
“
The DUCE diverted funds intended for the Fiume adventure, and used them for His own election campaign. He was arrested for the illegal possession of arms, sent parcel bombs to the Archbishop of Milan and its mayor, and after election was, as is well-known, responsible for the assassination of Di Vagno and Matteoti. Since then He has been responsible for the murders of Don Mizzoni Amendola, the Rosselli brothers, and the journalist Piero Gobetti, quite apart from the hundreds who have been the victims of His squadistri in Ferrara, Ravenna and Trieste, and the thousands who have perished in foreign places whose conquest was useless and pointless. We Italians remain eternally grateful for this, and consider that so much violence has made us a superior race, just as the introduction of revolvers into Parliament and the complete destruction of constitutional democracy have raised our institutions to the greatest possible heights of civilisation.
Since the illegal seizure of power, Italy has known an average of five acts of political violence per diem, the DUCE has decreed that 1922 is the new Annus Domini, and He was pretended to be a Catholic in order to dupe the Holy Father into supporting Him against the Communists, even though He really is one Himself. He has completely suborned the press by wrecking the premises of dissident newspapers and journals. In 1923 he invaded Corfu for no apparent reason, and was forced to withdraw by the League of Nations. In 1924 He gerrymandered the elections, and He has oppressed minorities in the Tyrol and the North-East. He sent our soldiers to take part in the rape of Somalia and Libya, drenching their hands in the blood of innocents, He has doubled the number of the bureaucracy in order to tame the bourgeoisie, He has abolished local government, interfered with the judiciary, and purportedly has divinely stopped the flow of lava on Mt Etna by a mere act of will. He has struck Napoleonic attitudes whilst permitting Himself to be used to advertise Perugina chocolates, He has shaved his head because He is ashamed to be seen to be going bald, He has been obliged to hire a tutor to teach Him table manners, He has introduced the Roman salute as a more hygienic alternative to the handshake, He pretends not to need spectacles, He has a repertoire of only two facial expression, He stands on a concealed podium whilst making speeches because He is so short, He pretends to have studied economics with Pareto, and He has assumed infallibility and encouraged the people to carry His image in marches, as though He were a saint. He is a saint, of course.
He has (and who are we to disagree?) declared Himself greater than Aristotle, Kant, Aquinas, Dante, Michelangelo, Washington, Lincoln, and Bonaparte, and He has appointed ministers to serve Him who are all sycophants, renegades, racketeers, placemen, and shorter than He is. He is afraid of the Evil Eye and has abolished the second person singular as a form of address. He has caused Toscanini to be beaten up for refusing to play 'Giovinezza', and He has appointed academicians to prove that all great inventions were originally Italian and that Shakespeare was the pseudonym of an Italian poet. He has built a road through the site of the forum, demolishing fifteen ancient churches, and has ordered a statue of Hercules, eighty metres high, which will have His own visage, and which so far consists of a part of the face and one gigantic foot, and which cannot be completed because it has already used up one hundred tons of metal.
”
”
Louis de Bernières (Corelli’s Mandolin)