Category Archives: Quotes

As every second post on this site is a quote. You’ll find a deep and broad variety of quotes under this category, which overlap with several other tags and categories. Many of the quotes are larded with links for deeper reading on the subject of the quote, or connections between the subject of the quotes and other people, things, or ideas. See the Taxonomies page for more about this category.

The Doubter’s Companion: Bad News

Posted on July 12, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Bad News: Those who have power always complain that journalists are only interested in bad news. ‘But if the newspapers in a country are full of good news, the jails are full of good people.’

Elsewhere, bad news comes as light relief from the unrelenting rightness of those with expertise and power. They insist that they are applying the correct and therefore inevitable solution to each problem. And when it fails they avoid self-doubt or a public examination of what went wrong by moving on to the next right answer. Bad news is the citizen’s only substitute for public debate.”

Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.

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Rotten Reviews: Gail Godwin, A Mother and Two Daughters

Posted on July 12, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Godwin earnestly sticks by her characters… The only trouble is, like the people next door, they’re nice but not very interesting.”

Saturday Review 

Excerpted from: Barnard, Andre, and Bill Henderson, eds. Pushcart’s Complete Rotten Reviews and Rejections. Wainscott, NY: Pushcart Press, 1998.   

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Confession

Posted on June 27, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Confession (noun): Admission of acknowledgement, especially of personal sin, wrongdoing, responsibility, etc; a public disclosure of one’s misconduct or fault in a matter; declaration of faith or love; candid, often soul-searching or remorseful memoir or autobiographical discourse. Plural: a spiritual autobiography or book of frank reminiscences or revelations. Adjective: confessional; Adverb: confessionally; Noun: confessionalism; Verb: confess.

‘I’m catching her up on the details only to make a point about bad confessional writers (the Voice is full of them): they’ve got their eye on the effect their making. Far too often they confess something only to make us admire their anguish, their courage, their honesty; or they squeeze a little bit of experience until it’s dry, hoping to make in yield up some grand historical truth.’ David Denby, The New Republic”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Term of Art: Story Map

Posted on June 27, 2024 | Leave a comment

“story map: A graphic used to illustrate the various elements of a short story. Typically, these elements include setting (time and place); conflict; protagonist; antagonist; minor characters; and elements of the plot (exposition, inciting incident, rising action, climax, crisis, falling action, resolution, and denouement).”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Colson Whitehead on Relief of Psychic Distress

Posted on June 27, 2024 | Leave a comment

“…When her mother passed, Elizabeth got a copy of that book On Death and Dying, which identified the Five Stages of Grief. When Pepper was laid low, the Four Stages of Putting Your Foot Up Somebody’s Ass provided similar comfort.”

Whitehead, Colson. Crook Manifesto. New York: Doubleday, 2003.

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Module

Posted on June 27, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Module: In classical architecture, half the diameter of a column at is base; by extension, any standard unit of measurement in architecture.”

Excerpted from: Diamond, David G. The Bulfinch Pocket Dictionary of Art Terms. Boston: Little Brown, 1992.

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The Doubter’s Companion: Award Show

Posted on June 27, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Award Show: Mechanism by which the members of a given profession attempt to give themselves the attributes of the pre-modern ruling classes—the military, aristocracy and priesthood—by assigning various orders, decorations, and medals to each other.

These shows are superficial expressions of corporatism. As with the pre-modern classes, their awards relate principally to relationships within the profession. Each time the words “I want to thank” are used by someone being decorated, they indicate a relationship based on power. The awards have little to do with the corporation’s relationship to the outside world—what you might call the public—or for that matter with quality.”

Excerpted from: Saul, John Ralston. The Doubter’s Companion. New York: The Free Press, 1994.

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Assonance

Posted on June 27, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Assonance: In poetry and prose, the identity of vowel sounds, as in the words scream and beech. Assonance is one of the many phonetic devices that serve to unify poetry and prose. In poetry it is frequently substituted for rhyme and, in this use, is sometimes referred to as vowel rhyme.”

Excerpted from: Murphy, Bruce, ed. Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition. New York: Harper Collins, 1996.

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George Bernard Shaw on Chess

Posted on June 21, 2024 | Leave a comment

“Chess is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever when they are only wasting their time.”

George Bernard Shaw

Excerpted from: Winokur, Jon, ed. The Big Curmudgeon. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2007.

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Term of Art: Social Skills Problem

Posted on June 21, 2024 | Leave a comment

“social skills problems: Children with a learning disability (especially nonverbal disabilities) may have trouble with social skills as a result of problems with perception. Children in this situation tend to be isolated, with few close friends, and only rarely participate in school activities. They are often rejected by children their own age because of odd behavior or poor school performance.

Teachers tend to rate these children as being easily led and with poor social adjustment. These problems may be caused by poor social comprehension, the inability to understand another’s point of view, poor language skills, or misinterpretation of body language.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

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