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61 " Ludzkie istoty rzadko są tak niebezpieczne jak wtedy, kiedy rozpływają się nad dobrocią własnych intencji. "
― Howard Jacobson
62 " The boastful are thin-skinned and the intolerant are forever looking over their shoulders "
63 " For himself, he wanted to impose his values on no one. He wasn't even sure he knew what his values were. "
― Howard Jacobson , J
64 " She hadn’t spoken to him about life on the chill northern archipelago where she had grown up, but he didn’t doubt it was in all essentials similar to here. The same vast and icy ocean crashed in on them both. The same befuddled men, even more thin-skinned and peevish in the aftermath of WHAT HAPPENED than their smuggler and wrecker ancestors had been, roamed angrily from pub to pub, ready to raise a hand to any woman who dared to refuse or twit them. Thick head? They’d show her a thick fist if she wasn’t careful! Snog her first – the snog having become the most common expression of erotic irritation between men and women: an antidote to the bland ballads of love the console pumped out – snog her first and cuff her later. An unnecessary refinement in Kevern’s view, since a snog was itself an act of thuggery. "
65 " But you tell me when there has ever been a reign of terror that wasn’t instigated by intellectuals and presided over by someone possessed of the madness of the artist. "
66 " People who see what’s coming have faulty chronology, that is all. "
― Howard Jacobson , The Finkler Question
67 " In my experience people who can’t stop making jokes about their identity aren’t easy with it. The man of the world accepts who he is and the influences which have made him, and then gets on with living in the world. "
― Howard Jacobson , The Making of Henry
68 " Out, in Henry’s view, is a madhouse. Historians of social lunacy will confirm that this is literally the case, that the mad have been let out of the asylums and allowed to walk the streets. But Henry doesn’t mean that. By mad, nerve-strung Henry means revving when you’re stationary and driving with your hand on your horn – read that sexually if you like, but Henry has in mind incessant honking – he means text messaging the person standing next to you, or being wired up so that you can speak into thin air, conversing with God is how it looks to Henry, or wearing running shoes when you’re not running, or coming up to Henry with a bad face and a dog on a piece of string and asking him for money. Why would Henry give someone with a bad face money? Because of the dog? Because of the string? "
69 " It is from his grandmother that Henry learns that punctuation can be a weapon. With a comma you can hurt someone. "