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a reading QUOTES

a reading QUOTES

1 " The willingness to undertake such action cannot be based on certainties, but on those possibilities glimpsed in a reading of history different from the customary painful recounting of human cruelties. In such a reading we can find not only war but resistance to war, not only injustice but rebellion against injustice, not only selfishness but self-sacrifice, not only silence in the fact of tyranny but defiance, not only callousness but compassion.

Human beings show a broad spectrum of qualities, but it is the worst of these that are usually emphasized, and the result, too often, is to dishearten us, diminish our spirit. And yet, historically, that spirit refuses to surrender. "

― Howard Zinn , You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times

2 " The embrace of essential beastliness, made scientific and respectable by a reading of Darwin that may or may not have done justice to his intentions, thrilled and enthralled Western thought in certain quarters and in fact still does enthrall persons and groups that experience live in society as a barely tolerable constraint on a kind of freedom they consider a birthright. This freedom appears to have most of the essential features of a war of each against all, whether a hot war that compels them to go armed to Starbucks or to church or a cold war that makes a virtue of craftiness and guile, the ability to loot and wreck the national economy without getting caught. "

― Marilynne Robinson , When I Was a Child I Read Books

3 " Great writing is always rewriting or revisionism, and is founded on a reading that clears space for the self. "

― Harold Bloom , The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages

4 " Should could no longer feel grief. She was now like a Geiger counter that had been subjected to too much radiation, no longer capable of giving any reaction, noiselessly displaying a reading of zero. "

― Liu Cixin , The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past #1)

5 " Every science fiction is a reading of the period that produced it. "

― Andrew Durbin , Mature Themes

6 " In 1940, we knew who we were, we knew who the enemy was, we knew the dangers and the issues," he told me when I pressed him for a reading of the struggle against Islamic radicalism. " In our island, we knew we would prevail, that the Americans would be drawn into the fight. It is different today. We don't know who we are, we don't know the issues, and we still do not understand the nature of the enemy. "

7 " Greymalkin was no demon familiar; she was a rambunctious cat with the playful temperament of a kitten. On those occasions when Greymalkin decided the Tarot were her playthings, Miriam knew any attempt at a reading would lead to chewed cards, overturned candles, and incense ash tracked across her tablecloth in the form of tiny gray pawprints. "

― Chris Dee , World's Finest: Red Cape, Big City

8 " She told me it was unlucky to share a reading with others, but the main point, the one I don't mind mentioning because it seems relevant to the story, is that she said I had a kind of evil spirit following me. 'Obviously,' she added, 'that sucks. But if we get you some amber— "

― Olivia Sudjic , Sympathy