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1 " Truth for anyone is a very complex thing. For a writer, what you leave out says as much as those things you include. What lies beyond the margin of the text? The photographer frames the shot; writers frame their world. Mrs Winterson objected to what I had put in, but it seemed to me that what I had left out was the story’s silent twin. There are so many things that we can’t say, because they are too painful. We hope that the things we can say will soothe the rest, or appease it in some way. Stories are compensatory. The world is unfair, unjust, unknowable, out of control. When we tell a story we exercise control, but in such a way as to leave a gap, an opening. It is a version, but never the final one. And perhaps we hope that the silences will be heard by someone else, and the story can continue, can be retold. When we write we offer the silence as much as the story. Words are the part of silence that can be spoken. Mrs Winterson would have preferred it if I had been silent.Do you remember the story of Philomel who is raped and then has her tongue ripped out by the rapist so that she can never tell? I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words. I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself. "
― Jeanette Winterson , Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
2 " We believe in a particular order not because it is objectively true, but because believing in it enables us to cooperate effectively and forge a better society. Imagined orders are not evil conspiracies or useless mirages. Rather, they are the only way large numbers of humans can cooperate effectivelyy. "
― Yuval Noah Harari , Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
3 " For paranoia was Zig's late style: How else but through networks and conspiracies could he fashion a target big enough for his outrage? Richard usually found paranoia uninteresting, insofar as it swept away the incidental, which was the real grist of history. "
― Garth Risk Hallberg , City on Fire
4 " I am seeking to rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the “obsolete” hand-loom weaver, the “utopian” artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity. Their crafts and traditions may have been dying. Their hostility to the new industrialism may have been backward-looking. Their communitarian ideals may have been fantasies. Their insurrectionary conspiracies may have been foolhardy. But they lived through these times of acute social disturbance, and we did not. Their aspirations were valid in terms of their own experience… "
― E.P. Thompson , The Making of the English Working Class
5 " Sometimes people need reasons for things, even when there are no reasons. That's what makes people believe in conspiracies or religions - if there is any difference. The world is just too complicated, so they need simple explanations. "
― Tad Williams , Otherland 1 - 4 Boxed Set
6 " The trouble with believing conspiracies is you start seeing them everywhere, right? And everything becomes a part of them. But, of course, the trouble with not believing them is becoming a dupe. "
― , Citations: A Brief Anthology
7 " Anyone who is portraying Israel as a friend is a servant of Israel.I warn some sides against turning enemies into friends and friends into enemies.Some in the Arab world try to present " Israel" as a friend and Iran as a foe.Yet such conspiracies will fail. " Israel" has not been helping because of its hostile and aggressive nature. The Arab world is realising day after day that Iran is a friend, which was highlighted in Iran's support to Gaza and Lebanon. "
8 " Of course real horror does not depend upon the melodrama of shadows or even the conspiracies of night. "
― Mark Z. Danielewski , House of Leaves
9 " Culture, religion, and education, are conspiracies to standardize worldviews. "
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana , N for Nigger: Aphorisms for Grown Children and Childish Grown-ups
10 " A prince need take little account of conspiracies if the people are disposed in his favor. "
― Niccolò Machiavelli , The Prince
11 " Just introduce a woman, conspiracies succeed; Of soldiers, or their weapons, there really is no need. "
― Luo Guanzhong , Three Kingdoms (4-Volume Boxed Set)
12 " The ideological premise, however, " can" not be defective; it is sacrosanct. ... Whatever does not seem right, whatever does not fit, must be explained by something wrong outside of the ideology; for its perfection is beyond all doubt. In (t)his way the ideology immunizes itself by offering more and more hair-splitting accusations. Betrayal and the dark powers of inner and outer enemies lie in wait everywhere. Theories about conspiracies develop and conveniently hide the absurdity of the premise, necessitating and justifying bloody purges. "