23
" We do need to bring to our writing, over and over again, all the abundance we possess. To be able, to be ready, to enter into the minds and hearts of our own people, all of them, to comprehend them (us) and then to make characters and plots in stories that in honesty and with honesty reveal them (ourselves) to us, in whatever situation we live through in our own times: this is the continuing job, and it's no harder now than it ever was, I suppose. Every writer, like everybody else, thinks he's living through the crisis of the ages. To write honestly and with all our powers is the least we can do, and the most "
― Eudora Welty , On Writing
24
" As I mentioned briefly on the phone, the best thing about the Air Chrysalis is that it's not an imitation of anyone. It has absolutely none of the usual new writer's sense of 'I want to be another so-and-so'. the syle, for sure, is rough,and the writing is clumsy. She even gets the title wrong: she's confusing 'chrysalis' and 'cocoon'. You could pick it apart completely if you wanted to. But the story itself has real power: it draws you in. the overall plots is a fantasy, but the descriptive details is incredibly real.The balance between the two is excellent. I don't know if words like 'originality' or Inevitability' fit here, and I suppose I might agree if someone insisted it's not at that level, but finally, after you work your way through the thing, with all its faults, it leaves a real impression- it gets to you in some strange, inexplicable way that may be a little disturbing. "
27
" Contemporary attitudes toward urban parks fall into three levels of sophistication. The first, the most naive assumption, is that parks are just plots of land preserved in their original state. If asked to discuss the issue at all, many laymen have maintained this much, that parks are bits of nature created only in the sense that some decision was made not to build on the land. Many are surprised to learn that parks that an artifact conceived and deliberated as carefully as public buildings, with both physical shape and social usage taken into account. The second, a little more informed, is that parks are aesthetic objects and that their history can be understood in terms of an evolution of artistic styles independent of societal considerations. The third is the view that each of the elements of the urban park represents part of planners' strategy for moral and social reform, so that today, as in the past, the citizen visiting a park is subject to an accumulated set of intended moral lessons. "
― , The Politics of Park Design: A History of Urban Parks in America
29
" But in Hebrew scripture David is not just the “sweet singer of Israel,” the chiseled poet who plays a harp and composes the Psalms. After he makes his name by killing Goliath, David recruits a gang of guerrillas, extorts wealth from his fellow citizens at swordpoint, and fights as a mercenary for the Philistines. These achievements make Saul jealous: the women in his court are singing, “Saul has killed by the thousands, but David by the tens of thousands.” So Saul plots to have him assassinated.19 David narrowly escapes before staging a successful coup. When David becomes king, he keeps up his hard-earned reputation for killing by the tens of thousands. After his general Joab “wasted the country of the children of Ammon,” David “brought out the people that were in it, and cut them with saws, and with harrows of iron, and with axes.” 20 Finally he manages to do something that God considers immoral: he orders a census. To punish David for this lapse, God kills seventy thousand of his citizens. "
― Steven Pinker , The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
34
" Listen my hatchling, for now you shall hear
Of the only seven slayers a dragon must fear.
First beware Pride, lest belief in one’s might
Has you discount the foeman who is braving your sight.
Never Envy other dragons their wealth, power, or home
For dark plots and plans will bring death to your own.
Your Wrath shouldn’t win, when spears strike your scale
Anger kills cunning, which you will need to prevail.
A dragon must rest, but Sloth you should dread
Else long years of napping let assassins to your bed.
‘Greed is good,’ or so foolish dragons will say
Until piles of treasure bring killing thieves where they lay.
Hungry is your body, and at times you must feed
But Gluttony makes fat dragons, who can’t fly at their need.
A hot Lust for glory, gems, gold, or mates
Leads reckless young drakes to the blackest of fates.
So take heed of this wisdom, precious hatchling of mine,
And the long years of dragonhood are sure to be thine. "
― E.E. Knight , Dragon Champion (Age of Fire #1)