SIR – Unless we seek to understand the motivations and perceived injustices of the terrorists there is no end in sight. Our response to terror should be thoughtfully analytical and should not, as in the past, be reflexive or reactionary. As Alexis de Tocqueville put it, when “the past no longer illuminates the future, the spirit walks in darkness”. Dirk Meerstadt London.
Civilization is only a pretense; in the crisis, we become mere apes again, forgetting the rational biped of our pretensions and becoming instead the hairy primate at the mouth of the cave, screeching at the enemy, wishing it would go away, fingering the heavy stone that we’ll use the moment it comes close enough.
They were usually christened with feminine names, perhaps in recognition of the fact that their personalities were sometimes slightly unpredictable.
The kids, to be frank, were absolutely no help at all, and I truly don’t think I’d ever have it any other way. Neil Gaiman, June 1998.
The anxiety that has followed me through my life like a bad friend had reappeared with a vengeance and taken a brand-new form. I felt like I was outside my own body, watching myself work. I didn’t care if I succeeded or failed because I wasn’t totally sure I was alive.
The main thing was not the speed or distance so much as running every day, without taking a break.
How can I know what I’ll do, until I’ve done it? How can I say?
Our premodern enemies enjoy the pretensions of postmodern America, a sort of cowardice always contextualized by convoluted rationalization and high-minded platitudes.
There was no way in hell I was going to let them see the tears in my eyes.
Making it up?” said Marvin, swivelling his head in a parody of astonishment, “Why should I want to make anything up? Life’s bad enough as it is without wanting to invent any more of it.
Do Muslims believe the Quran to be God’s “literal” word? Yes and No. Yes, in the sense that the Quran is seen as representing the exact words of the original text as revealed by God. And No, in the sense that the Quran is not a book that is devoid of metaphor and allegory. What would be more correct then is to say that Muslims believe the Quran to be “God’s immutable word” because they believe it to be unchanging over time and unable to be changed.
Perhaps all that is left of the world is a wasteland, covered with rubbish heaps, and the hanging garden of the Great Khan’s palace. It is our eyelids that separate them, but we cannot know which is inside and which outside.
Poetry doesn’t have to rhyme, it just has to touch someone where your hands couldn’t.
Dr Ambedkar said, “Mr Abdullah, you want India should defend Kashmir, India should develop Kashmir and Kashmiris should have equal rights as citizens of India, but you don’t want India and any citizen of India to have any rights in Kashmir. I am the Law Minister of India. I cannot betray the interest of my country.
Ever-after promises that no matter what comes or what has been, no matter who I become or who I was, no matter who you become or who you were, nothing can break us apart. Ever-after means forever means no matter what. Ever is the glue that brings two broken pieces together, and after is the bond that keeps them that way.
People fascinated by the idea of progress never suspect that every step forward is also a step on the way to the end and that behind all the joyous “onward and upward” slogans lurks the lascivious voice of death urging us to make haste.
To come right down to it, if I take the kind of things in which I believe, then add to that the kind of temperament that I have, plus the one hundred per cent dedication I have to whatever I believe in-these are ingredients which make it just about impossible for me to die of old age.
The past one year saw people turning Twitter into a battlefield of clashing opinions by creating hashtags against the enemy and making them trend.
The Life of Johnson is assuredly a great, a very great work. Homer is not more decidedly the first of heroic poets, Shakspeare is not more decidedly the first of dramatists, Demosthenes is not more decidedly the first of orators, than Boswell is the first of biographers. He has no second.
Go pillage the pretty pink birds, Sparrow. Before they come back to life and peck our eyes out.