I rather think the cinema will die. Look at the energy being exerted to revive it—yesterday it was color, today three dimensions. I don’t give it forty years more. Witness the decline of conversation. Only the Irish have remained incomparable conversationalists, maybe because technical progress has passed them by.
—Orson Welles, 1953
Archive
Quotes
It is impossible to translate the poets. Can you translate music?
—Voltaire, c. 1732Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don’t take it too seriously.
—Henry Miller, 1945God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
—John Lennon, 1970In life our absent friend is far away: / But death may bring our friend exceeding near.
—Christina Rossetti, 1881It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me.
—Martin Luther King Jr., 1962Business? Why, it’s very simple; business is other people’s money.
—Alexandre Dumas, 1857A garden must be looked into, and dressed as the body.
—George Herbert, 1640Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
—Ambrose Bierce, 1906Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think.
—Lawrence Durrell, 1957All our enemies are mortal.
—Paul Valéry, 1942Man has here two and a half minutes—one to smile, one to sigh, and half a one to love; for in the midst of this minute he dies.
—Jean Paul, 1795God walks among the pots and pans.
—Saint Teresa of Ávila, c. 1582