Davies Quotes
Over this past Christmas vacation, I became accquainted with an author about whom I knew nothing before a few months ago; I borrowed two of his books from my English-major uncle. Robertson Davies, Canadian author. I devoured (well, for me at least) the last of his so-called Deptford Trilogy, World of Wonders. A little bit Graham Greene; a little bit Dickens, and more than a little bit Umberto Eco: I enjoyed it thoroughly. An added benefit is that he is an eminently quotable author - I can't wait to begin his book of prose. But I got several books for Christmas. Here are some of my favorite quotes from World of Wonders:
"...the showiest things are quite simply arranged, but anything that looks like simplicity is extremely difficult."
"The notion that everybody wants the latest is a delusion of intellectuals; a lot of people want a warm, safe place where Time hardly moves at all..."
"Of course wonder is costly. You couldn't incorporate it into a modern state, because it is the antithesis of the anxiously worshipped security which is what a modern state is asked to give. Wonder is marvellous, but it is also cruel, cruel, cruel. It is undemocratic, discriminatory and pitiless."
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WOW!!! Tim, this homey is on the mark. utter truth on those quotes and it's also nice to hear it being said (or in this case written). love, brother...
Yes, and believe it or not, this book was written in 1977...which, according to the prescience of the statements, make me even more believe he really had tapped into the reality of things...
Exactly, the reality of things. Dostoevsky once said something that I think really describes the way things went down and/or go down, he said:
"In the beginning art would imitate life, then life would imitate art and at last life would gain its existence from art.
Amen...and now, post-Dostoevsky, some claim art=life...no confluence as such, just one river.