“ Novelty and Security: the security of novelty, the novelty of security. Always the full thing, the whole subject, the true subject, stood just behind the one you found yourself contemplating. The trick, but it wasn't a trick, was to take up at once the thing you saw and the reason you saw it as well; to always bite off more than you could chew, and then chew it. If it were selfindulgence for him to cut and polish his semiprecious memories, and yet seem like danger, like a struggle he was unfit for, then selfindulgence was a potent force, he must examine it, he must reckon with it. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 1.3K
“ When he was in college, a famous poet made a useful distinction for him. He had drunk enough in the poet's company to be compelled to describe to him a poem he was thinking of. It would be a monologue of sorts, the selfcontemplation of a student on a summer afternoon who is reading Euphues. The poem itself would be a subtle series of euphuisms, translating the heat, the day, the student's concerns, into symmetrical posies; translating even his contempt and boredom with that famously foolish book into a euphuism. The poet nodded his big head in a sympathetic, rhythmic way as this was explained to him, then told him that there are two kinds of poems. There is the kind you write; there is the kind you talk about in bars. Both kinds have value and both are poems; but it's fatal to confuse them. In the Seventh Saint, many years later, it had struck him that the difference between himself and Shakespeare wasn't talent not especially but nerve. The capacity not to be frightened by his largest and most potent conceptions, to simply (simply!) sit down and execute them. The dreadful lassitude he felt when something really large and multifarious came suddenly clear to him, something Learsized yet sonnetprecise. If only they didn't rush on him whole, all at once, massive and perfect, leaving him frightened and nerveless at the prospect of articulating them word by scene by page. He would try to believe they were of the kind told in bars, not the kind to be written, though there was no way to be sure of this except to attempt the writing; he would raise a finger (the novelist in the bar mirror raising the obverse finger) and push forward his change. Wailing like a neglected ghost, the vast notion would beat its wings into the void. Sometimes it would pursue him for days and years as he fled desperately. Sometimes he would turn to face it, and do battle. Once, twice, he had been victorious, objectively at least. Out of an immense concatenation of feeling, thought, word, transcendent meaning had come his first novel, a slim, pageant of a book, tombstone for his slain conception. A publisher had taken it, gingerly; had slipped it quietly into the deep pool of spring releases, where it sank without a ripple, and where he supposes it lies still, its calm Bodoni gone long since green. A second, just as slim but more lurid, nightmarish even, about imaginary murders in an imaginary exotic locale, had been sold for a movie, though the movie had never been made. He felt guilt for the producer's failure (which perhaps the producer didn't feel), having known the book could not be filmed; he had made a large sum, enough to finance years of this kind of thing, on a book whose first printing was largely returned. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 1.1K
“ Novelty. Security. Novelty wouldn't be a bad title. It had the grandness of abstraction, alerting the reader that large and thoughtful things were to be bodied forth. As yet he had no inkling of any incidents or characters that might occupy his theme; perhaps he never would. He could see though the book itself, he could feel its closed heft and see it opened, white pages comfortably large and shadowed gray by print; dense, numbered, full of meat. He sensed a narrative voice, speaking calmly and precisely, with immense assurance building, building; a voice too far off for him to hear, but speaking. ("Novelty") ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 2.8K
“ If you know how to read, the World of Books is open to you, after all; and if you like to read, you'll read. If you don't, you'll forget whatever anybody makes you read, anyway. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 1.7K
“ If you know how to read, the World of Books is open to you, after all; and if you like to read, you'll read. If you don't, you'll forget whatever anybody makes you read, anyway. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 659
“ God, he thought, her eyes are so bright, flashing, deep, full of promise, all those things eyes are in books but never are in life, and she was his. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 2.3K
“ Learning to decipher words had only added to the pleasures of holding spines and turning pages, measuring the journey to the end with a thumbriffle, poring over frontispieces. Books! Opening with a crackle of old glue, releasing perfume; closing with a solid thump. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 1.9K
“ Learning to decipher words had only added to the pleasures of holding spines and turning pages, measuring the journey to the end with a thumbriffle, poring over frontispieces. Books! Opening with a crackle of old glue, releasing perfume; closing with a solid thump. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 1.2K
“ We decided we wanted the hospitals to have an opportunity to digest this information (before) we would issue a press release. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 87
“ All of the hospitals, we think, are doing well,... And of course that's our job, to determine that they do well — but not too well. That's what this whole process is about. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 2K
“ All of the hospitals, we think, are doing well,... And of course that's our job, to determine that they do well — but not too well. That's what this whole process is about. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 490
“ We decided we wanted the hospitals to have an opportunity to digest this information (before) we would issue a press release. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 3.4K
“ Curiosity was a form of lust, a wandering cupidity of the eye and the mind. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 2.2K
“ Curiosity was a form of lust, a wandering cupidity of the eye and the mind. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 194
“ Curiosity was a form of lust, a wandering cupidity of the eye and the mind. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 1.6K
“ We decided we wanted the hospitals to have an opportunity to digest this information (before) we would issue a press release. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 3.9K
“ All of the hospitals, we think, are doing well,... And of course that's our job, to determine that they do well — but not too well. That's what this whole process is about. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 2K
“ Curiosity was a form of lust, a wandering cupidity of the eye and the mind. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 183
“ We decided we wanted the hospitals to have an opportunity to digest this information (before) we would issue a press release. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 328
“ Snow not falling but flying sidewise, and sudden, not signaled by the slow curdling of clouds all day and a flake or two drifting downward, but rushing forward all at once as though sent for. And filling up the world's concavities, pillowing up in the gloaming, making night light with its whiteness, and then falling still in every one's dreams, falling for pages and pages. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 3.8K
“ Curiosity was a form of lust, a wandering cupidity of the eye and the mind. ”
- John Crowley- Copy
- 1