Sedulia's Quotations

Senator McCain is aware of the World Wide Web

Asked earlier this year if he uses a Mac or PC, McCain replied: "Neither. I'm an illiterate who has to rely on my wife for all the assistance I can get." The running McCain-doesn't-get-the-Web meme climbed a steeper hill nearly a month ago when a McCain aide -- his deputy eCampaign director, no less -- told a bipartisan gathering of online political activists: "John McCain is aware of the Internet." And last Sunday, in an interview with the New York Times, McCain said he doesn't e-mail.

    --Article by Jose Antonio Vargas in the Washington Post, 18 July 2008

Colin Firth on liking ABBA

I think it's time we all came out. I think you either like ABBA or you're lying.

     --British actor Colin Firth, interviewed by Tina Daunt in the Los Angeles Times, 18 July 2008

Queen Elizabeth II dances to "Dancing Queen" because "I am the queen and I like to dance."

This is the best queen story ever. A friend of mine went to a dinner at Windsor Castle hosted by the queen, there was a couple of hundred people there, it was a special occasion for him.

The meal was had, the speeches were made and then the disco commenced, it was one of those posh dos, a dinner dance. It was a proper disco with proper music, proper disco music.

Now did the queen stick around or did she disappear? She stuck around because apparently she loves to get down on the dance floor, so she goes on the dance floor at which point people were going, "Ooh look, she's going to have a dance."

And what was the song being played? It was "Dancing Queen" by Abba.

She was on the floor and everybody said, "My goodness me, there is the Dancing Queen."

According to the presenter, the queen appreciated the irony of the situation -- and even makes a point of dancing when she hears the song.

That is a true story and she said audibly, "I always try to dance when this song comes on because I am the queen and I like to dance."

    --British BBC 2 D.J. Chris Evans, as quoted on The Monsters and the Critics

Lin Yutang praises the prewar Peking [Beijing] he knew

Peking is one of the jewel cities of the world. Except for Paris and (by hearsay) Vienna as they once were, there is no city in the world that is quite so nearly ideal, in regard to nature, culture, charm, and mode of living, as Peking....

Peking is like a grand old person, with a grand old personality. For cities are like persons, with their different personalities. Some are mean and provincial, curious, and inquisitive; others are generous, magnanimous, big-hearted, and cosmopolitan. Peking is magnanimous. Peking is big. She harbors the old and the modern, being unmoved herself. 

 

Peking is a like a grand old tree, whose roots stretch deep into the earth and draw sustenance from it. Living under its shade and subsisting upon its trunk and branches are millions of insects.... How can a Peking resident describe Peking, so old and so grand?

One never feels that one knows Peking. After living there for ten years, one discovers in an alley an old crank, and regrets not having met him earlier; or a lovely old gentleman painter with a big, bare belly sitting under a great locust tree, fanning himself with a palm-leaf fan and dreaming his hours away; or an old shuttlecock player who can make the shuttlecock travel inch by inch on his head and drop flat on the sole of this shoe at the back; or a society of sword fencers; or a children's school of dramatics; or a ricksha coolie who turns out to be a member of a Manchu princely family; or a former magistrate of imperial times. How dare one say that one knows Peking?

"Peking is a jewel city, a jewel city such as the eyes of man have not seen before. It is a jewel city of gold and purple and royal blue roofs, of palaces and pavilions and lakes and parks and princes' gardens. It is a jewel set with the purple sides of Western Hills and the blue girdle of the Jade Fountain stream and centuries-old cedars looking down on human being at the Central Park, the Temple of Heaven, and the Temple of Agriculture. In the city are nine parks and three imperial lakes, known as the "Three Seas," now thrown open to the public. And Peking has such a blue sky and such a beautiful moon, such rainy Summers, such cool, crisp Autumns, and such dry, clear Winters!

Peking is like a king's dream, with its palaces, princes' gardens, hundred-foot boulevards, art museums, colleges, universities, hospitals, temples, pagodas, and streets of art shops and second-hand book shops. Peking is like a gourmet's paradise. It has centuries-old restaurants, with old, smoky signboards, and wonderful waiters with shaved heads and towels across their shoulders, whose courtesy is perfect, since they were trained in the tradition of the imperial times and catered to high mandarin officials. It is a place for the rich and poor, where every neighborhood shop extends credit to a poor resident, where peddlers sell delicacies cheaply, and where you can loll at a tea restaurant and kill an entire afternoon over a pot of tea.

Peking is the shoppers' heave, being rich in China's old handicrafts-- books, prints, paintings, curios, embroidery, jade, cloisonnés, lanterns. It is a place where you can shop at home, for dealers come to your doors with their wares, and in the early morning the alleys are filled with the most charming musical cries of hawkers.

Peking has quiet. It is a city of homes, where every house has a courtyard, and every courtyard has a jar of goldfish and a pomegranate tree, where vegetables are fresh, and pears are pears and persimmons are persimmons. It is the ideal city, where there is space for everyone to breathe in, where rural quiet is matched with city comforts, where streets and alleys and canals are so arranged that one can find room for an orchard or a garden and glimpse the Western Hills while picking cabbage in the morning hours-- a stone's throw from a big department store.

It has variety-- variety of men. It has laws and breakers of laws, police and accomplices of police, thieves and protectors of thieves, beggars and kings of beggars. It has saints, sinners, Mohammedans, Tibetan "devil-expellers," fortune tellers, boxers, monks, prostitutes, Russian and Chinese taxi dancers, Japanese and Korean smugglers, painters, philosophers, poets, collectors of curios, young college students, and movie fans. It has political scoundrels, retired old magistrates, New Life followers, theosophists, wives of former Manchu officials, now serving as maids.

It has color-- color of the old and color of the new. It has the color of imperial grandeur, of historic age and of Mongolian plains. Mongolian and Chinese traders come with their camel caravans from Kalgan and Nankow and pass through its historic gates. It has miles upon miles of city walls, forty or fifty broad at the gates. It has gate towers and drum towers, which announce the evenings for the residents. It has temples, old gardens, and pagodas, where every stone and every tree and every bridge have a history and a legend....

Of all the things that make Peking the ideal city to live in, I would single out three: first its architecture; second, its mode of living; and, third, its common people....

As the Chinese conception of architectural beauty is serenity, rather than sublimity, and as the palace roofs are of the low and broad sweeping type, and as nobody other than the emperor was allowed to have houses with more than one story, the total effect is one of tremendous spaciousness....

But what makes Peking so charming is the mode of life, organized so that one can have peace and quiet, while living close to a busy street. Living is cheap and life is enjoyable for all. While officials and rich men can dine in big restaurants, a poor ricksha coolie can buy, with two coppers, a perfect assortment of oil, salt, pepper, and vinegar for his cooking purposes, with a few leaves of some spicy plant to boot....

The greatest charm of Peking is, however, the common people....

    --Lin Yutang 林語堂 (1895-1976) in With Love and Irony (New York, John Day Company, 1934)

In 1930 Beijing had an estimated population of 1,520,000, with a population density of 93 people per square kilometer. In 2000 it had an estimated population of 11,140,000 and a population density of 680 people per square kilometer. This year, 2008, the population is 15,000,000.

Mao had the city walls torn down in the early 1960s.

国在山河破

A.A. Gill on French literature

The sad truth is that little has been written in French that even the French will read for a generation. They are a nation with a thin literary heritage and virtually no literary present. Their contribution to the world's library in the past 30 years has been cartoon books which they consider art and literary criticism which is unreasonable. We have the French to thank for deconstruction. They are good at criticism. They have pathetically declined from being a second-rate nation to being the shrill, pinched, finger-pointing nag of Europe.

   --A.A. Gill (1954- ) in a newspaper article ca 1995

Joe Eszterhas on why the French can't make movies

Why the French can't make movies.

French woman wakes up, talks French, gets out of bed, has breakfast, goes shopping, talks French, comes back, thinks about lunch, visits her mother, talks French, maybe goes for a walk, sees child, talks French, movie ends....

American woman is woken up by gunshot, stripped naked and tied up by masked intruder, manages to untie herself with teeth, goes shopping, meets handsome all-action architect in the checkout line, comes back, thinks about lunch, tracks down masked intruder and tries to blow his head off, misses, runs traumatized to handsome all-action architect and fucks his brains out, discovers by chance while looking through drawer that handsome all-action architect is in fact masked intruder, blows his head off in anger, feels empowered, sees child, child says, "Love you, Mommy," end credits.

Result? Four hundred twenty-five million dollars box office worldwide. And not a word of French spoken.

   --Joe Eszterhas as told to Craig Brown, in Vanity Fair, March 2008

What to say to the movie director after the screening

Q:...Last week, I went to a screening for an independent movie. The director was there, and right afterward, he cornered a few of us to see what we though. He was really aggressive. I thought the film was pretty weak and predictable and said something vague about the costumes and production design. He glared at me. What do you say to a director if you see his movie and think it's lame? Should I have been more positive and lied? --M.F., Hollywood Hills

Dear M.F., Lied? We don't call it that here in Hollywood. We prefer the term "stunt talk." And if you simply can't muster up the grace to gild your adjectives, you should pack up your earnestness and move back to Idaho. Hollywood is no place for a person whose sincerity can't roll over and play dead once in a while.

Directors are as touchy as new moms with postpartum depression. After making a film, they are needy, exhausted and slightly deranged from being in labor for almost two years....

What would you do if you leaned into a baby carriage and saw an infant shaped like a cantaloupe with no discernible chin?

"You say, 'Wow! That child is so alert!'" says one studio exec, who declined to go on the record for this column....

    --Monica Corcoran as The Mannerist, manners column in the Los Angeles Times, 2 December 2007

Norman Mailer: Every wife is a culture that's not your own

Every wife is a culture, and you enter deep into another culture, one that's not your own, and you learn an awful lot from it. And given that marriage is not always a comfortable institution, you chafe in that culture. Suppose you spend ten years of your life in France, and you finally decide to leave. You wouldn't for the rest of your life say, I hate France. You'd say, France has an awful lot to offer. I have my differences with it, but I'm happy I spent ten years in France.

     --Norman Mailer (1923- ), in Harper's, September 2007

Daniel Gilbert: Ignorant remarks are the music of a free society

Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one.

    --Daniel Gilbert (1957- ),in What Is Your Dangerous Idea? ed. John Brockman

Tony Hoagland: I am asleep in America too

America

Then one of the students with blue hair and a tongue stud
says America is for him a maximum security prison whose walls

are made of Radio Shacks and Burger Kings, and MTV episodes
where you can't tell the show from the commercials;

and as I contemplate how full of shit I think he is,
he says that even when he's driving to the mall in his Isuzu

trooper with a gang of his friends, letting rap music pour over them
like a boiling jacuzzi full of ballpeen hammers, even then he feels

buried alive, captured and suffocated in the folds
of the thick satin quilt of America.

And I wonder if this is a legitimate category of pain,
or whether he is just spin-doctoring a better grade,

and then I remember that when I stabbed my father in the dream last night,
it was not blood but money

that gushed out of him, bright green hundred-dollar bills
spilling from his wounds, and, this is the funny part,

he gasped, "Thank God-- those Ben Franklins were
clogging up my heart--

and so I perish happily,
freed from that which kept me from my liberty--"

which is when I knew it was a dream, since my dad
would never speak in rhymed couplets

and I look at the student with his acne and cell phone and phony ghetto clothes
and I think, "I am asleep in America too,

and I don't know how to wake myself either"
and I remember what Marx said near the end of his life:

"I was listening to the cries of the past,
when I should have been listening to the cries of the future"

but how could he have imagined 100 channels of 24-hour cable
or what kind of nightmare it might be

when each day you watch rivers of bright merchandise run past you
and you are floating in your pleasure boat upon this river

even while others are drowning underneath you
and you see their faces twisting in the surface of the waters

and yet it seems to be your own hand
which turns the volume higher?

    --Tony Hoagland (1953-), author of (among others) Hard Rain and What Narcissism Means to Me