Quotes: Movies and Books. Mozart. Multimedia. Murder. Mysticism. Myth.

A collection of quotes on various topics. The sentence in bold face is a plain statement of the quote that follows.

Movies and Books
The movie version halted the sales of the book.
Movies and books 117 “Myra Breckinridge,”[ Gore Vidal’s transsexual satire], West’s 1970 return to the screen…mutilated to a point of toneless X-rated incomprehensibility: Vidal declared it the first time a movie had entirely halted the sales of a book. Pierpont, Claudia Roth. “A Critic at Large: The Strong Woman.” The New Yorker (Nov. 11, 1996), pp. 106-118.

Mozart
Mozart was interested in the drama of human relationships.
Mozart 241 Mozart…a passionate interest in human beings, and in the drama of human relationships.

Multimedia
I am convinced that a combination of media extends human experience in a way that words alone cannot do.
Multimedia xv I am convinced that a combination of words and music, color and movement can extend human experience in a way that words alone cannot do. Clark, Civilization.

Murder
If someone is intent on killing you, would you stop and ask if he is your father?
Murder 128 Oedipus: Let me ask you this one simple thing: If at this moment someone should step up to murder you, would you, godly creature that you are, stop and say: “Excuse me, sir, are you my father?” Sophocles. Oedipus at Colonus.

I didn’t kill him, but I accept the punishment because I intended to kill him.
Murder 561 But listen, for the last time, I am not guilty of my father’s blood…I accept my punishment not because I killed him but because I meant to kill him…. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

Mysticism
Today a mystic is one who is capable of wonder.
Mystic wonder wisdom 272 The convenient label “mystic” is, in our day, readily applied to men who pause for simple wonder. Eiseley, The Star Thrower

He had a sense of the wholeness of things, saw how everything was related.
Mysticism 325 But yet there was reigning in his soul a sense of the wholeness of things…. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

His soul seemed to be linked by threads to innumerable worlds.
Mysticism 328 There seemed to be threads from all those innumerable worlds of God, linking his soul to them. Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov.

I cease to live and just begin to be.
Mysticism 188 Thoreau: “Sometimes as I drift idly on Walden Pond, I cease to live and begin to be.” Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy, Spinoza.

Mysticism is removal from one’s body to become pure thought.
Mysticism 663 The ancients called it [mysticism] ecstasy or absence,--getting out of their bodies to think. Emerson, Representative Men: Swedenborg, or The Mystic.

Myth
Political myths: Fascism, an imperial past; Communism, a utopian future; National Socialism, racial superiority.
Myth 9 Political myth: …in the case of Fascism, the myth is of an imperial past; in the case of Communism, of a socialist-utopian future; and in the case of National Socialism, of racial superiority. Bracher, The German Dictatorship.

Myths are stories that seem to be different but they are really the same story.
Myth 121 Myths: The stories seem to be different stories, but the underlying structure is always the same, in any part of the world, at any time. L. Thomas, Lives of a Cell.

The “myths” of American foreign policy: inherently bad nations; punishment by withholding diplomatic recognition and the belief that democracy will inevitably win against an alien power.
Myths 574 As a Senator in 1954, he [Kennedy] had assailed in a magazine article the “myths” which “surrounded …American foreign policy,” including “…the existence of inherently good, bad or backward nations…the impairment of an aggressor’s military power by refusing…our diplomatic recognition…that the democratic way of life…will inevitably be the victor in any struggle with an alien power….” Sorenson, Kennedy