“Vocabulary is the Trojan horse that smuggles the lie. Facts don’t help. If you’re not a persuasive talker at a party, no one’s going to believe you, even if everything you say is true. But if you’re a persuasive liar then everyone is fooled.” – Jim Crace (interviewed by Adam Begley), “The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review
“There is nothing like a natural disaster to remind you of your powerlessness.” – Lyz, Men Yell at Me, October 2, 2024
“It easeth some, though none it ever cur’d, to think their dolour others have endur’d.” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“Short time seems long in sorrow’s sharp sustaining. Though woe be heavy, yet it seldom sleeps; and they that watch see time how slow it creeps.” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“Princes are the glass, the school, the book, where subjects’ eyes do learn, do read, do look.” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“Who buys a minute’s mirth to wail a week? Or sells eternity to get a toy? For one sweet grape who will the vine destroy?” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“Leaden slumber with life’s strength doth fight; and every one to rest themselves betake, save thieves, and cares, and troubled minds, that wake.” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“By our ears our hearts oft tainted be.” – William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else’s dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.” – Joan Didion (interviewed by Linda Kuehl), “The Art of Fiction,” Paris Review
“Of Perseus’ company, Melaneus was killed, and Dorylas, millionaire of Nasamonia, no one as rich as he in land or spices, heaped up in mountains over his estates. Thrust from one side, a spear pierced through his groin—a deadly spot. When Halcyoneus, who threw the spear, heard Dorylas sigh and saw his eyes roll up, he said, ‘Here where you lie are all the lands you own.’” – Ovid: The Metamorphoses, trans. Horace Gregory
“The one irredeemable error of a supply program is not too much, but too little.” – “Report of War Department Procurement Review Board” (quoted in Robert W. Coakley and Richard M. Leighton, Global Logistics and Strategy: 1943-1945)
“Now this ill-wresting world is grown so bad, mad slanderers by mad ears believed be.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet CXL”
“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun; coral is far more red than her lips’ red; if snow be white, why then her breast are dun; if hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. I have seen roses damask’d, red and white, but no such roses see I in her cheeks; and in some perfumes there is more delight than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak,—yet well I know that music hath a far more pleasing sound; I grant I never saw a goddess go,—my mistress when she walks, treads on the ground; and yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare as any she belied with false compare.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet CXXX”
“Those lines that I before have writ, do lie; even those that said I could not love you dearer; yet then my judgment knew no reason why my most full flame should afterwards burn clearer. But reckoning time, whose million’d accidents creep in ‘twixt vows, and change decrees of kings, tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents, divert strong minds to the course of altering things; alas! why, fearing Time’s tyranny, might I not then say, ‘Now I love you best,’ when I was certain o’er incertainty, crowning the present, doubting of the rest? Love is a babe; then might I not say so, to give full growth to that which still doth grow?” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet CV”
“One of the items asked for by [Colonel] Puller in an urgent dispatch, several hundred bottles of mosquito lotion, raised a few eyebrows at division headquarters, but the request was filled promptly. The Gilnit Group commander’s well-known disdain for the luxuries of campaigning caused the wonder, but the explanation was simple and a lesson in jungle existence. As a patrol member later remarked: ‘Hell, the colonel knew what he was about. We were always soaked and everything we owned was likewise, and that lotion made the best damn stuff to start a fire with that you ever saw.’” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T. Kane, USMC, Isolation of Rabaul, History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol. II, “Part IV, The New Britain Campaign”
“Fair, kind, and true, have often liv’d alone.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet CV”
“Sweets grown common lose their dear delight.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet CII”
“On the finger of a throned queen the basest jewel will be well esteem’d.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet XCVI”
“Some glory in their birth, some in their skill, some in their wealth, some in their body’s force; some in their garments, though new-fangled ill; some in their hawks and hounds, some in their horse; and every humour hath his adjunct pleasure, wherein it finds a joy above the rest; but these particulars are not my measure, all these I better in one general best. Thy love is better than high birth to me, richer than wealth, prouder than garments’ cost, of more delight than hawks and horses be; and, having thee, of all men’s pride I boast.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet XCI”
“The climate of western New Britain is what might be expected of a region of jungle-covered mountains and swamps. At all times during the year, the humidity is high, and the daytime temperature range hovers around 90 degrees; at night the temperature seldom drops below 72 degrees. The annual rainfall usually totals 150–200 inches and much of this, an average of 30 inches a month, comes during the period of the northwest monsoon, mid-December to mid-February. In this wettest season, rain may fall almost every day and squalls with torrential downpours are frequent. The northwest winds are strong and fairly steady, making the sea rough and the surf heavy. The dry season at Cape Gloucester occurs during the summer months when the prevailing southeast winds vent most of their force on the south slopes of the mountains. The periods between the two seasons, and the period of the southeast monsoon itself, are times of comparatively calm weather. The campaign to seize control of western New Britain would be fought in the worst possible weather of the year. Low-lying terrain would disappear beneath a cover of standing water, and, on the higher ground, the trees, the undergrowth, and the land itself would become and remain, rainsoaked. The prospect was that attacker and defender alike, mired in combat in the dripping jungle, would curse the day they set foot on the island.” – Henry I. Shaw, Jr., and Major Douglas T. Kane, USMC, Isolation of Rabaul , History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, Vol.II, “Part IV, The New Britain Campaign”
“Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet XCIV”
“In many looks the false heart’s history is writ, in moods and frowns and wrinkles strange.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet XCIII”
“If thou wilt leave me, do not leave me last, when other petty griefs have done their spite, but in the onset come; so shall I taste at first the very worst of fortune’s might; and other strains of woe, which now seem woe, compar’d with loss of thee will not seem so.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet XC”
“That time of year thou mayst in me behold when yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang upon those boughs which shake against the cold, bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang. In me thou seest the twilight of such day as after sunset fadeth in the west, which by and by black night doth take away, Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest. In me thou seest the glowing of such fire, that on the ashes of his youth doth lie, as the death-bed whereon it must expire, consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet LXXIII”
“Like as waves make towards the pebbled shore, so do our minutes hasten to their end; each changing place with that which goes before. In sequent toil all forwards do contend. Nativity, once in the main of light, crawls to maturity, wherewith being crown’d, crooked eclipses ‘gainst his glory fight, and Time, that gave, doth now his gift confound. Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth, and delves the parallels in beauty’s brow; feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth, and nothing stands but for the scythe to mow.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet LX”
“Sweet love, renew thy force; be it not said, thy edge should blunter be than appetite, which but to-day by feeding is allay’d, to-morrow sharpen’d in his former might: so, love, be thou.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet LVI”
“What is your substance, whereof are you made, that millions of strange shadows on you tend?” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet LIII”
“Nimble thought can jump both sea and land, as soon as think the place where he would be.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet XLIV”
“Full many a glorious morning have I seen flatter the mountain-tops with sovereign eye, kissing with golden face the meadows green, gilding pale streams with heavenly alchymy.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet XXXIII”
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, and summer’s lease hath all too short a date: sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, and often is his gold complexion dimm’d; and every fair from fair sometime declines, by chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimm’d; but thy eternal summer shall not fade, nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; nor shall Death brag thou wander’st in his shade, when in eternal lines to time thou growest; so long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, so long lives this, and this gives life to thee.” – William Shakespeare, “Sonnet XVIII”