Lecture Quotes

“I'm always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it's very shocking to the system.”
― Flannery O'Connor

“Lorsque tout va mal, laissez tomber et allez à la bibliothèque.”
― Stephen King, 11/22/63

“I have clients who are nowhere near as insane as their family is, but they're the people who have been targeted with the mental illnesses because that’s convenient for everyone involved.”
― Jordan B. Peterson

“The trouble with a lecture is that it answers questions that haven't been asked.”
― Alan Alda, If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating

“All good work looks perfectly modern: a piece of Greek sculpture, a portrait of Velasquez—they are always modern, always of our time.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lecture to Art Students

“Anyone can lecture from the butt; only very few can act.”
― Pawan Mishra, Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy

“Le livre n'est qu'un miroir. Il nous renvoie à ce que nous sommes. C'est pour cela qu'un livre est adoré par certains et vomi par d'autres. Chacun y trouve sa part de sensibilité, sa part d'humanité. Le livre fait partie du rêve et le rêve est le père de tous les espoirs.”
― Yasmina Khadra

“Les mystiques et leurs «  œuvres  complètes ». Quand on s'adresse à Dieu, et à Dieu seul, comme ils le prétendent, on devrait se garder d'écrire. Dieu ne lit pas...”
― Emil Cioran, Del inconveniente de haber nacido

“He utilizes
form for a striking lecture;
young poets shiver

inexperience,
but thaw over their own work,
fertilize magic.”
― Kristen Henderson, Of My Maiden Smoking

“There is no smarter professor than life, and no wiser sage than experience.”
― Matshona Dhliwayo

“This Saturday? As in tomorrow Saturday? We have to give lectures in twelve hours? We're not prepared for that! I can't just pull a cyber-crimes lecture out of my ass!" He could, but it was the principle of the thing.”
― Abigail Roux, Divide & Conquer

“On lit pour découvrir une vision du monde.”
― Amélie Nothomb, Les Combustibles

“The moment the feeling enters the body is political.”
― Adrienne Rich

“What an amazing gift to help people, not just yourself.”
― Barack Obama

“So she was waiting for the lecture; prolonged silence always led to the lecture. It was the last thing Sarah needed, and a list of the first things would have filled a book: a hug, a bath, an ear, some sympathy.”
― Mick Herron, Down Cemetery Road

“Tu sais, le mot FIN n'apparaît jamais quand tu termines un livre. Ce n'est pas comme au cinéma. Quand je referme un roman, je n'ai pas l'impression d'avoir terminé quoi que ce soit, si bien que j'ai besoin d'en ouvrir un autre.”
― Elif Shafak, The Bastard of Istanbul

“Mais ça veut dire quoi d'abord "mon livre", ton livre ? Que tu l'as acheté ? Qu'on te l'a donné ? Prêté ? Que tu l'as lu ?”
― Mélissandre L., Table des Matières

“You'll feel fairly patronised for the first few weeks, or first few lectures here, but the effect is a bit like driving a car; you start off in low gears, and you go very slowly and it's frustrating, but before you realise it you're doing about 140 on the freeway and breaking the law and all kinds of things. That's what this course will be like.”
― Albert Atkin

“There is a girl behind the desk in blue uniform, with dark red hair, spread fanlike from her head in lacquered splendour; she looks at them without interest. 'Hallo, dolling,' says Lubijova, 'Here is Professor Petwurt, reservation of the Min'stratii Kulturi, confirmation here.' 'So, Petvurt?' the girl says, taking a pen from her hair and running it languidly down the columns of a large book. 'Da, Pervert, so, here is. Passipotti. ' 'She likes your passport, don't give it to her, says Lubijova, 'Give it to me. I know these people well, they are such bureaucrats. Now, dolling, tell me, how long do you keep?' 'Tomorrow,' says the girl, 'It registers with the police.”
― Malcolm Bradbury , Rates of Exchange

“Je suis content que tu aies trouvé ton livre, Steve. Tout le monde y arrive, un jour ou l'autre. Il faut parfois en lire dix, cent ou mille, mais on finit toujours par le dénicher. Enfin, presque toujours. Certains abandonnent avant de l'avoir trouvé, malheureusement...”
― François Gravel, La Piste Sauvage

“Interestingly enough, whenever I cite examples from superhero comic books in a lecture, my students never wonder when they will use this information in their "real life". Apparently they all have plans, post-graduation, that involve protecting the City from all threat while wearing spandex. As a law-abiding citizen, this notion fills me with a great sense of security, knowing as I do how many of my scientist colleagues could charitably be termed "mad".”
― James Kakalios, The Physics of Superheroes: Spectacular Second Edition

“Je lis vite, avec voracité, presque en diagonale, pour essayer de m'en fourrer autant que je peux dans la tête avant la prochaine longue famine. S'il s'agissait de manger, ce serait la gloutonnerie de l'affamé, et s'il s'agissait de sexualité, ce serait une brève et furtive étreinte, debout quelque part dans une ruelle.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

“Je lisais … comme toujours lorsqu’on est emporté par la magie d’une histoire bien racontée ou la simple ivresse de se reconnaître à travers des mots plus habiles que les siens.”
― Gabrielle Roy, La Détresse et l'Enchantement

“Il était ennuyeux de considérer des livres comme des lectures incontournables au motif que d’autres les avaient lus”
― Katarina Bivald, The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend

“Madiba reminds that democracy is more than just elections.”
― Barack Obama

“The following factors define a successful lecturer: knowing the topic of the lecture very well, being well-prepared for the lecture, speaking fluently and clearly, and last but not least – showing a genuine enthusiasm for the subject which attracts students’ attention.”
― Eraldo Banovac

“The professor's voice was amplified with her mike. 'In the nineteenth century... artists were compelled by the idea of the sublime, which was the most elevated expression of the harmony between nature and man. By contemplating nature, a figure like this one on the mountaintop would be inspired with reverence for the majesty of what God created--both humbled by it and also elevated by it because he, as a witness and an observer, had a privileged relation to all of creation--both of it and standing outside it to contemplate it. It was through contemplating nature that one would gain this experience of the sublime, so you tend to find in pictures from this time--' Slide changed. '--this theme repeated: the untamed and overwhelming power and beauty of nature, and the witness to it, somewhere in the painting, a stand-in for the viewer and the painter....”
― Sheila Heti, How Should a Person Be?

“Lire ressemble à regarder à l'horizon. D'abord on ne voit qu'une ligne noir. Puis on imagine des mondes.”
― orsenna

“Borges - his blind face like an Aztec woman's, that old shyster of metaphor, across whose open eyes pass flashes of magnesium without affecting him. The blind always seem to be holding their heads out of water. Yet they are gifted in unreality and cunning. I am sure he knows down to ten people how many are there to hear him, simply by listening, by sensing. The lecture is hopeless, but it is a sacrificial ceremony. The listeners are overwhelmed by the intelligence of this man whose cunning ploy is to make it seem as though he were speaking from beyond the grave, as if he were already dead. His muffled, syncopated, barely audible voice condemns the others to silence in the same way as he is condemned to the night. All the metaphors he uses are those of the night, including the thousand and first night, the finest since it is one added to eternity. He is without doubt also in his eighty-four-and-first year - i.e. he has one foot in eternity. There reigns all about him an ironic and cruel affectation. I don't know what animal he resembles. He has a soft spot for the tiger. Put a tiger in your liltrary and take away its sight: that's Borges. In this vegetation of Californian academics' soft encephalons, his silences carve lethal spirals. Since he can no longer see the world, he quotes it. His speech is one long quotation. ' Life itself is a quotation ', he says.”
― Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories

“Don't live on your goddamn computers, and the internet, and all that crap. Go to the library. Don't let them flim-flam you into owning all these devices...”
― Ray Bradbury