There is a strange taboo in our society against ending something merely because it is not pleasant-- life, love, a conversation, you name it, the etiquette is that you must begin in ignorance

Helen DeWitt


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There are people who think contraception is immoral because the object of copulation is procreation. In a similar way there are people who think the only reason to read a book is to write a book; people should call up books from the dust and the dark and write thousands of words to be sent down to the dust and the dark which can be called up so that other people can send further thousands of words to join them in the dust and the dark. Sometimes a book can be called from the dust and the dark to produce a book which can be bought in shops, and perhaps it is interesting, but the people who buy it and read it because it is interesting are not serious people, if they were serious they would not care about the interest they would be writing thousands of words to consign to the dust and the dark. There are people who think death a fate worse than boredom.

Helen DeWitt


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I thought suddenly Look. If Kambei had stopped recruiting when the first samurai didn’t work out a 205-minute masterpiece of modern cinema would have been over at minute 32.

Helen DeWitt


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Indolence, interruption, business, and pleasure; all take their turns of retardation….Perhaps no extensive and multifarious performance, said Sib, was ever effected within the term originally fixed in the undertaker’s mind. He that runs against Time, has an antagonist not subject to casualities.

Helen DeWitt


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I once read somewhere that Sean Connery left school at the age of 13 and later went on to read Proust and Finnegans Wake and I keep expecting to meet an enthusiastic school leaver on the train, the type of person who only ever reads something because it is marvellous (and so hated school). Unfortunately the enthusiastic school leavers are all minding their own business.

Helen DeWitt


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Yamamoto said he thought you had to be able to hear how something did not work as part of a bigger thing to hear how it did and it was precisely because people couldn't hear that that they were willing to let movements be taken out of pieces.

Helen DeWitt


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I wish you wouldn't say the first thing that comes into your head, Ludo. There is an obvious difference between someone who works within the technical limitations of his time which are beyond his control and someone who accepts without thinking limitations which are entirely within his own power to set aside.

Helen DeWitt


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I got home and I thought I should stop leading so aimless an existence. It is harder than you might think to stop leading an existence,

Helen DeWitt


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The master swordsman isn't interested in killing people. He only wants to perfect his art.

Helen DeWitt


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In her excitement at the idea of just walking out the door she had walked out the door without stopping to practice and without even her sheet music, and now she had nothing to play from and nothing prepared.

Some people might have been daunted by this setback. The Konigsbergs faced musical catastrophe on a daily basis,

Helen DeWitt


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