Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Different though the sexes are, they inter-mix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above.

Books from Alibris: Virginia Woolf

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951)

Humor is not a mood but a way of looking at the world. So if it is correct to say that humor was stamped out in Nazi Germany, that does not mean that people were not in good spirits, or anything of that sort, but something much deeper and more important.

Books from Alibris: Ludwig Wittgenstein

Owen Wister (1960-1938)

When you can't have what you choose, you just choose what you have.

Books from Alibris: Owen Wister

Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

Books from Alibris: Alfred North Whitehead

Fay Weldon (1931-)

The New Women! I could barely recognize them as being of the same sex as myself, their buttocks arrogant in tight jeans, openly inviting, breasts falling free and shameless and feeling no apparent obligation to smile, look pleasant or keep their voices low. And how they live! Just look at them to know how! If a man doesn't bring them to orgasm, they look for another who does. If by mistake they fall pregnant, they abort by vacuum aspiration. If they don't like the food, they push the plate away. If the job doesn't suit them, they hand in their notice. They are satiated by everything, hungry for nothing. They are what I wanted to be; they are what I worked for them to be: and now I see them, I hate them.

Books from Alibris: Fay Weldon

Patricia Warren (1936-)

What is so special about Montana that one of its daughters who is a living icon repeatedly returns to teach, inspire, and speak out against injustice? Patricia Nell Warren, like many others, sees Montana as possibly the "last best place" in America. This best selling author grew up among Montana cowboys, worked as an editor for Reader's Digest for 22 years, and in 1974 completed the most famous book in gay literature, The Front Runner, having sold over 10 million copies in ten languages. Winner of numerous awards, including the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy Hall of Fame, her other titles include Harlan's Race, Billy's Boy, The Fancy Dancer, and One Is the Sun.

Patricia Nell Warren speaks of Montana and its legacy like a mother speaking proudly of her growing child. In a two-part series, we will examine the many faces of the author, whose life is like the Montana Big Sky. While interviewing her from her Los Angeles offices, you'd swear she is five people wrapped into one. Not only is she a renowned author, but also a publisher, an advocate for gay teens, a voice of the future for aging gays, an outspoken leader against homophobia and injustice in general. Yet, hiding behind that dynamic exterior lies a spiritual teacher for any with an open mind and an open heart. In other words, she's a walking miracle wrapped inside a suit of armor. She is no Don Quixote charging at windmills. When Patricia Nell Warren charges forth it is not the sound of hoofbeats one hears, but the beat of one's own heart.

Perhaps it is her own Native American roots, growing up on a ranch in Deer Lodge, Montana, where she first saw the best in humanity. Tiny Deer Lodge, she loves to tell, once served as a trading center among Montana's First Nation people as well as its metis (mixed bloods). It was the metis who fostered the tradition of tolerance in the area. Then came white trappers who understood and respected the Native and mixed-blood tradition of esteeming all traders. For a tribe could suffer or flourish depending on whether traders ferried needed supplies around the Big Sky's river networks. Warren recognizes that Montana's legendary attitude about "live and let live" stems from these Native roots. It isn't until missionaries invaded the area that we begin to find discord and judgment separating "savage" from "the saved." - [Adapted from OutSpoken]

Books from Alibris: Patricia Warren

Alice Walker (1944-)

The trouble with our people is as soon as they got out of slavery they didn't want to give the white man nothing else. But the fact is, you got to give em something. Either your money, your land, your woman or your ass.

Books from Alibris: Alice Walker

John Updike (1932-2009)

Quotation

A narrative is like a room on whose walls a number of false doors have been painted; while within the narrative, we have many apparent choices of exit, but when the author leads us to one particular door, we know it is the right one because it opens.

Books

Please browse our Amazon list of titles about John Updike. For rare and hard to find works we recommend our Alibris list of titles about John Updike.

Research

COPAC UK: John Updike
Library of Canada: John Updike
Library of Congress: John Updike
Other Library Catalogs: John Updike

Biographical

John Updike (March 18, 1932 - ) was a novelist and short story author born in Shillington, Pennsylvania. Updike's most famous works are his Rabbit series (Rabbit, Run,Rabbit Redux, Rabbit is Rich, Rabbit at Rest, and Rabbit, Remembered), but this series isn't what made him famous. Updike was well known for his prolific writing, having published about 30 novels and short story collections, as well as some literary criticism. His career is often viewed as an unending series of accomplishments, rather than one great pinnacle. He favors realism in his writing; for instance the opening of Rabbit, Run, spans several pages describing a pick-up basketball game in intricate detail. Most of his novels follow this style at least loosely, and generally feature everyday people in middle America. He on occasion abandons this setting, for instance in The Witches of Eastwick (a novel about witches, later made into a movie of the same name), The Coup (about a fictional Cold War era African dictatorship), and in his most recent work, Claudius and Gertrude (a prelude to the story of Hamlet). His most common themes are probably sex and death, and how they work together. He's a well known and practicing critic, and is often in the center of critical wars of words, including being called one of three stooges by Tom Wolfe ( the other two were John Irving and Norman Mailer). Updike has also been involved in critical duels with Gore Vidal, another author notorious for his criticisms. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on John Updike.]

Books from Alibris: John Updike

Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975)

We have been God-like in our planned breeding of our domesticated plants and animals, but we have been rabbit-like in our unplanned breeding of ourselves.

Books from Alibris: Arnold Joseph Toynbee

Judith Thompson (1954-)

I think theatre has a crucial role to play in the mapping of local and international identities––the playwright must reflect the world around her/him––and that world is constantly shifting. I recently directed a group of children in a presentation of Hamlet's speech "to be or not to be" (for a 6-week enrichment cluster). Instead of a straight up presentation, I asked each child to say "to be or not to be that is the question" in their ancestral language. This began the show. Then, after "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" each child named an illness they had suffered. After "to sleep, perchance to dream" each child told the audience a nightmare they had had" and after the speech was finished, they repeated the ancestral languages. It was a huge success––the immigrant parents were happy to see their place of origin recognized.

Books from Alibris: Judith Thompson

Charles Taylor (1931-)

"Charles Taylor is without question one of the two or three most important social philosophers in the world today," said Keith Topper, associate professor of communication studies. "Combining a profound moral imagination with acute sensitivity to the diverse ways in which human beings find meaning in their world, he has fundamentally altered the manner in which philosophers, social scientists and many sectors of the educated public think about issues of politics, ethics, religion, secularization, cultural pluralism, human identity and human understanding."

Books from Alibris: Charles Taylor

John Steinbeck (1902-1968)

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

Books from Alibris: John Steinbeck

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

Americans are very friendly and very suspicious, that is what Americans are and that is what always upsets the foreigner, who deals with them, they are so friendly how can they be so suspicious they are so suspicious how can they be so friendly but they just are.

Books from Alibris: Gertrude Stein

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)

Literature that is not the breath of contemporary society, that dares not transmit the pains and fears of that society...loses the confidence of its own people, and its published works are used as wastepaper instead of being read.

Books from Alibris: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Baron Charles Percy (C.P.) Snow (1905-1980)

When you think of the long and gloomy history of man, you will find more hideous crimes have been committed in the name of obedience than have ever been committed in the name of rebellion.

Books from Alibris: C. P. Snow

Georg Simmel (1858-1918)

For the division of labor demands from the individual an ever more one-sided accomplishment, and the greatest advance in a one-sided pursuit only too frequently means dearth to the personality of the individual.

Books from Alibris: Georg Simmel

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a footrule can measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As it is, the political problem remains unsolved.

Books from Alibris: George Bernard Shaw

Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

Books from Alibris: Jean Paul Sartre

George Santayana (1863-1952)

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted, it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in which instinct has learned nothing from experience. from The Life of Reason, Volume 1 (1905)

Books from Alibris: George Santayana

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

Books from Alibris: Bertrand Russell