Stig Dagerman quotes

“How is it possible on the one hand, for example, to behave as if nothing on earth were more important than literature, and on the other fail to see that wherever one looks, people are struggling against hunger and will necessarily consider that the most important thing is what they earn at the end of the month? Because this is where he (the writer) is confronted with a new paradox: while all he wanted was to write for those who are hungry, he now discovers that it is only those who have plenty to eat who have the leisure to take notice of his existence.”
-- Stig Dagerman

Source : Nobel Lecture, www.nobelprize.org. December 07, 2008.

#Struggle Quotes #Writing Quotes #Hands Quotes

“Journalism is the art of coming too late as early as possible. I’ll never master that.”
-- Stig Dagerman

Source : Stig Dagerman (1988). “German autumn”

#Art Quotes #Too Late Quotes #Journalism Quotes

“Life expects of you duties which appear repugnant to you. You must now know that the most important thing is not duties but what permits you to be someone good and just. There are many who will say to you that this is a piece of asocial advice, but you only have to reply to them: When the forms of society are so hard and hostile to life, it is more important to be asocial than inhuman”
-- Stig Dagerman

#Advice Quotes #Important Quotes #Pieces Quotes

“Educational enterprises do not for any length of time remain immune from the struggle of interests for power which is the dominant feature of social life under a class system.”

Source : "Some Notes on Workers' Education" by A. J. Muste, first published in "New International", Volume 2, No. 7 (pp. 225-227), www.marxists.org. December 1935.

“Human curiosity, the urge to know, is a powerful force and is perhaps the best secret weapon of all in the struggle to unravel the workings of the natural world.”

“I suspect that here theists and atheists would agree: Human beings have within them the ability to choose evil or good. We wake up each day facing the age-old struggle of good and evil. In some situations, mental illness clouds our judgment.”

Source : "No, Everything Doesn’t Happen for a Reason" by Adam Hamilton, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 20, 2012.

“It's a really big struggle for me to write a song. Songs take either 30 seconds for me to write or a year or two to piece together, depending on the song and how I'm feeling on any given day. I don't really like to write music at all unless I am completely unbothered by touring.”

“The real struggle for us is for the citizen to cease to be the property of the state.”

“In actual fact the pacifistic-humane idea is perfectly all right perhaps when the highest type of man has previously conquered and subjected the world to an extent that makes him the sole ruler of this earth… Therefore, first struggle and then perhaps pacifism.”

“Mankind has grown strong in eternal struggles and it will only perish through eternal peace.”

“The most difficult and complicated part of the writing process is the beginning.”

“Back in the days when American billboard advertising was in flower [said Hemingway], there were two slogans that I always rated above all others: the old Cremo Cigar ad that proclaimed, Spit Is a Horrid Word-but Worse on the end of Your Cigar, and Drink Schlitz in Brown Bottles and Avoid that Skunk Taste. You don't get creative writing like that any more.”

Source : A. E. Hotchner (2010). “The Good Life According to Hemingway”, p.11, Harper Collins

“He would not stay for me, and who can wonder? He would not stay for me to stand and gaze. I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder, And went with half my life about my ways.”