Joan Nestle famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Once upon a time, a historian told me that the most important choice a new historian could make was of his or her specialist subject. Most of the good stuff was far too overcrowded, so you had to pick about in the exotic and extinct. His recommendations were the Picts or the Minoans, because hardly anything was known about them and you could spend a happy lifetime of speculation.
History is not a catalogue but...a convincing version of events.
History is the great propagator of doubt.
All other forms of history - economic history, social history, psychological history, above all sociology - seem to me history with the history left out.
We, while noting many things amiss about Victorian society, more often sense them judging us.
A land without ruins is a land without memories - a land without memories is a land without history.
First Conjuration Addressed to Emperor Lucifer. Emperor Lucifer, Master and Prince of Rebellious Spirits, I adjure thee to leave thine abode, in what-ever quarter of the world it may be situated and come hither to communicate with me.
Priests might divide the world into good and bad. In battle there was strong and weak and nothing else.
I thought religion would make me live with my head in the clouds, but as often as not, it grounds me in this world.
I thought how lovely and how strange a river is...

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