Eliot Weinberger quotes

“William Carlos Williams, late in his long life, had a dream: He saw an enormous spiral staircase in empty space, and his father slowly descending toward him. When he reached the bottom, his father walked over, looked him in the eye and said: “You know those poems you're writing? They're no good.””
-- Eliot Weinberger

Source : Eliot Weinberger (2007). “An Elemental Thing”, p.115, New Directions Publishing

#Dream Quotes #Father Quotes #Writing Quotes

“Translation is not appropriation, as is sometimes claimed; it is a form of listening that then changes how you speak.”
-- Eliot Weinberger

Source : Eliot Weinberger (2000). “Anonymous Sources: A Talk on Translators and Translation : Lecture”

#Listening Quotes #Sometimes Quotes #Speak Quotes

“Goodbye, my almost lover. Goodbye, my hopeless dream. I'm trying not to think about you, can't you just let me be? So long, my luckless romance, my back is turned on you. Should've known you'd bring me heartache. Almost lovers always do.”

Source : Song: Almost Lover, Album: One Cell in the Sea, 2007

“My biggest dream to connect people through music has come true. In a world where there are enough reasons to separate us, the Oscars have unified us.”

“Once upon a time, when men and women hurtled through the air on metal wings, when they wore webbed feet and walked on the bottom of the sea, learning the speech of whales and the songs of the dolphins, when pearly-fleshed and jewelled apparitions of Texan herdsmen and houris shimmered in the dusk on Nicaraguan hillsides, when folk in Norway and Tasmania in dead of winter could dream of fresh strawberries, dates, guavas and passion fruits and find them spread next morning on their tables, there was a woman who was largely irrelevant, and therefore happy.”

Source : FaceBook post by A.S. Byatt from Aug 27, 2011

“Having a dream, living that dream, losing that dream, dreaming again and then having that dream come true again is one of the greatest feelings ever because I`m stronger.”

“When I cannot understand my Father's leading, And it seems to be but hard and cruel fate, Still I hear that gentle whisper ever pleading, God is working, God is faithful-Only wait.”

“As my poor father used to say In 1963, Once people start on all this Art Goodbye, moralitee! And what my father used to say Is good enough for me.”

Source : Ballads for Broadbrows (1930) "Lines for a Worthy Person"

“Nature, not content with denying him the ability to think, has endowed him with the ability to write.”

“It came about as follows: over the years when I was involved in dianetics, I wrote the beginnings of many stories. I would get an idea, and then write the beginning, and then never touch it again.”

“Science fiction is a field of writing where, month after month, every printed word implies to hundreds of thousands of people: 'There is change. Look, today's fantastic story is tomorrow's fact.”

“The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite. Without this, it is impossible to accumulate, within the allotted span, enough experience of eating to have anything worth setting down.”