"Not Hercules could have knock'd out his brains, for he had none."
-- Shakespeare
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"--a strange complaint to come from
the mouths of people who have had to live.
-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar"
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
-- Mark Twain
At once it struck me what quality went to form a man of achievement,
especially in literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously
-- I mean negative capability, that is, when a man is capable of being
in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching
after fact and reason.
-- John Keats
In the plot, people came to the land; the land loved them; they worked and
struggled and had lots of children. There was a Frenchman who talked funny
and a greenhorn from England who was a fancy-pants but when it came to the
crunch he was all courage. Those novels would make you retch.
-- Canadian novelist Robertson Davies, on the generic Canadian
novel.