A bad review is even less important than whether it is raining in Patagonia.
--
Quoted in The Times (6 July 1989).Iris Murdoch
The main point is, did God tell him to make a boat, or did Noah just use his captain common sense? Cause there are a number of us, if we were somewhere where it was raining and raining and raining and raining and raining and raining and raining and raining, and we had a big pile of wood, some of us might put two and two together and go, "I'm gonna make a bloody boat!" Others might go, "I'm gonna make a hairdresser's", "I'm gonna build a monkey emporium.", "I'm gonna build a big pair of wooden shoes, that would fit a giant." ... But he made a boat. Oh, he was quite sensible! And what did he put on the boat? His family. What else? Animals. Which animals? Any he could find. Did he put two of every animal in the world on the boat? No! How can I be so sure? Try it!
Eddie Izzard
"A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior" in Language, 35, No. 1 (1959), 26-58. Summation by Noam Chomsky: Rereading this review after eight years, I find little of substance that I would change if I were to write it today. I am not aware of any theoretical or experimental work that challenges its conclusions; nor, so far as I know, has there been any attempt to meet the criticisms that are raised in the review or to show that they are erroneous or ill-founded.
Noam Chomsky
When you review an exhibition of paintings you don't compose a painting about it, when you review a film you don't make a film about it and when you review a new CD you don't make a little CD about it. But when you review a prose-narrative then you write a prose-narrative about that prose-narrative and those who write the secondary prose-narrative, let's face it, must have once had dreams of writing the primary prose-narrative. And so there is a kind of hierarchy of envy and all those other things.
Martin Amis
"Beck's bass player (Justin Meldal-Johnsen) suggested I do a cover of Slayer's 'Raining Blood," she says applying strawberry lip balm with her pinkie. "I was reading about what was going on in Afghanistan--the way women were being oppressed, the destruction of religious statues. And when i heard that song, i just imagined a huge juicy vagina coming out of the sky, raining blood over all those racist, misogynist f**kers."
Tori Amos
"I’m still not sure what went wrong with the site, so I’ll just do what I always do in these situations and assume it was a causality casualty from war with an alternate timeline. Rolling with that assumption on all of life’s little problems can give you a terrific perspective on things. Y’know? “Augh, f**k. It’s raining!” becomes, “Huh, it’s raining,” and then with a bemused nod, “Typical 31st century Mega-Etruscan tactic. ”And then when your friends look at you weird, you can give them a pitying gaze, clutch their heads to your bosom, and lament that they too have been affected by the wars. Something like, “Oh, you poor dear. You’ve no memory of what never shall be.” I don’t have many friends anymore. Not since the war took them."
Brian Clevinger
Murdoch, Iris
Murdoch, Rupert
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