I beg the reader not to go in search of messages. It is a term that I detest because it distresses me greatly, for it forces on me clothes that are not mine, which in fact belong to a human type that I distrust; the prophet, the soothsayer, the seer. I am none of these; I’m a normal man with a good memory who fell into a maelstrom and got out of it more by luck than by virtue, and who from that time on has preserved a certain curiosity about maelstroms large and small, metaphorical and actual.
--
"The Premise," The Mirror Maker (1986)Primo Levi
If I have eschewed the word prophet, I do not wish to attribute to myself such lofty title at the present time, for whoever is called a prophet now was once called a seer; since a prophet, my son, is properly speaking one who sees distant things through a natural knowledge of all creatures. And it can happen that the prophet bringing about the perfect light of prophecy may make manifest things both human and divine, because this cannot be done otherwise, given that the effects of predicting the future extend far off into time.
or Michel de Nostredame) Nostradamus (Michel de Notredame
Every writer has an ideal reader, I thought, and it was just my good luck that mine wanted to sleep with me.
Michael Chabon
As I search the archives of my memory I seem to discern six types or methods which divide themselves from one another with measurable distinctness. There is the type magisterial or imperative; the type laconic or sententious; the type conversational or homely; the type refined or artificial, smelling of the lamp, verging at times upon preciosity or euphuism; the demonstrative or persuasive; and finally the type tonsorial or agglutinative, so called from the shears and the pastepot which are its implements and emblem.
Benjamin N. Cardozo
When comparing human memory and computer memory it is clear that the human version has two distinct disadvantages. Firstly, as indeed I have experienced myself, due to aging, human memory can exhibit very poor short term recall.
Kevin Warwick
The magician depends for the success of his art upon the credulity of the people. Whatever mystifies, excites curiosity; whatever in turn baffles this curiosity, works the marvelous.
Of course human ignorance is no longer a source of profit to the magician, as it was in the days of the diviner, the oracle, and the soothsayer. Few believe nowadays that the magician claims any supernatural aid. I will scarcely be believed, therefore, when I tell my readers that in a few cities in Italy and Spain in which I have performed hundreds came to see me as a curiosity, impressed with the belief that for the power he gave me I had made a compact with the devil for the delivery of my soul. In these cities I have seen people reverently cross themselves when I was passing…Alexander Herrmann
Levi, Primo
Leviev, Lev
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