As a scholar [Allan Bloom] intends to enlighten us, and as a writer he has learned from Aristophanes and other models that enlightenment should also be enjoyable. To me, this is not the book of a professor, but that of a thinker who is willing to take the risks more frequently taken by writers. It is risky in a book of ideas to speak in ones own voice, but it reminds us that the sources of the truest truths are inevitably profoundly personal. Academics, even those describing themselves as existentialists, very seldom offer themselves publicly and frankly as individuals, as persons.
--
p. 12Saul Bellow
You will want a book which contains not man's thoughts, but God's not a book that may amuse you, but a book that can save you not even a book that can instruct you, but a book on which you can venture an eternity not only a book which can give relief to your spirit, but redemption to your soul a book which contains salvation, and conveys it to you, one which shall at once be the Saviour's book and the sinner's.
John Selden
Now my education, life and consciousness are talked about by those who cannot understand what I wrote, what I think, what is my life. They make me up from their subjective imagination and attack me publicly as well as secretly. Because my novels completely obscure my behaviour and ideas, and result in a lot of misunderstandings, my name is related to nihilism or humanism, although I have written a book of over three hundred pages to explain my ideas (this book is very easy to understand and without a metaphysical term). Those who talk about me never read it. They judged my ideas according to one of my short stories, then deduced a variety of strange conclusions and decided which doctrine I belong to. I have been caught in this predicament all these years and cannot get rid of it...
Ba Jin
Some years ago, I wrote a book called The Emperor's New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calculations. So we are not exactly computers. There's something else going on and the question of what this something else was would depend on some detailed physics and so I needed chapters in that book, which describes the physics as it is understood today. Well anyway, this book was written and various people commented to me and they said perhaps I could use this book for a course Physics for Poets or whatever it is if it didn't have all that contentious stuff about the mind in that. So I thought, well, that doesn't sound too hard, all I'll do is get out the scissor out and snip out all the bits, which have something to do with the mind. The trouble is that if I did that and I actually didn't do it the whole book fell to pieces really because the whole driving force behind the book was this quest to find out what could it be that constitutes consciousness in the physical world as we know it or as we hope to know it in future
Roger Penrose
Homo Sapiens wouldn't have made it, and everything would be different! Television would be you know, Book of the Month club on television would be:
Neanderthal presenter: "And now we have the professor uh whaddayou think of this book?"
Neanderthal professor: "Wha' ?"
Presenter: "What do you think of this book, in a critical way?"
Professor: "It's all right "
Presenter: "There you have it. It's all right!"Eddie Izzard
Very broadly, I think one writes and rewrites the same book. I lead a character from book to book, I continue along with the same ideas. Only the angle of vision, the method, the lighting, change.
Francoise Sagan
Bellow, Saul
Bellucci, Monica
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z