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Why should a blacksmith put his hands in the fire if he has tongs?

Alexander Theroux

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Alexander Theroux
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: August 17
Novelist
Poet
Medford
Massachusetts
Alexander Louis Theroux
Tongs
Blacksmith
Blacksmiths
Burning
Fire
Hands

More quotes by Alexander Theroux

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Nothing is more subtly destructive than a closed circle of artists feeding on one another. Envy grows from insignificant differences between people, not from overwhelming inequalities... it was envy that forced them to emulate each other, not esteem.
Alexander Theroux
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The parrot holds its food for prim consumption as daintily as any debutante, [with] a predilection for pot roast, hashed-brown potatoes, duck skin, butter, hoisin sauce, sesame seed oil, bananas and human thumb.
Alexander Theroux
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Being natural is one of the most irritating poses I know in people.
Alexander Theroux
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Artists are never complete people. But if it's art that completes them, then what is taken away?
Alexander Theroux
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Nothing is quite as bad as being without privacy and lonely at the same time.
Alexander Theroux
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Will I have to use a dictionary to read your book? asked Mrs. Dodypol. It depends, says I, how much you used the dictionary before you read it.
Alexander Theroux
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Yellow is vagueness and luminousness, both.
Alexander Theroux
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One's style holds one, thankfully, at bay from the enemies of it but not from the stupid crucifixions by those who must willfully misunderstand it.
Alexander Theroux
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Where there is no style, there is in effect no point of view. There is, essentially, no anger, no conviction, no self. Style is opinion, hung washing, the caliber of a bullet, teething beads.
Alexander Theroux
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I hate injustice, I despise inequity, I condemn hypocrisy, I abhor the lack of reason.
Alexander Theroux
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The man who has faith in logic is always cuckolded by reality.
Alexander Theroux
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There is no loneliness like that of a failed marriage.
Alexander Theroux
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Book-publishing is all about politics. Agents, editors, which books will be puffed, which ignored, etc.
Alexander Theroux
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Brent Berlin and Paul Kay in Basic Color Terms demonstrate exhaustively and empirically, the very simple thesis that anywhere in the world, as a language develops and acquires names for color, the colors always enter in the same order. The most primitive are black and white. Then red. Then either green or yellow.
Alexander Theroux
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I kneel to my Lord because I am such a failure. I pray, I hope, I look to the Gospels.
Alexander Theroux
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Reviewing books is all about coziness. It is all of it a kind of caucus race. Women review women, Jewish writers review and praise Jewish writers, blacks review blacks, etc.
Alexander Theroux
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The ears, which master the face of a dunce, are that part of the head which most publishes stupidity.
Alexander Theroux
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A lover is never a completely self-reliant person viewing the world through his own eyes, but a hostage to a certain delusion.
Alexander Theroux
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Hypocrisy is the essence of snobbery, but all snobbery is about the problem of belonging.
Alexander Theroux
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Ordinary persons, he said, smiling, found no differences between men. The artist found them all.
Alexander Theroux