Quote

I read passionately with a need to know and see the act of reading as an act of cognition and not simply a means of passing time.

Alexander Theroux

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Alexander Theroux
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: August 17
Novelist
Poet
Medford
Massachusetts
Alexander Louis Theroux
Need
Cognition
Mean
Passionately
Needs
Passings
Time
Passing
Simply
Reading
Read
Means

More quotes by Alexander Theroux

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There is no loneliness like that of a failed marriage.
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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Faculty Meetings are held whenever the need to show off is combined with the imperative of accomplishing nothing.
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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Ordinary persons, he said, smiling, found no differences between men. The artist found them all.
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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Nothing is quite as bad as being without privacy and lonely at the same time.
Alexander Theroux
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If on a friend’s bookshelf You cannot find Joyce or Sterne Cervantes, Rabelais, or Burton, You are in danger, face the fact, So kick him first or punch him hard And from him hide behind a curtain.
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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Being natural is one of the most irritating poses I know in people.
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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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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The urge for Chinese food is always unpredictable: famous for no occasion, standard fare for no holiday, and the constant as to demand is either whim, the needy plebiscite of instantly famished drunks, or pregnancy.
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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September: it was the most beautiful of words, he’d always felt, evoking orange-flowers, swallows, and regret.
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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I thought... their elegance... lies not so much in their clothes as in their bodies, and their bodies have received it, and continue to unceasingly receive it, from their souls, which are just like yours, lovely Simonetta.
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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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