Quote

Why, for example, do the great writers use anticipation instead of surprise? Because surprise is merely an instrument of the unusual, whereas anticipation of a consequence enlarges our understanding of what is happening.

Roger Rosenblatt

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Roger Rosenblatt
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: January 1
Journalist
Great
Consequence
Enlarges
Surprise
Anticipation
Merely
Unusual
Writers
Whereas
Instead
Instrument
Example
Happenings
Understanding
Instruments
Use
Happening

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If the sad truth be known, writers, being the misfits we are, probably ought not to belong to families in the first place. We simply are too self-interested, though we may excuse the flaw by calling it 'focused.'
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Children love to be alone because alone is where they know themselves, and where they dream.
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Slum kids die slowly, their lives eroded at so languid a pace that even they would have trouble tracing the disintegration. To the children of war death explodes like a car bomb.
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If you put anger in the writing, then it's like an actor crying on stage. The audience will not cry with the actor and in some way inure itself against the emotion.
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The belief in potential human virtue underlies the whole idea of the Bill of Rights the document is a very tough guardian of that belief.
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The problem with death is absence
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If you need three adjectives to describe something, then you've probably chosen the wrong something.
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Just because the person who criticizes you is an idiot doesn't make him wrong.
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Remote control. Ingenious contradiction of terms. Fits like a handshake. Aims like a gun.
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Anytime you make a person into something other than himself, you make a monster.
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A five-year old is in a pretty good position to assess who is beautiful and who is not. Removed from the confusions of sexuality, he or she can judge a face as a face.
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The trick in foraging for a tooth lost in coffee grounds is not to be misled by the clumps. The only way to be sure is to rub each clump between your thumb and index finger, which makes a mess of your hands.
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For those at home, as well as for those in battle, war is curiously disabling. The mere realization that one's country is at war poisons the bloodstream, creates an incessant mood of worry that infiltrates even the most casual moments.
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A library should be like a pair of open arms.
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The only reason I wanted 'Making Toast' as the title is that it is a simple gesture of moving on. Every morning there's the bread and you make the toast and you start the day.
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If a man spends enough time in a library, he may actually change his mind. I have seen it happen.
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Uncle Scrooge preferred to let the poor die and decrease the surplus population. Scrooge may not have had God on his side, but his arithmetic was impeccable.
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Every writing teacher gives the subliminal message, every time they teach: 'Your life counts for something.' In no other subject that I know of is that message given.
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Death is too much for men to bear, whereas women, who are practiced in bearing the deaths of men before their own and who are alsopracticed in bearing life, take death almost in stride. They go to meet death--that is, they attempt suicide--twice as often as men, though men are more successful because they use surer weapons, like guns.
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What is the difference between grief and mourning? Mourning has company.
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