All of us literary nerds are familiar with the name, “Virginia Woolf.” We have also heard that we are supposed to fear her, and not simply because of her name, but because of her tenacity to stand up against the patriarchal mind, and also the mental paradigms of her own time.
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English writer, considered one of the most important modernist 20th century authors and also a pioneer in the use of stream of consciousness as a narrative device.
Here are the six best quotes we could muster:
‘Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.’
“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to matter very much, do they?”
“Books are the mirrors of the soul.”
“I enjoy almost everything. Yet I have some restless searcher in me.”
“I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.”
“In solitude we give passionate attention to our lives, to our memories, to details around us.”
Quote by Ray Bradbury. Used for Mind on Fire Books
I fell in love with the book from the first line: “It was a pleasure to burn.” There aren’t many books that have pulled me in so deeply with just a few words but this was one of them. With those six simple words the author, Ray Bradbury, conveys Montag’s obvious satisfaction with his life as a fireman. The exposition of this novel depicts a dystopian future where the vast majority of citizens live in numb contentment.
I could go on and on about this lovely short novel, but I will save that for another post. Here I would just like to share about 8 of the best quotes from the book that I think every reader should know.
1. “It was a pleasure to burn.”
2. “He was not happy. He was not happy. He said the words to himself. He recognized this as the true state of affairs. He wore his happiness like a mask and the girl had run off across the lawn with the mask and there was no way of going to knock on her door and ask for it back.”
3. “We need not to be let alone. We need to be really bothered once in a while. How long is it since you were really bothered? About something important, about something real?”
4. “There must be something in books, things we can’t imagine, to make a woman stay in a burning house; there must be something there. You don’t stay for nothing.”
5. “A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Burn it. Take the shot from the weapon.”
6. “What is there about fire that’s so lovely? No matter what age we are, what draws us to it?’ Beatty blew out the flame and lit it again. ‘It’s perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did.”
There are books to remind us what asses and fools we are. Used for Mind on Fire Books
7. “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.”
8. “If you hide your ignorance, no one will hit you and you’ll never learn.”
9. “We cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over; so in a series of kindnesses there is at last one which makes the heart run over.”
10. “Don’t ask for guarantees. And don’t look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.”
11. “The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.”
12. “The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.”
13. “I don’t talk things, sir. I talk the meaning of things.”
14. “See the world. It’s more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask for no guarantees, ask for no security.”
A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. Used for Mind on Fire Books
And last but not least:
15. “Stuff your eyes with wonder,’ he said, ‘live as if you’d drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It’s more fantastic that any dream made or paid for in factories. Ask no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away. To hell with that,’ he said, ‘shake the tree and knock the great sloth down on his ass.”
Also, were you aware that HBO recently adapted a film version of this book? I must admit that I actually enjoyed the film (don’t hate me.) It was rather strange, just as strange as the book was. The film had it’s expected differences from the book, but honestly, I liked how they were able to keep me entertained since I already knew how the book ended. If you ever find yourself chilling at home on a cold evening, throw on that film adaptation of “Fahrenheit 451,” and hopefully it will entertain you as much as it did me.
Getting Smarter
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Today we launch our first multi-author fiction anthology exploring three disturbing tales about the nature of man and the true nature of what lies inside of him.
The cost is only 2.99, so that’s one dollar a story and all of our writers are indie horror authors. Available on all major platforms.
Mad Men is a collection of three disturbing horror shorts from authors living in the Midwest. The themes explored in this collection range from man versus self, man versus man, and man versus creature.
We start with Matt’s tale, a thought-provoking thriller which causes the reader to question his reality and what he fears within himself. The second tale explores the grotesque juxtaposed with beautiful nature, where the ending unfolds into a horrific dream, waking in even more terrible pain. The third tale is by seasoned horror writer, A.R. Braun – and his diabolical creatures never disappoint! A.R. Braun’s goal is to be on the banned book list; we think this tale may just be evil enough to be considered. A must read before it does get banned!
Mainstream Horror Shorts don’t always satisfy us in the way they should. They don’t open conversations about what it is that we fear or why we fear such things, they focus mainly on pop culture and gore. The writers in this anthology understand the need for literate horror, opening discussions of man’s psyche. When these writers set out to tell a story, they are less interested in conveying fear and more interested in wonder, the sublime, and the infinite strangeness that drives all man and woman. Highly recommended for tweens, teens, and adults.
As one of the founding fathers of science fiction, Herbert George Wells certainly had a lot to say about the human race. From mankind’s fondness for war to our place in the universe, Wells certainly didn’t shy away from sharing his opinions. In honor of what would have been his 154th birthday, here are a few of H.G. Wells’s greatest hits.
1. ON WAR
“If we don’t end war, war will end us.”
—From Things to Come (1936)
John F. Kennedy’s speechwriters later adapted the phrase for his 1961 address to the United Nations: “The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.”
Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946) was an English writer. He was prolific in many genres, writing dozens of novels, short stories, and works of social commentary, satire, biography, and autobiography, and even including two books on recreational war games. He is now best remembered for his science fiction novels and is often called a “father of science fiction”, along with Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback.During his own lifetime, however, he was most prominent as a forward-looking, even prophetic social critic who devoted his literary talents to the development of a progressive vision on a global scale. A futurist, he wrote a number of utopian works and foresaw the advent of aircraft, tanks, space travel, nuclear weapons, satellite television and something resembling the World Wide Web. His science fiction imagined time travel, alien invasion, invisibility, and biological engineering.
Agatha Christie was born 15 September 1890, and died 12 January 1976.
Agatha Christie was a British crime writer of novels, short stories, and plays. She is best remembered for her 66 detective novels featuring Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Her works include And Then There Were None, Murder on the Orient Express, Death on the Nile.
Agatha Christie. Mind on Fire Books
Christie is believed to be the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly four billion copies. The other 10 best-selling authors are featured here. Christie wrote in her library at Greenway House.
Here are 10 of her most used quotes:
Very few of us are what we seem.
There was a moment when I changed from an amateur to a professional. I assumed the burden of a profession, which is to write even when you don’t want to, don’t much like what you’re writing, and aren’t writing particularly well.
Imagination is a good servant, and a bad master.
Crime is terribly revealing. Try and vary your methods as you will, your tastes, your habits, your attitude of mind, and your soul is revealed by your actions.
I specialise in murders of quiet, domestic interest.
I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.
The best time to plan a book is while you’re doing the dishes.
I’ve always believed in writing without a collaborator, because where two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worry and only half the royalties.
An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her.
Where large sums of money are concerned, it is advisable to trust nobody.
Leo Tolstoy was born 9 September 1828, and died 20 November 1910.
Leo Tolstoy was a Russian writer of novels, short stories, plays and essays. He is best known for War and Peace, Anna Karenina, and The Death of Ivan Ilyich. His ideas on non-violent resistance, in such works as The Kingdom of God Is Within You, had an impact on Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.
Leo Tolstoy was born 9 September 1828, and died 20 November 1910. Mind on Fire Books
Tolstoy Quotes
Art lifts man from his personal life into the universal life.
Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly.
The greater the state, the more wrong and cruel its patriotism, and the greater is the sum of suffering upon which its power is founded.
Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can’t eat it.
Music is the shorthand of emotion.
All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.
Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.
Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul, and shows to people these secrets which are common to all.
Freethinkers are those who are willing to use their minds without prejudice and without fearing to understand things that clash with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking.
Born August 5, 1850, Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer. He is considered one of the fathers of the modern short story. He wrote more than 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of poetry.
It is with Le Gaulois in 1883 that de Maupassant diverted himself from a career as a humorous short story writer and begins on a second career that would make him a horror writer to stand beside Edgar Allan Poe. The stories in de Maupassant’s first nine volumes often speak of insanity, and it becomes clear that the author had a fascination with mental illness that grew with time, for lunacy is often used by de Maupassant as a plot devise.
De Maupassant’s masterpiece is “The Horla”(1886). Of all the stories he wrote this single tale is most often anthologized and was even filmed, though under the title of a different story, in MGM’s Diary of a Mad Man (1963) with Vincent Price. H. P. Lovecraft felt of stories describing alien possession “this tense narrative is perhaps without peer in its particular department.” In “Diary of a Mad Man” we read a judge’s diary revealing how he was obsessed with killing, then murders a little boy and a fisherman.
Photo by Justin Schuler. Graphic design by Mind on Fire Books.
Here are 10 quotes attributed to this writer.
Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.
There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! How you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.
I have come to the conclusion that the bed comprehends our whole life; for we were born in it, we live in it, and we shall die in it.
Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship’s captain has to avoid a shipwreck.
It is better to be unhappy in love than unhappy in marriage, but some people manage to be both.
Solitude is dangerous for active minds. We need men who can think and can talk, around us. When we are alone for a long time, we people space with phantoms.
Love always has its price, come whence it may.
The great artists are those who impose their personal vision upon humanity.
There are in France some fifty thousand young men of good birth and fairly well off who are encouraged to live a life of complete idleness. They must either cease to exist or must come to see that there can be no happiness, no health even, without regular daily labor of some sort.
Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.
Elevate My Thoughts
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Alexandre Dumas was born 24 July 1802, and died 5 December 1870.
12 Quotes
Learning does not make one learned: there are those who have knowledge and those who have understanding. The first requires memory and the second philosophy.
One’s work may be finished someday, but one’s education never.
Infatuated, half through conceit, half through love of my art, I achieve the impossible working as no one else ever works.
There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.
There are two distinct sorts of ideas: Those that proceed from the head and those that emanate from the heart.
In business, sir, one has no friends, only correspondents.
Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.
As a general rule…people ask for advice only in order not to follow it; or if they do follow it, in order to have someone to blame for giving it.
The difference between treason and patriotism is only a matter of dates.
There are two ways of seeing: with the body and with the soul. The body’s sight can sometimes forget, but the soul remembers forever.
True love always makes a man better, no matter what woman inspires it.
Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels bound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum, even when they are gilded.
Alexandre Dumas literary birthday. Mind on Fire Books post.
Transcending
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