mark > Books: he-said-she-said‎ (37)

"...without Tyrion Lannister you would have to start the show again, because he is the epitome of the story's moral scope; and anyway he is us, bright enough to see the world's evil but not strong enough to change it. His big head is the symbol of his comprehension, and his little body the symbol of his incapacity to act upon it. For all his cleverness, there are times when only a quirk in the script can save him. Real life could kill the dwarf, but the show couldn't. So finally Game of Thrones stands revealed as a crowd pleaser. To despise that, you have to imagine you aren't part of the crowd. But you are: the lesson that the twentieth century should have taught all intellectuals. Now it is a different century, and they must go on being taught."

"My colleagues weren't just stupid and petty. They were shilling for the rich and sucking up to tyrants, teaming up to squelch dissent, keeping the world, and particularly rich America, isolated from desperate emergencies.

Working for the eXile made me realize that right and wrong really do still exist, that the struggle between good and evil hadn't been phased out of existence. The fundamental things really did apply, as time goes by. All the rights that I'd enjoyed growing up - free speech, the rule of law - they were all tenuous and fragile, constantly in danger of being taken away. And everybody, even people working in professions as seemingly stupid and inane as newspaper writing, was playing a part in determining whether we kept them or lost them."

Under the spell of caste, the [baseball] majors, like society itself, were willing to forgo their own advancement and glory, and resulting profits, if these came at the hands of someone seen as subordinate.

 What I particularly loved:

 What I didn't love so much/food for thought:

 Great quotes:

Democracy is an interesting, even laudable, notion and there is no question but that when compared to Communism, which is too dull, or Fascism, whi

Democracy is an interesting, even laudable, notion and there is no question but that when compared to Communism, which is too dull, or Fascism, which is too exciting, it emerges as the most palatable form of government. This is not to say that it is without its drawbacks - chief among them being its regrettable tendency to encourage people in the belief that all men are created equal.

People (a group that in my opinion has always attracted an undue amount of attention) have often been likened to snowflakes. This analogy is meant to suggest that each is unique - no two alike. This is quite patently not the case. People, even at the current rate of inflation - in fact, people especially at the current rate of inflation - are quite simply a dime a dozen.