Allan Massie famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

We are responsible for actions performed in response to circumstances for which we are not responsible.
-- Allan Massie

#Action #Responsible #Circumstances
Do you know what a soldier is, young man? He's the chap who makes it possible for civilized folk to despise war.
-- Allan Massie

#War #Men #Soldier
Blunders are an inescapable feature of war, because choice in military affairs lies generally between the bad and the worse.
-- Allan Massie

#Military #War #Lying
All a writer's characters are imaginary, no matter whether they are based on real people or not. They are people as one imagines them to be.
-- Allan Massie

#Real #Character #People
It is one of the many merits of this admirable biography of Proust's mother that it invites one to return to the novel with perhaps a fuller understanding of Proust's heredity, hinterland, and upbringing. . . . This fascinating book is full of interesting social and cultural observation, of information about French Jewish life, the position of Jews in society and, of course, the Dreyfus case. But it is essentially a study of one of the most remarkable and fruitful of mother-son relationships. As such it is a book that every Proustian will want to read.
-- Allan Massie

#Mother #Book #Son
Today the crime novelist has one advantage denied to writers of 'straight' or 'literary' novels. Unlike them he can range over all levels of society, for crime can easily breach the barriers that exist in our stratified society. Because of these barriers the modern literary novel, unlike its 19th-century predecessors, is often confined to the horizontal, dealing only with one class. But crime runs through society from top to bottom, and so the crime novelist can present a fuller picture of the way we live now.
-- Allan Massie

#Running #Book #Class

How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.
My Dear Son... remember that you are accountable to your Maker for all your words and actions.
Good actions are a guard against the blows of adversity.
Without knowledge action is useless and knowledge without action is futile.
Dreams grow holy put in action; work grows fair through starry dreaming, But where each flows on unmingling, both are fruitless and in vain.
Once you are my friend, I am responsible for you.
Just because you're living in blissful oblivion doesn't mean you're not responsible.
I couldn't see how we could seriously struggle without having a strong sense of collectivity, without being responsible FOR each other and TO each other.
Not a sentence or a word is independent of the circumstances under which it is uttered.
You may not control life's circumstances, but getting to be the author of your life means getting to control what you do with them.

Allan Massie famous quotes

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