To deny that Shakespeare’s plays could have been written by a man of relatively humble background is, after all, to deny the very possibility of genius itself—a sentiment increasingly attractive in a democratic culture where few harsh realities are so unpalatable as that of human inequality. The mere existence of a Shakespeare is a mortal […]
Even when awake, southern Indians seem to me drowsy, lifeless, absent. – The late French film-maker Louis Malle in the documentary Phantom India
After all the years abroad, he [Imre Galambos] is good at comparing different cultures. He taught both Chinese and American students, and he tells me that Americans don’t have the same relationship to the written word that he noticed among the Chinese. For the Chinese, writing seemed to be the root of their cultural identity, […]
And how I despise the average citizen, who settles himself down upon one tiny spot of land with one asinine woman, to breed and stew and rot in that condition unto his life’s end. And always with the same woman! I simply cannot believe that any man in his senses would put up with just […]
‘Tis easy to be a friend to the prosperous, for it pays; ’tis not hard to be a friend to the poor, for ye get puffed up by gratitude and have your picture printed standing in front of a tenement with a scuttle of coal and an orphan in each hand. But it strains the […]
We should just believe in hope and trust and love and that’s all is going to get us through to everything. – Bollywood starlet Sonam Kapoor at a candlelight vigil near German Bakery for the victims of the February 13 blast. Source: DNA