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| Montage © Roy R. Behrens |
Anthony Powell, Messengers of Day (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978), p. 101—
He planned a practical illustration of the harm alcohol can do. He came into Helgate's sitting room holding a tumbler of neat whiskey in one hand, a piece of liver in the other. Dropping the liver dramatically into the whiskey, he paused for a moment while the meat shrivelled up. "That: he exclaimed, "is what is happening to your liver all the time you drink as you do." Heygate, who was undoubtedly startled by this action, reported himself as replying: "What a shameful waste of liver and whiskey."
Francine du Plessix Gray, in George Plimpton, ed., The Writer’s Chapbook—
We must all struggle against all that is curious, already-seen, fatigued, shopworn. I battle against what my admirable colleague William Gass calls "pissless prose," prose that lacks the muscle, the physicality, the gait of a good horse, for pissless prose is bodiless and has no soul. Of course this holds equally true for fiction as for essays, reporting, a letter to a friend, a book review, a decent contribution to art criticism—in sum I search for language in which faith intertwines with desire, faith that we can recapture, with erotic accuracy, that treasured memory or vision which is the object of our desire. I'm keen on the word "voluptuous," a word too seldom heard in this society founded on puritanical principles. I think back to a phrase of Julia Kristeva's, the most interesting feminist thinker of our time, who speaks of "the voluptuousness of family life." I would apply the same phrase to the prose I most admire, prose I can caress and nuture and linger on, diction which is nourished by the deep intimacy of familiar detail, and yet is constantly renewed by the force of the writer's love and fidelity to language.
Edmund Fuller, 2500 Anecdotes for All Occasions (New York: Crown , 1943)—
[Thomas] Edison was very proud. He enjoyed showing visitors around his property, pointing out the various laborsaving devices. At one point it was necessary to pass through a turnstile in order to take the main path back to the house. Considerable effort was needed to move the turnstile. A guest asked Edison why it was that, with all the other clever gadgets around, he had such a heavy turnstile. Edison replied , "Well, you see, everyone who pushes the turnstile around pumps eight gallons of water into the tank on my roof."
