Writers are not mere copyists of language; they are polishers, embellishers, perfecters. They spend hours getting the timing right so that what they write sounds completely unrehearsed. Louis Menand More Quotes by Louis Menand More Quotes From Louis Menand Quotable quotes are coins rubbed smooth by circulation. Louis Menand smooth coins circulation We have much wisdom to gain by learning to understand other people's cultures and permitting ourselves to accept that there is more than one version of reality. Louis Menand culture reality people It’s all in the genes”: an explanation for the way things are that does not threaten the way things are. Why should someone feel unhappy or engage in antisocial behavior when that person is living in the freest and most prosperous nation on earth? It can’t be the system! There must be a flaw in the wiring somewhere. Louis Menand unhappy earth doe I think in general there's no point in going into a field like English literature if you're not going to have fun with it. Louis Menand literature fun thinking Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark; professionals built the Titanic. Never, btw, ask that androgynous paper clip anything. S/he is just a stooge for management, leading you down more rabbit holes of options for things called Wizards, Macros, Templates, and Cascading Style Sheets. Louis Menand ark style trying Just in higher education alone, more people go to college now, by enormous amounts, than went to college in the '50's and '60's. So that represents a whole new literate public that's a consumer of literature, of news, of print, of, you know, opinion. And that's a bigger audience and much more diverse audience than it used to be. Louis Menand news college people The short story is not as restrictive as the sonnet, but, of all the literary forms, it is possibly the most single-minded. ...at the end there has to be the literary equivalent of the magician's puff of smoke, an outcome that is both startling and anticipated. Louis Menand puff outcomes stories Harvard has something that manages, I think, to provide a lot of options for students, but still fairly prescriptive about the kinds of subjects that the courses ought to cover. Louis Menand kind students thinking Most Americans who made it past the fourth grade have a pretty good idea who Thurgood Marshall, Rosa Parks, and Martin Luther King, Jr., were. Not many Americans have even heard of Alice Paul, Howard W. Smith, and Martha Griffiths. But they played almost as big a role in the history of women’s rights as Marshall and King played in the history of civil rights for African-Americans. They gave women the handle to the door to economic opportunity, and nearly all the gains women have made in that sphere since the nineteen-sixties were made because of what they did. Louis Menand kings opportunity past Literature is being taught as though it were only political medicine or political poison-a view that is not only illiberal but illiterate. Louis Menand medicine political views The way universities operate is the decision about what students need for the degree are... is the decision made by the faculty. Louis Menand degrees decision needs Public circulation is what renders something a quotation. It's quotable because it's been quoted, and its having been quoted gives it authority. Louis Menand circulation authority giving If time is a staircase, reality is a Slinky. Decades can be parsed. Television, frequently accused of destabilizing life, is actually what stitches the segments together. Louis Menand slinkies staircases reality Diminished circumstances had no effect on his sense of what was honorable: after The Spectator sent him a check for a piece it had accepted but was unable to run for a lack of space, he refused to write for the magazine again. Louis Menand space writing running Obviously input is helpful to faculty in trying to come up with a curriculum, but ultimately it's the faculty's job to know what students need to know. Make a decision about it and present it. Louis Menand decision trying jobs There are limits, after all, to the idea of limits. Louis Menand limits ideas A person whose financial requirements are modest and whose curiosity, skepticism, and indifference to reputation are outsized is a person at risk of becoming a journalist. Louis Menand requirements risk curiosity The difficulty with coming up with a curriculum is mainly that faculty aren't trained to think in terms of general education. They're trained to think in terms of their own discipline, or their specialty. Louis Menand curriculum discipline thinking Getting faculties to come to a consensus about something that they've never really thought about or had to worry about in their careers before can be a rather slow process and a long process, it certainly was the case at Harvard, and it's the case with most of the general education curricula that I know of, it takes four or five years just to get everybody on board with one idea. Louis Menand careers years ideas One of the oddities about responses that you get to what you write, if you get a fair number of them, is that people have very different ideas of what you said. Louis Menand oddities writing ideas
