Clive Davis

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In my own recent life in Washington, I have been bombarded with obscene and menacing phone calls from Muslims, promising to punish my family because I do not support a campaign of lies and hatred and violence against democratic Denmark. But when  my wife accidentally left a large amount of cash on the backseat of a taxi, the Sudanese cab driver went to a good deal of trouble and expense to work out whose property this was, and to drive all the way to my home to return it untouched. When I made the vulgar mistake of offering him 10 per cent of the money, he made it quietly but firmly plain that he expected no recompense for performing his Islamic duty. Which of these two versions of faith is the one to rely upon?

Christopher Hitchens: God Is Not Great.

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College students, like Professor Rorty, rarely have to cope with an atrocity or give a reason for condemning those they learn of. To them, the perils of cultural relativism are purely hypothetical. One can get along most of the time with unanchored beliefs.

James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense.

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I have often, particularly on a Sunday, met groups of negroes, elegantly dressed; and have been sometimes been amused by observing the very superior air of gallantry assumed by the men, when in attendance on their "belles", to that of the whites in similar circumstances. On one occasion we met in Broadway a young negress in the extreme of the fashion, and accompanied by a black beau, whose toilet was equally studied; eye-glass, guard-chain, nothing was omitted; he walked beside his sable goddess uncovered, and with an air of the most tender devotion. At the window of a handsome house which they were passing, stood a very pretty white girl, with two gentlemen beside here; but alas! both of them had their hats on, and one was smoking!

Fanny Trollope, Domestic Manners of the Americans.

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It requires strength of character to act upon one's ideas; it requires no less strength of character to resist being seduced by them.

Irving Kristol, The Politics of Stylish Frustration.

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There were to be no press photographs showing cabinet ministers attending banquets, nor any reports on them. Other censored items included outbreaks of cattle-poisoning resulting from the effect of German potassium on cattle fodder, a car accident involving von Ribbentrop in which his eldest daughter had been badly hurt, and the participation of Fräulein Hess in the Berlin dog show. The question of whether Jesus had been Jewish was not to be broached, for the reason that it could no longer be decided after two thousand years.

Richard Grunberger, A Social History of the Third Reich.

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Yesterday I finished making a list of all social, political, and artistic events which I thought possibly useful for my novel between 1872 and 1882. Tedious bore, for a trifling result in the book. But necessary. Today in the forest (of Fontainebleau) I practically arranged most of the construction of the first part of the novel. Still lacking a title for it. If I thought an ironic title would do, I would call it "A thoughtful young man". But the public is so damned slow in the uptake.

Arnold Bennett, Journal, 19th November 1909.

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"He said, 'Let's go for an automobile ride, and I'll show you Toronto,' " Leonard Bernstein recalls. "So, well, what is there to see? It was cold, and it was getting dark, and I had sort of seen it the day before. So we went out, Glenn in his usual three coats and two hats, and I don't know how many pairs of gloves. We got into his car, which was a black sedan. He turned the heat up to maximum, and the radio volume up to maximum, and he got a station that was playing pop tunes, and Petula Clark was singing, and I said, 'Do you really want to hear this?' It was so hot in that car, I can't tell you, and the music was so loud, and there was nothing to see - it was growing dark - but we drove around for maybe half an hour, having a conversation by shouting over this radio full blast, and that was our tour of Toronto."

Otto Friedrich, Glenn Gould: A Life and Variations.

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Chambers  was sounding precariously like a liberal. So be it. He had wearied of ideological battles. "I have scarcely an interest in invective tags." His prevailing interest was simply to "grope for reality".

Sam Tanenhaus, Whittaker Chambers.

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Aldous informed us that female rabbits can now be impregnated from the ova of other female rabbits, but they can only produce females. In the same way, a future manless age  of matriarchs might be created; a lesbian tyranny. Salka and Aldous began picturing the Hollywood of the future - Warner Sisters, Lousia B. Mayer, United Artistes, Twentieth Century Vixen, etc.

Christopher Isherwood, Diaries, 6 February 1940.

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Toward evening we came into downtown Los Angeles - perhaps the ugliest city on earth. It was a Saturday night, and the streets were swarming with drunks. We saw three sailors  carrying a girl into a house, as though they were going to eat her alive. From the hotel, we telephoned Chris Wood. "How wonderful," he said, "to hear an effeminate British voice!"

Christopher Isherwood, Diaries, 17 May 1939.