CRITICAL LENS STATEMENTS (1999 – Present)
"In literature, evil often triumphs but never conquers."
- Unknown (6/99)
"Good literature substitutes for an experience which we have not ourselves lived through."
- Alexander Solzhenitsyn (8/99)
"When writers write from a place of insight and real caring about the truth, they have the ability to throw the
lights on for the reader."
- Anne Lamott (1/00)
"It is not what an author says, but what he or she whispers, that is important."
- Logan Pearsall Smith (6/00)
"A story must be exceptional enough to justify its telling; it must have something more unusual to relate than
the ordinary experience of every average man and woman."
- Thomas Hardy (8/00)
"It is the responsibility of the writer to expose our many grievous faults and failures and to hold up to the light
our dark and dangerous dreams, for the purpose of improvement."
- John Steinbeck (1/01)
"All conflict in literature is, in its simplest form, a struggle between good and evil."
- Unknown (6/01)
"What lasts is what is written. We look to literature to find the essence of an age.”
- Peter Brodie (8/01)
"All literature is protest. You can't name a single literary work that isn't protest."
- Richard Wright (1/02)
"The bravest of individuals is the one who obeys his or her conscience."
- J.F. Clarke (6/02)
"If the literature we are reading does not wake us, why then do we read it? A literary work must be an ice-axe to
break the sea frozen inside us."
- Franz Kafka (8/02)
"All literature shows us the power of emotion. It is emotion, not reason, that motivates characters in literature."
- Duff Brenna (1/03)
“Good people…are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure.”
- William Saroyan (6/03)
“We do not read novels for improvement or instruction.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes (8/03)
“Things can happen in some cities (places) and the tale of them will be interesting; the same story laid in
another city (place) would be ridiculous.”
- Frank Norris (1/04)
“In a dark time, the eye begins to see…”
- Theodore Roethke (6/04)
“A person is a person through other persons…”
- Archbishop Desmond Tutu (8/04)
“The right good book is always a book of travel; it is about a life’s journey.”
- H. M. Tomlinson (1/05)
“In this world goodness is destined to be defeated.”
- Walker Percy (6/05)
“I like flawed characters because somewhere in them I see more of the truth.”
- Nicolas Cage (8/05)
“All that is literature seeks to communicate power...”
- Thomas De Quincey (1/06)
“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he
stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr. (6/06)
“To gain that which is worth having, it may be necessary to lose everything else.”
- Bernadette Devlin (8/06)
“The human heart has ever dreamed of a fairer world than the one it knows.”
- Carleton Noyes (1/07)
“For what does it mean to be a hero? It requires you to be prepared to deal with forces larger than yourself.”
- Norman Mailer (6/07)
“You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it.”
- Yann Martel (8/07)
“Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right using of strength….”
- Henry Ward Beecher (1/08)
“…it is the human lot to try and fail...”
- David Mamet (6/08)
“The real hero is always a hero by mistake…”
- Umberto Eco (8/08)
“Fear always springs from ignorance.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1/09)
“…the strongest man upon earth is he who stands most alone.”
- Henrik Ibsen (6/09)
“It is only with the heart that one can see rightly…”
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (8/09)
“Whosoever does wrong, wrongs himself...”
- Marcus Aurelius (1/10)
“The difficulty in life is the choice…”
- George Moore (6/10)
“Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.”
- Franklin D. Roosevelt (8/10)
“...although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
- Helen Keller (1/11)
“...men are at the mercy of events and cannot control them.”
- Herodotus (6/11)
“… we pay a price for everything we get or take in this world...”
- L. M. Montgomery (8/11)
“No two persons regard the world in exactly the same way…”
- J. W. Von Goethe (1/12)
“Fear is simply the consequence of every lie”
- Fyodor Dostoevsky (6/12)
“…it is impossible to go through life without trust…”
— Graham Greene (8/12)
“Circumstances are beyond the control of man; but his conduct is in his own power.”
- Benjamin Disraeli (1/13)
“...the greater the difficulty, the greater the glory.”
- Cicero (6/13)
“…the truth is often unpopular…”
—Adlai E. Stevenson (8/13)
“…only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr. (1/14)