33 Quotes by Helen DeWitt

Perhaps this is the root of all evil, that gardeners are not put in charge of our schools.

There are people who think contraception is immoral because the object of copulation is procreation. In a similar way there are people who think the only reason to read a book is to write a book...

I wish you wouldn’t say the first thing that comes into your head, Ludo. There is an obvious difference between someone who works within the technical limitations of his time which are beyond his control and someone who accepts without thinking limitations which are entirely within his own power to set aside.

He liked I expect the idea of effortless excellence, and being unable to combine the two has settled for the one he could be sure of...

He was a linguist, and therefore he had pushed the bounds of obstinacy well beyond anything that is conceivable to other men. He.

Truth be told, you can make a hell of a lot more money by being wrong at the right time than by being right at the wrong time.

When you play a piece of music there are so many different ways you could play it. You keep asking yourself what if. You try this and you say what if and you try that. When you buy a CD you get one answer to the question. You never get the what if.

I didn’t want to go to sleep knowing I would just wake up in the morning.

Yamamoto said he thought you had to be able to hear how something did not work as part of a bigger thing to hear how it did and it was precisely because people couldn’t hear that that they were willing to let movements be taken out of pieces.