172 Quotes by Walter Kirn






  • Author Walter Kirn
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    Literature had torn Tessa and me apart, or prevented us from merging in the first place. That was its role in the world, I'd started to fear: to conjure up disagreements that didn't matter and inspire people to act on them as though they mattered more than anything. Without literature, humans would all be one. Warfare was simply literature in arms. The pen was the reason man invented the sword.

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  • Author Walter Kirn
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    We were all journalists, professional truth-seekers, but one thing we knew about the truth that laymen were prone to disregard was that it need not be literal or factual; the unpredictable human personality was itself a fact.

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  • Author Walter Kirn
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    Who were all these people, so many of them so brown? What was this ritual unfolding around him? I've never seen a German look as German as Clark did when he assessed his likely assessors. His eyes were like small blue coins behind his glasses.

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  • Author Walter Kirn
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    The jurors appear vaguely stranded and at loose ends, uprooted from their routines and livelihoods.

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