You May Not Be Interested in War, But War Is Interested in You

Leon Trotsky? Fannie Hurst? James Burnham? O. H. Steiner? Marshall Berman? Michael Walzer? Donald Barthelme? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: Several sayings have employed the following templates: (1) You may not be interested in X, but X is interested in you. (2) We may not be interested in X, but X is interested in us. (3) …

You May Not Be Interested in Absurdity, But Absurdity Is Interested in You

Donald Barthelme? Fannie Hurst? Gore Vidal? Dear Quote Investigator: A wide variety of sayings have employed the following template: You may not be interested in X, but X is interested in you. Different terms have been substituted for X including: war, politics, dialectic, and strategy. In addition, variant templates have occurred: We may not be …

The Center Will Not Hold If It Has Been Spot-Welded by an Operator Whose Deepest Concern Is His Lottery Ticket

Donald Barthelme? William Butler Yeats? Dear Quote Investigator: A poet once proclaimed with despair that the center cannot hold. The postmodern storyteller Donald Barthelme quipped that the center would not hold if it was welded together by a distracted worker. Would you please help me to find a citation. Also, I cannot recall the name …

The Thing About Books Is, There Are Quite a Number You Don’t Have To Read

Donald Barthelme? Apocryphal? Dear Quote Investigator: When I was a young child I found the number of books in my local library overwhelming. I wondered how one could find the time to read so many books? When I was a slightly older child, I concluded that there were a enormous number that you don’t have …