Authors:

Jenny Diski Quotes

It isn't important what you do, it is the attitude with which you proceed through the world that matters.

It isn't important what you do, it is the attitude with which you proceed through the world that matters.

Jenny Diski
Attitude, Important, World
Jenny Diski (2013). “Stranger on a Train: Daydreaming and Smoking Around America with Interruptions”, p.268, Picador

Everything passes, but nothing entirely goes away.

Jenny Diski
Time

For the most part, quantum theory has been of little practical value in my life.

Jenny Diski
Littles, Quantum, Theory
1997 Skating to Antarctica.

Good writing and dark wit always excite me and they come together thrillingly in this book. It has a quiet grip on the strangeness of the interior and exterior worlds of love and politics. I delighted in the writing and the scope.

Jenny Diski
Book, Writing, Dark

There are some words I find impossibly difficult ... 'Love,' 'feeling' and especially 'happiness' are at the head of the list. This is not because I haven't experienced any of them but because whenever I think about using the words I don't really know what anyone means by them. I'd find it easier to sit down and write a book about each (coming, obviously, to no conclusion) than to use them casually in speech or writing.

Jenny Diski
Book, Writing, Mean

But nothing will persuade me that the mere fact of being in a place is enough in itself to justify the effort of getting out of bed to become a tourist, or even a traveller. I don't have the slightest wish to be intrepid. I don't want to prove myself to myself or anyone else. I don't care if no one thinks me brave or hardy. I have no concern at all that I did not have whatever it is I should have had to take a dive out of a plane or off a building. None of that matters to me in the least.

Jenny Diski
Thinking, Should Have, Effort

There's a cultural conviction that any 'artist' must have personal suffering to back up their work, otherwise there's something undeserved and therefore inauthentic about it, perhaps even some sort of cheating.

Jenny Diski
Cheating, Artist, Suffering

We were greeted by the minister whose inclusive, non-judgemental smile was no more than a whisker away from a smirk. Have I made it clear? I don't like belief systems and even less like those that peddle self-righteousness. I have no doubt the minister was a sincere man, but I am not as impressed by the idea of sincerity as the sincere seem to be.

Jenny Diski
Men, Self, Ideas

Statistics are designed to keep you safe.

Jenny Diski
Safe, Statistics
1997 Skating to Antarctica.

You May Also Like: