Ken Roberts - Favourites

"Godzilla is a warning -- a warning to every one of us.
When mankind falls into conflict with nature, monsters are born."
-- From the movie "Godzilla 1985".

"Writing, when properly managed, (as you may be sure I think mine is) is but a different name for conversation. As no one, who knows what he is about in good company, would venture to talk all; -- so no author, who understands the just boundaries of decorum and good breeding, would presume to think all: The truest respect which you can pay to the reader's understanding, is to halve this matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn, as well as yourself."
-- Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy, Vol II Ch XI.

"Truth does not lead to fortune."
-- Jean Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, Book 2, Ch 2.

"Good language, rather like good music, has the capacity to bring harmony to the soul."
-- Terry Waite, speaking of the importance of books during his four years of solitary confinement as a hostage in the Middle East. From an interview on "Focus", CBC Radio, January 17, 1997.
If I were allowed one book, it would be Emma by Jane Austen.

"Finger-prints and other mechanics good in books, in real life not so much so. My experience tell me to think deep about human people. Human passions. Back of murder what, always? Hate, revenge, need to make silent the slain one. Greed for money, maybe. Study human people at all times."
-- Charlie Chan, in "The House Without A Key", by Earl Derr Biggers.
This observation is, I believe, the key to writing good mysteries. Despite Charlie Chan's polite allowance, fingerprints and other mechanics do not suffice for good books either. A good mystery must involve a human puzzle.
The opposing stance is perhaps V.I. Warshawski's injunction to "follow the money". But if the author believes her, she will write only a certain kind of mystery story, the "unveiling of financial conspiracy", a stockbroker's abstraction. Life has more interesting puzzles than those made of dollars. We like the Warshawski stories not for the puzzles she solves, but for the puzzle she doesn't solve - i.e. herself.

"No society is safe in the hands of its clever people."
-- Lancelot Hogben, "Mathematics for the Million".
Furthermore, no society is safe in the hands of its bullies, or its rich people, or its lazy people either. Society is life. The Greeks had a word for a citizen who chose not to participate in the public discussion which governed the democracy: "idiot".

Debate of the Two Poets
-- From G. K. Chesterson's "The Man Who Was Thursday".

A Prayer by Jane Austen
-- Jane Austen wrote three evening prayers for her family's use.