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Monday, December 15th, 2003
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| Subject: | [in reply to "have you abandoned the AR quotations journal?"] |
| Time: | 10:53 pm. |
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[actually not but here is what's happening with that. the goal there was to get a chronological series of her quotes, starting from when she was young and going to when she was old. however! i lost my copy of we the living, and i am now at the point in time where i need to read we the living and get quotes from it. so until i can get another copy i've postponed it.]
[so stay tuned! this journal will not die.]
[(i will delete this entry as soon as i start with the we the living quotes, to return to the all ayn rand quotes feeling)]
[-![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) rinku]
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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Saturday, July 19th, 2003
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| Subject: | from we the living |
| Time: | 7:43 pm. |
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'Do you believe in God, Andrei?'
'No.'
'Neither do I. But that's a favorite question of mine. An upside-down question, you know.'
'What do you mean?'
'Well, if I asked people whether they believed in life, they'd never understand what I meant. It's a bad question. It can mean so much that it really means nothing. So I ask them if they believe in God. And if they say they do - then, I know they don't believe in life'
'Why?'
'Because, you see, God - whatever anyone chooses to call God - is one's highest conception of the highest possible. And whoever places his highest conception above his own possibility thinks very little of himself and his life. It's a rare gift, you know, to feel reverence for your own life and to want the best, the greatest, the highest possible, here, now, for your very own. To imagine a heaven and then not to dream of it, but to demand it.'
copied and pasted from http://www.livejournal.com/users/blackburntrose/71621.html
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Comments: Add Your Own.
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| Subject: | an epic [undated] |
| Time: | 8:47 am. |
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An epic:
1. Spans an entire epoch.
2. Has a large theme, a grand theme -- and an enormous conflict (external or internal).
3. Exhausts and integrates everything related to the theme; it represents the essence, in the best possible form.
4. A concrete story expresses the universal essence; it is not an exceptional occurence.
5. The story applies to everyone, not just to an individual soul.
How it is expressed:
1. Expresses various main ideals, ideas, and events of a given epoch.
2. A large theme, closely related to the epoch's character.
3. The most interesting, universal traits and facts are expressed in the most [illegible], interesting, and characteristic story.
4. A concrete story is built in such a way as to express the idea, the universal traits, in the most colorful way.
5. Do not push the hero into the foreground too much, do not express everything only from the hero's point of view and as being for the hero; implicitly let it be felt that the hero is a means, not the end.
6. The plot [should] express and unite everything, all the concretes. The plot flows from the essence of the theme; one constructs the plot after analyzing the theme, the epoch.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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Thursday, April 24th, 2003
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| Subject: | ~July-September 1927 |
| Time: | 5:12 pm. |
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An epic must have a big idea behind it, an idea related to human lives. Achievement is the aim of life. Life is achievement.
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Comments: Read 5 or Add Your Own.
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| Subject: | August 28, 1926 |
| Time: | 5:05 pm. |
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The only thing that remains for me is to rise, which I am doing with my characteristic straight-line decisiveness.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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Tuesday, April 15th, 2003
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| Subject: | Impression of America - August 28, 1926 |
| Time: | 3:27 am. |
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Not taking anything too seriously is the chief rule Americans adhere to. Everybody makes fun of everybody else, not malicioiusly, but very wittily, and that is the essence of America. The language here is not English at all, and is all "jokes" and "wisecracks" as they are called here.
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Comments: Read 2 or Add Your Own.
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| Subject: | Hello - (August 28, 1926) |
| Time: | 1:20 am. |
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There was a time when I loved that American expression of yours ["hello"], and now I am using it myself, because they don't have any other expression here.
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Comments: Read 1 or Add Your Own.
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