TV Quote of the Day (“Dr. Evil,” Revealing His 2020 Plans)

“I found the perfect running mate, the only man more hated than Donald Trump.” (A campaign poster fills the screen: "Evil/Zuckerberg 2020.") “Hey, America, get ready to be poked!” (begins to laugh diabolically)—“Dr. Evil” (played by Mike Myers), describing his firing from the Trump Cabinet (he was the “ideas” man) and his plans for the next Presidential election, appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Apr. 5, 2018

Quote of the Day (Robert Stone, on Decency and Betrayal)

''It's very difficult to be even basically decent; it is much easier for people to betray themselves than we think it is.''—American novelist Robert Stone (1937-2015) quoted in Jean Strouse, “Heebiejeebieville Express,” The New York Times, March 16, 1986

Quote of the Day (James Baldwin, on MLK and Malcolm X)

“I don’t think that any black person can speak of Malcolm [X] and Martin [Luther King Jr.] without wishing that they were here. It is not possible for me to speak of them without a sense of loss and grief and rage; and with the sense, furthermore, of having been forced to undergo an unforgivable indignity, both personal and vast. Our children need them, which is, indeed, the reason that they are not here: and now we, the blacks, must make certain that our children never forget them. For the American republic has always done everything in its power to destroy our children’s heroes, with the clear (and sometimes clearly stated) intention of destroying our children’s hope. This endeavor has doomed the American nation: mark my words.”—African-American novelist-essayist James Baldwin (1924-1987), “Malcolm and Martin,” in No Name in the Street (1972)

(I took the image accompanying this post over four years ago, while visiting the memorial to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Washington, DC.)

Quote of the Day (Saul Bellow, on the Novel’s True and False Impressions)

“A novel is balanced between a few true impressions and the multitude of false ones that make up most of what we call life.” —American novelist Saul Bellow (1915-2005), Nobel Prize lecture, Dec. 12, 1976

Quote of the Day (John Oliver, on What Film Genre He Would Be In Other Than Comedy)

“Probably some kind of English period drama where people talk a lot but don’t talk about how they feel — some movie version of Downton Abbey. Class-wise, I am of peasant stock, so I would very much be the downstairs worker there, where I’m getting shouted at by an expensively dressed man. I see myself as a kind of bedraggled kitchen staffer being slapped across the face because the soup is cold and Master is angry.” —Last Week Tonight host John Oliver, asked “If you were in a film genre other than comedy, what would it be?,” in  “Stupid Questions With John Oliver” (interviewed by Ray Rahman), Entertainment Weekly, Feb. 17, 2017

(Photograph of John Oliver from February 2008, by Ted Kerwin.)

Quote of the Day (A.N. Wilson, With a Meditation for Easter)

“Christianity is not and cannot be a faith of ‘biblical fundamentalism,’ because the Bible is a work of symbolism and mythology that does not contain ‘evidence’ — or, if it does, it does so accidentally. But the moral and spiritual truths that have lit up countless human lives for the past 2,000 years are intimately entwined, in these narratives, with the conviction that ‘the Lord is risen indeed.’” — British man of letters A.N. Wilson, “He Is Risen!” The Financial Times, Apr. 4-5, 2015

The image accompanying this post is from the painting Resurrection, by the Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca.