Top 5 Quotes & Sayings by Ihab Hassan

Quotations offer one kind of break in what the eye can see, the ear can hear.

Universal violence compels the language to be mute . . . . Silence is not only a metaphor of Hemingway's work; it is also the source of its formal excellence, its integrity.

The (post) structuralist temper requires too great a depersonalization of the writing/speaking subject. Writing becomes plagiarism; speaking becomes quoting. Meanwhile, we do write, we do speak.

Unknowingly, we plow the dust of stars, blown about us by the wind, and drink the universe in a glass of rain.

We rarely quote nowadays to appeal to authority... though we quote sometimes to display our sapience and erudition. Some authors we quote against. Some we quote not at all, offering them our scrupulous avoidance, and so make them part of our "white mythology." Other authors we constantly invoke, chanting their names in cerebral rituals of propitiation or ancestor worship.