Martin Amis on Donald Tromp

As a lover of America (and as an admirer of the planet), I offer this advice: Don’t shrug. Don’t stand by and let President Trump be President Trump.

Russia abandoned socialism right under Lenin and Trotsky!

I would place the abandonment of socialism much earlier, under Lenin and Trotsky, at least if socialism is understood to mean at a minimum control by working people over production. The seeds of Stalinism were present in the early Bolshevik years, partly attributable to the exigencies of the civil war and foreign invasion, partly to Leninist ideology. Under Stalin it became a monstrosity.
- Noam Chomsky

Made-of-Literature Writer

I'm made of literature and nothing else.
-Franz Kafka

Fear is my fuel: Steven Spielberg

Fear is my fuel. I get to the brink of not really knowing what to do and that’s when I get my best ideas. Confidence is my enemy and it always has been.

It's politics, stupid!

A part of it is fear, another part of it is ignorance, and another part of it is most people think they are powerless. They ask, “What can we do?” They don’t believe how much power they have. They have a lot. And between being selfish and having fear, most of the people give up. It doesn’t mean that they don’t have any interest in following politics.. They follow politics because they have to follow. It’s impacting their life.

Fariba Hachtroudi

Is the game up for Mamata Banerjee and TMC?

The Assembly election this time gives me back a whole lot of fun and faith. Who had ever thought that the central forces and the state police would actively help conduct a free and fair election? But this has thrown Ms Mamata Banerjee in a fit of rage and has her threatening her own police.

One more phase remains to the election. It's to be held on the 5th. 25 seats. The election commission is deploying thirty two thousand forces for this phase. And the police seem determined to play it out the way it did in earlier phases.

Is the game up for Ms Banerjee and TMC?

A political star is born

“We don’t want freedom from India, my brothers, we want freedom in India.”

Recommended reading: I'm a freelance writer. I refuse to work for free

I'm a freelance writer. I refuse to work for free.

Salman Rushdie on Internet

"The Internet is not a place for information, but a place for trolling, paranoia and ranting. With the shrinking of the newspaper industry, correspondents are being replaced by more and more opinion columnists, substituting truth for truthiness."

--Salman Rushdie

Absolve Kanhaiya Kumar of charge of sedition or charge me with sedition, says Harsh Mander

"It either absolves Kanhaiya Kumar of all charges of sedition. Or, if it persists in its belief that he committed the crime of sedition, then it must charge me also with criminal sedition, and arrest me, and subject me to the same investigation to which Kanhaiya Kumar is being subjected. This is because I have, in writing, taken similar positions on the issues for which his conduct is criminalised."

Why don't people understand what's happening?

 In a society of isolated people where each person is alone with his Fox News and iPhone people don’t understand what is happening. It is happening here in this fashion and it is happening in Europe in other ways, but I think these phenomena are very real.

--Noam Chomsky

Markandey Katju bids goodbye to Facebook

"I am a man of 70 and have very few years more to live.

I tried to pass on all my knowledge I acquired in my life to you, so that you may benefit. This knowledge I acquired from my gurus, before whom I stood with folded hands for decades before they gave me that knowledge. But what did I get in return? I got mostly abuses from most of you, because most of you are stupid and arrogant, and have no desire to learn.

I am sorry I even tried to teach you. So, goodbye.?"

via

History's quantum effect on people

"I’m interested in how history has this spooky quantum effect on people. How history, even when we run from it, even when we disavow it, even when we forget it, is like some very strange dark-eyed dog. It always finds its way back to us.  Not to say that this is the way the world works, but it’s what brings me to the page."

Nayantara Sahgal lambasts the fundamentalists at Hyderabad Literary Festival

"One way of raising our voices against this threat is by holding festivals of literature like this one, where writers and readers and critics can get together to discuss and debate, and agree or disagree. This way, we give public notice of the fact that writers will go on writing the stories they want to write, publishers will go on publishing them, readers will read what they wish to read, and that none of us will toe the line of those who want to make rules about how we should think, or live, or worship, and they certainly cannot tell us what we should or should not eat."