Play Topics

In its use of words poetry is just the reverse of science. Very definite thoughts do occur, but not because the words are so chosen as logically to bar out all possibilities save one. No. But because the manner, the tone of voice, the cadence and rhythm play upon our interests and make them pick out from among an indefinite number of possibilities the precise particular thought which they need. That is why poetical descriptions often seem so much more accurate than prose descriptions. Language logically and scientifically used cannot describe a landscape or a face. To do so would need a prodigious apparatus of names for shades and nuances, for precise particular qualities. These names do not exist, so other means have to be used.
—David Daiches (b. 1912)

What the hell is nostalgia doing in a science-fiction film? With the whole universe and all the future to play in, Lucas took his marvelous toys and crawled under the fringed cloth on the parlor table, back into a nice safe hideyhole, along with Flash Gordon and the Cowardly Lion and Luck Skywalker and the Flying Aces and the Hitler Jugend. If there’s a message there, I don’t think I want to hear it.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)

Children bring us a sense of intimacy which cannot be replicated in adult relationships. . . . Being attentive to physical comfort, hurt feelings, the ability to play with total concentration and joy . . . the nakedness of childhood preoccupations helps us to keep in touch with ourselves, with the child imprisoned within each adult.
—Greta Hofmann Nemiroff (20th century)