Crude Oil Distillation

Famous quotes containing the words crude, oil and/or distillation:

    Of course you will pooh-pooh whatever’s fresh and new, and declare
    it’s crude and mean;
    Sir William Schwenck Gilbert (1836–1911)

    Can he who has discovered only some of the values of whalebone and whale oil be said to have discovered the true use of the whale?
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It’s the drowning out of false voices.
    Don Delillo (b. 1926)