Failure Mode

Famous quotes containing the words failure and/or mode:

    ... how have I used rivers, how have I used wars
    to escape writing of the worst thing of all—
    not the crimes of other, not even our own death,
    but the failure to want our freedom passionately enough
    so that blighted elms, sick rivers, massacres would seem
    mere emblems of that desecration of ourselves?
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    In most cases a favorite writer is more with us in his book than he ever could have been in the flesh; since, being a writer, he is one who has studied and perfected this particular mode of personal incarnation, very likely to the detriment of any other. I should like as a matter of curiosity to see and hear for a moment the men whose works I admire; but I should hardly expect to find further intercourse particularly profitable.
    Charles Horton Cooley (1864–1929)