Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more time, or of going one more round with a hostile or (much worse) indifferent audience. I first became involved with the Czech opposition in 1968 when it was an intoxicating and celebrated cause. Then, during the depressing 1970s and 1980s I was a member of a routine committee that tried with limited success to help the reduced forces of Czech dissent to stay nourished (and published). The most pregnant moment of that commitment was one that I managed to miss at the time: I passed an afternoon with Zdenek Mlynar, exiled former secretary of the Czech Communist Party, who in the bleak early 1950s in Moscow had formed a friendship with a young Russian militant with an evident sense of irony named Mikhail Sergeyevitch Gorbachev. In 1988 I was arrested in Prague for attending a meeting of one of Vaclav Havel's 'Charter 77' committees. That outwardly exciting experience was interesting precisely because of its almost Zen-like tedium. I had gone to Prague determined to be the first visiting writer not to make use of the name Franz Kafka, but the numbing bureaucracy got the better of me. When I asked why I was being detained, I was told that I had no need to know the reason! Totalitarianism is itself a clich
It is a cliche that most cliches are true, but then like most cliches, that cliche is untrue.
Vale m
Our lack of originality is something we usefully forget as we hunch over our
As a rule of thumb, I'd say one clich
Two cliches make us laugh. A hundred cliches move us. For we sense dimly that the cliches are talking among themselves, and celebrating a reunion.
As an opener, I'd like to state that elves are certainly NOT cliche. It doesn't matter if they all have pointy ears, or they all live a long time, or even if they all like forests. It doesn't matter if they're short or tall or both. It doesn't matter if they're related to forest spirits or even angels. Regardless of how many elves are like one another or how many elves appear in how many books, elves are NOT cliche. Why? Well, for one, an elf is a creature. How can a creature be a cliche? Is a human cliche? They certainly do appear in a lot of books! How about dragons? Now there's a popular subject! Are dragons cliche as well? Well what about vampires too? Or werewolves? Or bats? Or rabbits? Or mice? Or owls? Or crows? Cats??
Let's have some new cliches.
I never ever thought that I was a giggler. I was the one who could hold it together but I didn't on this... - Ashley Jensen
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They're not clothes that Ashley would wear. But the thing is, you can't stand out. At first I thought, ... - Ashley Jensen
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I know what I look like. I'm not a babe who's automatically going to be the leading-lady type. I think ... - Ashley Jensen
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Wow, that's a lot. Basically I have been trying to build a career for myself. I learned early on what to... - Alana Evans
The only person who beat me was Jenna Jameson and that kicks ass.... - Alana Evans
I've learned to think in terms of having a long career. Actors can have very long careers that last unti... - Bryce Dallas Howard
