Distillation/history

Famous quotes containing the words distillation and/or history:

    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)

    Only the history of free peoples is worth our attention; the history of men under a despotism is merely a collection of anecdotes.
    —Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)