In A Ligthter Vien
Quote a Quotable Quote Or Read A Classic Book
By Roamer
A classic book is defined as one which everybody knows about and no one reads while a quote is on the tip of your tongue but you cannot recall it. It is so unlike the definition of a classic.
The real questIon is if it is so quotable why is it you do not remember it. Before you jump to the conclusion that it was not so quotable at all, let me qualify that you think you know the essence of what it implies but not the exact words.
When faced with such problems I always ‘phone a friend’ who has fantastic memory and tells me my definition of a classic was so wrong that he could not even understand it as the exact quote is not “which” but “that” (or is it not “all” but “everybody”, I don’t remember).
As I had said he has a fantastic memory that recalls the name of a forgotten author Margaret Gaskell and not Gaitskell and that the book “Maharaja” was by Jarmnani Dass with double “S”, whom I always confuse with another author – Diwan Chaman Lal (no double “l”)
The friend is right: How can you call it a quote and attribute it to someone if It is not exactly a coma. One way out is to quote myself, though it Is considered arrogant (Eminent lawyer Sir Harisingh Gaur stopped legal practice when a British judge objected to him quoting his own book, the only authority on that branch of jurisprudence). It does remind me of a Malayalee joke : “Raman Nair is an eminent man” . “Who told you?” “Raman Nair himself” (Hope the friend who told me the joke will not phone me from 2000 miles away to correct me to say it was not R Nair but was Menon. He is a Menon himself).
‘Phone a friend’ option may help you win a million on a TV reality show. My friend’s phone helps me know it is tIme i stopped writing.
So I stop.