The Lewis Legacy-Issue 61, Summer 1994 Assorted Quotations

I never in my most sanguine moments dreamed that the invasion of Europe would go quite so well.

September 6, 1944, C. S. Lewis’s letter to Sister Penelope

I have appreciated the work of C. S. Lewis, particularly his essays. Mere Christianity was placed in my hands at a time when I don’t know what I would have done without it. If Lewis hears in heaven I hereby let him know how much it meant to me. Except for the space trilogy, however, I’ve never been a fan of his fiction, and I mostly appreciated the final volume, That Hideous Strength, when application was made to the institutions that have become as corrupt as Lewis predicted they would. I admire his scholarship in sixteenth-century literature. But I have never been able to read the Narnia books and perhaps never will.

Larry Woiwode, ACTS (HarperCollins, 1993). Woiwode is the author of Beyond the Bedroom Wall and other highly acclaimed novels. He lives with his family on a ranch in North Dakota.

Fraud is an unusual crime. Like other anti-social acts it involves a victim and a perpetrator but, unlike them, it makes the victim an unwitting accomplice through trust. The victim has become a partner in the crime through persuasion — by believing the story, confusing fact with fiction.

Harold Coyne, Scam: How con men use the telephone to steal your money

Nowadays… the punishment for asking naively pertinent questions is to be dismissed as a fool whose question doesn’t deserve an answer.

Russell Baker, Washington Post

Something horrid has recently befallen the craft of biography…. There is a certain arrogance on the part of people who assume that they really know what people are thinking if there’s no evidence for it.

Arthur Schlesinger, The New Republic

Art, like any business, obeys the laws of supply and demand, and a great artist’s death is only a minor obstacle. In fact, some artists’ posthumous production far exceeds their original output. The Frenchman Corot is probably the all-time, most copied artist, and it is occasionally noted that he made “2,000 drawings during his lifetime, of which 10,000 are in the United States.”

Crime follows money, and forgeries are part of every country’s fine art’s history. In painting, drawing, prints, sculpture, ceramics, and furniture, once an artist or style gains popularity, the forgers go to work. Some are so skilled that the original artist can’t tell the difference…

Frederick Waterman, “Those Fabulous Fakes,” Hemisphere (July 1994,
74-80)