Last Modified: 2023-09-11
what
massacre
happens to my son
between
him
living within my skin.
drinking my cells.
my water.
my organs.
and
his soft psyche turning cruel.
does he not remember
he
is half woman.
[Salt. Nayirrah Waheed]
massacre
happens to my son
between
him
living within my skin.
drinking my cells.
my water.
my organs.
and
his soft psyche turning cruel.
does he not remember
he
is half woman.
[Salt. Nayirrah Waheed]
i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh ... And eyes big love-crumbs,
and possibly i like the thrill
of under me you so quite new.
[E.E.Cummings]
You who never arrived
in my arms, Beloved, who were lost
from the start,
I don't even know what songs
would please you. I have given up trying
to recognize you in the surging wave of the next
moment. All the immense
images in me— the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,
cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspected
turns in the path,
and those powerful lands that were once
pulsing with the life of the gods-
all rise within me to mean
you, who forever elude me.
You, Beloved, who are all
the gardens I have ever gazed at,
longing. An open window
in a country house—, and you almost
stepped out, pensive, to meet me.
Streets that I chanced upon,--
you had just walked down them and vanished.
And sometimes, in a shop, the mirrors
were still dizzy with your presence and, startled,
gave back my too-sudden image. Who knows?
perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us
yesterday, separate, in the evening…
[Rainer Maria Rilke]
When I'm recording I have certain things I have to do. I wet down my hair, I turn my jacket inside out and I undo the first button on my collar. I throw a rock through a window, I tear the head off a doll, I drink a bottle of Scotch and, er, I'm there.' 'For some people to have to watch you go through that it's a little embarrassing. So you have to work with people you trust, people who won't turn on you.
[Tom Waits]
Ordinarily, I go to the woods alone, with not a single friend, for they are all smilers and talkers and therefore unsuitable. I don’t really want to be witnessed talking to the catbirds or hugging the old black oak tree. I have my way of praying, as you no doubt have yours. Besides, when I am alone I can become invisible. I can sit on the top of a dune as motionless as an uprise of weeds, until the foxes run by unconcerned. I can hear the almost unhearable sound of the roses singing. If you have ever gone to the woods with me, I must love you very much.
[Mary Oliver, Swan: Poems and Prose Poems]
They talk too much for me. They have worries, aims, desires, that I cannot understand. I often sit with one of them in the little beer garden and try to explain to him that this is really the only thing: just to sit quietly, like this. They understand of course, they agree, they may even feel it so too, but only with words, only with words, yes, that is it--they feel it, but always with only half of themselves, the rest of their being is taken up with other things, they are so divided in themselves that none feels it with his whole; I cannot even say myself exactly what I mean.
[Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front]
I have never yet met anyone who tried to become a real person with success. The result of such attempts is invariably loss of personality, for there is an ancient paradox of the spiritual life whereby those who try to make themselves great become small. The paradox is even a bit more complicated than this; it also means that if you try, indirectly, to make yourself great by making yourself small, you succeed only in remaining small. It is all a question of motive, of what you want. Motives may be subtly concealed, and we may not call the desire to be a real person the desire to be great; but that is just a matter of words.
So many modern religions and psychologies make this fundamental mistake of trying to make the tail wag the dog, which is what the quest for personality amounts to.
When we revere real personality in others, we are liable to become mere imitators; when we revere it as an ideal for ourselves, here is the old trouble of wanting to make yourself great. It is all a question of pride, for if you revere Life and Reality only in particular types of personal living, you deny Life and Reality to such humble things as, for instance, saltshakers, specks of dust, worms, flowers, and the great unregenerate masses of the human race… But a Life, a Reality, a Tao that can be at once a Christ, a Buddha, a Lao-tzu, and an ignorant fool or a worm, this is something really mysterious and wonderful and really worth devotion if you consider it for a while… For Life and Reality are not things you can have for yourself unless you accord them to all others. They do not belong to particular persons any more than the sun, moon and stars.
[Alan Watts]
There is an eternal antagonism of interest between the individual and the world at large. The individual will not so much care how much he may suffer in this world provided he can live in men's good thoughts long after he has left it. The world at large does not so much care how much suffering the individual may either endure or cause in this life, provided he will take himself clean away out of men's thoughts, whether for good or ill, when he has left it.
[Samuel Butler, Notebooks]
I suspect it is simply a feature of being an adult, what I will call being grown, or a grown person, to have endured some variety of thorough emotional turmoil, to have made your way to the brink, and, if you’re lucky, to have stepped back from it — if not permanently, then for some time, or time to time. Then it is, too, a kind of grownness by which I see three squares of light on my wall, the shadow of a tree trembling in two of them, and hear the train going by and feel no panic or despair, feel no sense of condemnation or doom or horrible alignment, but simply observe the signs — light and song — for what they are — light and song. And, knowing what I have felt before, and might feel again, feel a sense of relief, which is cousin to, or rather, water to, delight.
[Ross Gay, Book of Delights]
JOE HELLER
True story, Word of Honor:
Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!
[Kurt Vonnegut]
An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.
It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.
It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.
It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.
[Adrianne Rich, On Lies, Secrets, and Silence]
But I don't have a character. Or any feelings. "Shape I may take, converse I may, but neither god nor Buddha am I, rather an insensate being whose heart thus differs from that of man." (Ueda Akinari's Tales of Moonlight and Rain)
...
The strength I am looking for isn't the kind where you win or lose. I'm not after a wall that'll repel power coming from outside. What I want is the kind of strength to be able to absorb that outside power, to stand up to it. The strength to quietly endure things - unfairness, misfortune, sadness, mistakes, misunderstandings.
[Haruki Murikami, Kafka on the Shore]
Nay, let us walk from fire unto fire,
From passionate pain to deadlier delight,--
I am too young to live without desire,
Too young art thou to waste this summer night
Asking those idle questions which of old
Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.
[Panthea Wilde, Oscar 1881 Poems]
From passionate pain to deadlier delight,--
I am too young to live without desire,
Too young art thou to waste this summer night
Asking those idle questions which of old
Man sought of seer and oracle, and no reply was told.
[Panthea Wilde, Oscar 1881 Poems]
And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.`
[Kurt Vonnegut]
[Kurt Vonnegut]
What is the purpose of life? Trout plundered his pockets for a pen or pencil. He had an answer to the question. But he had nothing to write with, not even a burnt match. So he left the question unanswered, but here is what he would have written, if he had found anything to write with: To be the eyes and ears and conscience of the Creator of the Universe, you fool.
[Kurt Vonnegut]
i am a feather on the bright sky .. i am the blue horse that runs in the plain .. i am the fish that rolls, shining in the water .. i am the shadow that follows a child .. i am the evening light, the luster of meadows .. i am an eagle playing in the wind .. i am a cluster of bright beads .. i am the farthest star .. i am the cold of the dawn .. i am the roaring of the rain .. i am the glitter on the crust of the snow .. i am the long track of the moon in a lake .. i am a flame of four colours .. i am a deer standing away in the dusk .. i am a field of sumac and sweet grass .. i am an angle of geese in the winter sky .. i am the hunger of a young wolf .. i am the whole dream of these things.
[Mindan Gunther-moore]
You may well be surprised to hear this, as my lips look so sweet, but my mouth was meant for beautifully indecent acts. For decadence. For long stories and questions and laughter. For teasing. To give and receive pleasure. To murmur as I imagine the path you’ll trace down my body. To sigh as the sensation washes over me. My mouth was built to receive those that I choose, their fingers, their tongues, their lips, their sex… their sex.
My mouth was made for passion and longing.I’m sure you think about it; how my lips feel on your neck - that soft kiss as I sneaked up behind you. How they feel on your body; wet and eager and hungry. Whispering secrets in your ear, stories across the pillow, and endearments. My mouth was made for spewing profanity as you fill me up or push me to the edge, for expressing the dirtiest of sentiments in the most sensual of manners. My mouth was made for crying out, for tasting for fucking for being used. For parting lips, for falling open, for swallowing you up, and for forming into that sweet-shaped o. My mouth was meant for feeding my body and soul. But really, my mouth is meant for no one but myself.
Luckily, I’m a very generous girl.
[mtlamoureuse]
I want you to show me every twisted, frightened thought you've ever had. I want your eyes to crack my bones; I want your words to tear my skin apart.
[unknown]
Because these fools always look up for power. People above you, they never want to share power with you. Why you look to them? They give you nothing. People below you, you give them hope, you give them respect, *they* give you power, cause they don't think they have any, so they don't mind giving it up.
[Orson Scott Card],Ender's Shadow
[Orson Scott Card],
No point in getting emotional about anything. Being emotional didn't help with survival. What mattered was to learn everything, analyze the situation, choose a course of action, and then move boldly. Know, think, choose, do. There was no place in that list for "feel". Not that Bean didn't have feelings. He simply refused to think about them or dwell on them or let them influence his decisions, when anything important was at stake... In the end, Bean suspected, character mattered more than intelligence. In Bean's litany of survival - know, think, choose, do - intelligence only mattered in the first three, and was the decisive factor only in the second one.
[Orson Scott Card], Ender's Shadow
[Orson Scott Card], Ender's Shadow
Bean was tired of talking about this. She looked so happy when she talked about God, but he hadn't figured it out yet, what God even was. It was like, she wanted to give God credit for every good thing, but when it was bad, then she either didn't mention God or had some reason why it was a good thing after all. As far as Bean could see, though, the dead kids would rather have been alive, just with more food. If God loved them so much, and he could do whatever he wanted, then why wasn't there more food for these kids? And if God just wanted them dead, why didn't he let them die sooner or not even be born at all, so they didn't have to go to so much trouble and get all excited about trying to be alive when he was just going to take them to his heart. None of it made any sense to Bean, and the more Sister Carlotta explained it, the less he understood. Because if there was somebody in charge, then he ought to be fair, and if he wasn't fair, then why should Sister Carlotta be so happy that he was in charge?
[Orson Scott Card], Ender's Shadow
[Orson Scott Card], Ender's Shadow
"It isn't lying to tell a bureaucrat whatever story it takes to get him to do his job properly."
"But if he does his job properly, he won't give you any information about Peter."
"If he does his job properly, he'll understand the purpose of the rules and therefore know when it is appropriate to make exceptions".
[Orson Scott Card], Shadow of the Hegemon
"But if he does his job properly, he won't give you any information about Peter."
"If he does his job properly, he'll understand the purpose of the rules and therefore know when it is appropriate to make exceptions".
[Orson Scott Card], Shadow of the Hegemon
"Ignorance is not a trategy," said Anton, "merely an opportunity. But to know and refuse to know what you know, that is foolishness."
[Orson Scott Card], Shadow Puppets
[Orson Scott Card], Shadow Puppets
If you give orders and explain nothing, you might get obedience, but you'll get no creativity. If you tell them your purpose, then when your original plan is shown to be faulty, they'll find another way to achieve your goal. Explaining to your men doesn't weaken their respect for you, it proves your respect for them.
[Orson Scott Card], Shadow of the Giant
[Orson Scott Card], Shadow of the Giant
I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.
[Orson Scott Card], Shadow of the Giant
[Orson Scott Card], Shadow of the Giant
... How strange it is that in the huge machine of life, past, present and future, there should be a fourteen-year-old girl who is sitting and writing all kinds of stupid things about her small soul, which to her seems something immense, and that she occupies herself so seriously with something which is really small and of no consequence. ...But to her it seems all-important and she wholly surrenders herself to it. How strange is this abstraction; how strange the isolation of my little life in comparison with that other which is so immeasurably big.
[Nelly Ptaschkina], Revelations - Diaries Of Women
[Nelly Ptaschkina], Revelations - Diaries Of Women
Have no illusions. The Sherry Urquist assignment did not fall into my lap because somebody at Overt Intelligence liked me. It was simply this: I am a roue. If any agent had a prayer of planting this particular Dissembler, that agent was me. It's the eyebrows that do it, great bushy extrusions suggesting a predatory mammal of unusual prowess, though I must admit they draw copious support from my straight nose and full, pillowlike lips. Am I handsome as a god? Metaphorically speaking, yes.
[James Morrow], Veritas
[James Morrow], Veritas
I shall never be able to speak them [the lies] - not without being dropped from here to hell in a bucket of pain.
[James Morrow], Veritas
[James Morrow], Veritas
This book dates from 1972-73, and the man who wrote it does not exists anymore. Even I, occupying the same body that he did, hardly remember him and quite often do not agree with his opinions at all, at all. I have therefore corrected and updated his ideas in about a hundred places because, frankly, he embarrasses me at times, especially since we share the same name as well as the same body.
[Robert Anton Wilson], Sex, Drug & Magick
[Robert Anton Wilson], Sex, Drug & Magick
In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true or becomes true, within limits to be found experimentally and experientially. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind, there are no limits.
[John Lilly], The Center of the Cyclone
[John Lilly], The Center of the Cyclone
Lone wolf looking to pair up with a solo coyote to scavenge in the city and roam the hills, wild and free. I stand tall, lean, fit and hungry... for a mate. You're natural, slim, wily, a little unpredictable. Let's connect, for soon the dog days of summer will be upon us.
[Marty H]
[Marty H]
L'histoire de ma vie n'existe pas. Il n'y a jamais de centre. Pas de chemin, pas de ligne. Il n'y a de vastes endroites ou l'on croire qu'il y avait quelqu'un, ce n'est pas vrai, il n'y avait personne.
[Margeurite Duras], L'Amant
[Margeurite Duras], L'Amant
Je n'ai jamais ecrit, croyant le faire, je n'ai jamais aime, croyant aimer, je n'ai jamais rien fait qu'attendre devant la porte fermee.
[Margeurite Duras], L'Amant
[Margeurite Duras], L'Amant
Je me suis dit qu'on ecrivait toujours sur le corps mort du monde et, de meme, sur le corps mort de l'amour.
[Margeurite Duras], L'Amant
[Margeurite Duras], L'Amant
"Between eighteen and twenty five," she wrote, "my face took off in a new direction. My aging was very sudden. I saw it spread over my features one by one... And I've kept it ever since, the new face I had then. It has been my face. It's got older still, of course, but less, comparatively, than it would otherwise have done. It's scored with deep, dry wrinkles, the skin is cracked. But my face hasn't collapsed...It has the same contours, but its substance has been laid waste. I have a face laid waste..."
[Margeurite Duras], L'Amant
[Margeurite Duras], L'Amant
Writing is trying to know beforehand what one would write if one wrote, which one never knows until afterward.
[Margeurite Duras]
[Margeurite Duras]
For that's what a woman, a mother wants - to teach her children to take an interest in life. She knows it's safer for them to be interested in other people's happiness than to believe in their own.
[Margeurite Duras]
[Margeurite Duras]
In love there are no vacations. No such thing. Love has to be lived fully with its boredom and all that.
[Margeurite Duras]
[Margeurite Duras]
The Hold Up
Stripped of leaves,
surprised -
the trees
scrape the grey winter sky
with veined brittle arms.
[M. NourbeSe Philip]
Stripped of leaves,
surprised -
the trees
scrape the grey winter sky
with veined brittle arms.
[M. NourbeSe Philip]
Rational behavior, in particular, depends upon a ceaseless flow of data from the environment. It depends upon the power of the individual to predict, with at list a fair success, the outcome of his own actions. To do this, he must be able to predict how the environment will respond to his acts. Sanity, itself, thus hinges on man's ability to predict his immediate, personal future on the basis of information fed him by the environment.
[Alvin Toffler], Future Shock
[Alvin Toffler], Future Shock
It was Trout's fantasy that somebody would be outraged by the footprints. This would give him the opportunity to reply grandly, "What is it that offends you so? I am simply using man's first printing press. You are reading a bold and universal headline which says, 'I am here, I am here, I am here.'"
[Kurt Vonnegut], Breakfast Of Champions
[Kurt Vonnegut], Breakfast Of Champions
"You know what the truth is?" said Karabekian. "It's some crazy thing my neighbor believes. If I want to make friends with him, I ask him what he believes. He tells me, and I say, 'Yeah, yeah - ain't it the truth?'"
[Kurt Vonnegut], Breakfast Of Champions
[Kurt Vonnegut], Breakfast Of Champions
Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.
[Kurt Vonnegut], Breakfast Of Champions
[Kurt Vonnegut], Breakfast Of Champions
The girl with the greyhound was an assistant lighting director for a musical comedy about American history, and she kept her poor greyhound, who was named Lancer, in a one-room apartment fourteen feet wide and twenty-six feet long, and six flights of stairs above street level. His entire life was devoted to unloading his excrement at the proper time and place. There were two proper places to put it: in the gutter outside the door seventy-two steps below, with the traffic whizzing by, or in a roasting pan his mistress kept in front of the Westinghouse refrigerator.
Lancer had a very small brain, but he must have suspected from time to time, just as Wayne Hoobler did, that some kind of terrible mistake had been made.
[Kurt Vonnegut], Breakfast Of Champions
Lancer had a very small brain, but he must have suspected from time to time, just as Wayne Hoobler did, that some kind of terrible mistake had been made.
[Kurt Vonnegut], Breakfast Of Champions
And the peanut butter-eaters on Earth were preparing to conquer the shazzbutter-eaters on the planet in the book by Kilgore Trout. By this time, the Earthlings hadn't just demolished West Virginia and Southeast Asia. They had demolished everything. So they were ready to go pioneering again.
They studied the shazzbutter-eaters by means of electronic snooping, and determined that they were too numerous and proud and resourceful ever to allow themselves to be pioneered.
So the Earthlings infiltrated the ad agency which had the shazzbutter account, and they buggered the statistics in the ads. They made the average for everything so high that everybody on the planet felt inferior to the majority in every respect.
And then the Earthling armored space ships came in and discovered the planet. Only token of resistance was offered here and there, because the natives felt so below average. And then the pioneering began.
[Kurt Vonnegut], Breakfast Of Champions
They studied the shazzbutter-eaters by means of electronic snooping, and determined that they were too numerous and proud and resourceful ever to allow themselves to be pioneered.
So the Earthlings infiltrated the ad agency which had the shazzbutter account, and they buggered the statistics in the ads. They made the average for everything so high that everybody on the planet felt inferior to the majority in every respect.
And then the Earthling armored space ships came in and discovered the planet. Only token of resistance was offered here and there, because the natives felt so below average. And then the pioneering began.
[Kurt Vonnegut], Breakfast Of Champions
There was a message written in pencil on the tiles by the roller towel. This was it:
What is the purpose of life?
Trout plundered his pockets for a pen or pencil. He had an answer to the question. But he had nothing to write with, not even a burnt match. So he left the question unanswered, but here is what he would have written, if he had found anything to write with:
To be
the eyes
and ears
and conscience
of the Creator of the Universe,
you fool.
[Kurt Vonnegut], Breakfast Of Champions
What is the purpose of life?
Trout plundered his pockets for a pen or pencil. He had an answer to the question. But he had nothing to write with, not even a burnt match. So he left the question unanswered, but here is what he would have written, if he had found anything to write with:
To be
the eyes
and ears
and conscience
of the Creator of the Universe,
you fool.
[Kurt Vonnegut], Breakfast Of Champions
"You know San Lorenzo well?" I asked.
"This'll be the first time I've ever seen it, but everything I've heard about it I like," said H. Lowe Crosby. "They've got discipline. they've got something you can count on from one year to the next. They don't have the government encouraging everybody to be some kind of original pissant nobody ever heard before."
"Sir?"
"Christ, back in Chicago, we don't make bicycles any more. It's all human relations now. The eggheads sit around trying to figure out new ways for everybody to be happy. Nobody can get fired, no matter what; and if somebody does accidentally make a bicycle, the union accuses us of cruel and inhuman practices and the government confiscates the bicycle for back taxes and gives it to a blind man in Afghanistan."
"And you think things will be better in San Lorenzo?"
"I know damn well they will be. The people down there are poor enough and scared enough and ignorant enough to have some common sense!"
[Kurt Vonnegut], Cat's Craddle / The Books of Bokonon
"This'll be the first time I've ever seen it, but everything I've heard about it I like," said H. Lowe Crosby. "They've got discipline. they've got something you can count on from one year to the next. They don't have the government encouraging everybody to be some kind of original pissant nobody ever heard before."
"Sir?"
"Christ, back in Chicago, we don't make bicycles any more. It's all human relations now. The eggheads sit around trying to figure out new ways for everybody to be happy. Nobody can get fired, no matter what; and if somebody does accidentally make a bicycle, the union accuses us of cruel and inhuman practices and the government confiscates the bicycle for back taxes and gives it to a blind man in Afghanistan."
"And you think things will be better in San Lorenzo?"
"I know damn well they will be. The people down there are poor enough and scared enough and ignorant enough to have some common sense!"
[Kurt Vonnegut], Cat's Craddle / The Books of Bokonon
His pores looked as big as craters on the moon. His ears and nostrils were stuffed with hair. Cigar smoke made him smell like the mouth of Hell. So close up, my father was the ugliest thing I had ever seen. I dream about it all the time.
[Kurt Vonnegut], Cat's Cradle
[Kurt Vonnegut], Cat's Cradle
...Then said the King, "Come to me not clothed, not naked, not riding, not walking, not in the road, and not off the road, and if you can do that I will marry you."
[Brothers Grimm], "The Peasant's Wise Daughter"
[Brothers Grimm], "The Peasant's Wise Daughter"
Passion, after all these years, was different from what it had been when I'd made those first visits to her Turtle Bay apartment. Then our desire for each other had been fierce and urgent and undeniable. Now it had been tempered by time and custom. The love, present from the beginning, had grown infinitely broader and deeper with time; the delight we've always taken in each other's company was keener than ever. And our passion, it it had grown less furious, was richer as well.
We kissed again, and her breath caught in her throat. We moved to the bedroom, shed our clothes.
"I love you," I said. Or may be she said it. After a while you loose track.
[Lawrence Block], "Even the wicked"
We kissed again, and her breath caught in her throat. We moved to the bedroom, shed our clothes.
"I love you," I said. Or may be she said it. After a while you loose track.
[Lawrence Block], "Even the wicked"
...So I listened, and all they did was make the sounds people make when they are thus engaged (love-making). Some grunting, some groaning, some mumbling, some moaning, and the occasional sharp intake of breath and small sign of appreciation.
[Lawrence Block], "The burgler in the rye"
[Lawrence Block], "The burgler in the rye"
The Hold Up
Stripped of leaves,
surprised -
the trees
scrape the grey winter sky
with veined brittle arms.
[M. Nourbese Philip]
Stripped of leaves,
surprised -
the trees
scrape the grey winter sky
with veined brittle arms.
[M. Nourbese Philip]
shy wildflower found
peeking out from winter's bed
serendipity
seeing you after so long
a brief collision of joy
[Vicki Goodfellow Duke]
peeking out from winter's bed
serendipity
seeing you after so long
a brief collision of joy
[Vicki Goodfellow Duke]
There was no anger in her for Kino. He has said, " I am a man", and that meant certain things to Juana. It meant that he was half insane and half god. it meant that Kino would drive his strength against a mountain and plunge his strength against the sea. Juana, in her woman's soul, knew that the mountain would stand while the man broke himself; that the sea would surge while the man drowned in it. And yet it was this thing that made him a man, half insane and half god, and Juana had need of a man; she could not live without a man.
... He drew strength from her.
[John Steinbeck], "The Pearl"
... He drew strength from her.
[John Steinbeck], "The Pearl"
I have forgotten the words with which to tell you. I knew them once, but I've forgotten them, and now I'm talking to you without them. Unlikely as it may seem, I'm not the sort of woman who gives herself up body and soul to the love of one person, even the person who's dearest to her in the whole world. I am someone who's unfaithful. I wish I could find the words I laid aside to tell you that. And now some of them are coming back to me. I wanted to tell you what I think, which is that one always ought to keep oneself a place, yes, that's the word, a private place, where one can be alone and love. To love one knows not what, nor whom, nor how, nor for how long. To love... now all the words are suddenly coming back... To set aside a place inside oneself to wait, you never know, to wait for a love, perhaps for a love without a person attached to it yet, but for that and only that. For love. I wanted to tell you you were what I had waited for. You alone became the outer surface of my life; the side I never see, and you will be that, the unknown part of me until I die. Don't ever answer this. And please don't hope to see me.
[Margeurite Duras], "Emily L." (p.98)
[Margeurite Duras], "Emily L." (p.98)
We had stretched out on our deck chairs and were watching the pale pink mountains of Arabia slide past, very beautiful, very inhuman. The sun was revolving heavily over our heads, like a millstone. White men and white women were beginning to decompose.
[Nikos Kazantzakis], "The Rock Garden"
[Nikos Kazantzakis], "The Rock Garden"
When he comes back she's there, lying in her place.
She looks at him without seeing him, her eyes empty. She's angry in a way he doesn't recognize, smoldering, spiteful.
She says, "You'd like to handle the idea of God as if it were some sort of marchandise, distribute it everywhere, gaudy and old-fashioned as it is, as if God needed your help."
He doesn't answer. He is the sort of man that doesn't answer.
She goes on: "When you cry, you cry because you can't make people accept God. Because you can't steal him and then share him out."
Her anger disappers, and the lying. She lies down and covers her body with the sheets and her face with the black silk.
She says, weeping, "But you never mention God either." She says, "God is the law that reigns always and everywhere, no need to go and look for it at night by the sea."
She weeps. She's in a state of deep dejection that isn't painful, that is wept rather than spoken, that can go with a sort of happiness. And that he knows he can never mention to her.
[Margeurite Duras], "Blue eyes, black hair"
She looks at him without seeing him, her eyes empty. She's angry in a way he doesn't recognize, smoldering, spiteful.
She says, "You'd like to handle the idea of God as if it were some sort of marchandise, distribute it everywhere, gaudy and old-fashioned as it is, as if God needed your help."
He doesn't answer. He is the sort of man that doesn't answer.
She goes on: "When you cry, you cry because you can't make people accept God. Because you can't steal him and then share him out."
Her anger disappers, and the lying. She lies down and covers her body with the sheets and her face with the black silk.
She says, weeping, "But you never mention God either." She says, "God is the law that reigns always and everywhere, no need to go and look for it at night by the sea."
She weeps. She's in a state of deep dejection that isn't painful, that is wept rather than spoken, that can go with a sort of happiness. And that he knows he can never mention to her.
[Margeurite Duras], "Blue eyes, black hair"
"How old are you? I never knew how old you were."
She actually laughed a little, showing her broad white teeth.
"As old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth", she said.
"So am I."
"Sixteen," she said. " That's how old I am."
"Is that old?" he said.
"I sometimes think," she said, "it's as old as I ever want to be."
[?]
She actually laughed a little, showing her broad white teeth.
"As old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth", she said.
"So am I."
"Sixteen," she said. " That's how old I am."
"Is that old?" he said.
"I sometimes think," she said, "it's as old as I ever want to be."
[?]
...but even more important was the little redhead who started making eyes at me about a week after I got there. She wasn't much to look at, at least not compared to the showgirls I'd horsed around with in Chicago, but there was a bemused flicker in those green eyes that struck a chord with me, and I didn't waste much time in getting to know her. I've made only two good decisions in my life. The first one was following Master Yehudi onto that train when I was nine years old. The second one was marrying Molly Fitzsimmons. Molly put me together again, and considering the kind of shape I was in when I landed in Newmark, that was not a small job... God knows what she saw in me, but I fell for her because she made me feel comfortable, because she brought out my old wise-cracking self and knew a good joke when she heard one. There was nothing flashy about her, nothing to make her stand out in a crowd. Pass her on the street, and she was just another working stiff's wife: one of those women with pudgy hips and broad bottom who didn't bother to put on a make up unless she was going out to a restaurant. But she had spirit, Molly did, and in her own quiet, watchful way, she was as sharp as any person I've ever known. She was kind; she didn't bear grudges; she stood up for me and never tried to turn me into someone I wasn't. If she was a bit of a slob as a housekeeper and something less than a good cook, that didn't matter. She wasn't my servant, after all, she was my wife. She was also the one true friend I'd had since my days in Kansas with Aesop and Mother Soux, the first woman I'd ever loved.
[Paul Auster], "Mr. Vertigo"
[Paul Auster], "Mr. Vertigo"
"If it hadn't been for the present, I probably would have gone through with it. When Billy Bigelow brought back that package from Cape Cod, I couldn't resist taking a peek. A bride's not supposed to open her presents before the wedding, but this one was special, and once I unwrapped it, I knew the marriage wasn't meant to be."
"What was in the box?"
"I thought you knew."
"I never got around to asking him."
"He gave me a globe. A globe of the world."
"A globe? What's so special about that?"
"It wasn't the present, Walt. It was the note he sent along with it."
"I never saw that either."
"One sentence, that's all it was. Wherever you are, I'll be with you. I read those words, and then I fell apart. There was only one man for me, sweetie pie. If I couldn't have him, I wasn't going to fool around with substitutes and cheap imitations."
[Paul Auster], "Mr. Vertigo"
"What was in the box?"
"I thought you knew."
"I never got around to asking him."
"He gave me a globe. A globe of the world."
"A globe? What's so special about that?"
"It wasn't the present, Walt. It was the note he sent along with it."
"I never saw that either."
"One sentence, that's all it was. Wherever you are, I'll be with you. I read those words, and then I fell apart. There was only one man for me, sweetie pie. If I couldn't have him, I wasn't going to fool around with substitutes and cheap imitations."
[Paul Auster], "Mr. Vertigo"
She said quite simply to me, "You look more like a prince. I must call you Prince Charming".
[Oscar Wilde], "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
[Oscar Wilde], "The Picture of Dorian Gray"
She framed his face in her hands, looking into him straight on. What did it mean, the first time a thinking creature looked deeply into another's eyes? Did it take a hundred thousand years before this happened or was it the first thing they did, transcendingly, the thing that made them higher, made them modern, the gaze that demonstrates we are lonely in our souls?
She said, "Why do you think I'm standing closer to you than you are to me?"
[Don DeLillo], "The Body Artist"
She said, "Why do you think I'm standing closer to you than you are to me?"
[Don DeLillo], "The Body Artist"
I loved you and this love by chance,
Inside my soul has never fully vanished;
No longer shall it ever make you tense;
I wouldn't want to sadden you with anguish.
I loved you speechlessly and wildly,
By modesty and jealousy was stressed;
I loved you so sincerely and so mildly,
As, God permit, may love you someone else.
[Pushkin]
Inside my soul has never fully vanished;
No longer shall it ever make you tense;
I wouldn't want to sadden you with anguish.
I loved you speechlessly and wildly,
By modesty and jealousy was stressed;
I loved you so sincerely and so mildly,
As, God permit, may love you someone else.
[Pushkin]
"Why is it", he said, one time, at the subway entrance, "I feel I've known you so many years?". "Because I like you", she said, "and I don't want anything from you. And because we know each other."
[Ray Bradbury], "Fahrenheit 451"
[Ray Bradbury], "Fahrenheit 451"
I don't know what Bunny's Topless is like at night. It almost have to be livelier, with more young women showing their breasts and more men staring at them. And it is probably sad at any hour, deeply sad in the manner of most emporia that cater to our less noble instincts. Gambling casinos are sad in that way, and the glitzer they are the more palable is their sadness. It has an ozone-tainted reek of base dreams and broken promises.
[Lawrence Block], "Even the wicked"
[Lawrence Block], "Even the wicked"