26 Thursday Oct 2017
“I am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all I have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. I am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world affected was affected by mine. I am anything that happens after I’m gone which would not have happened if I had not come.”
— Salman Rushdie (Midnight’s Children)
19 Thursday Oct 2017
“Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
12 Thursday Oct 2017
“I just can’t help thinking what a real shake up it would give people if, all of a sudden, there were no new books, new plays, new histories, new poems…”
And how proud would you be when people started dying like flies?” I demanded.
They’d die more like mad dogs, I think–snarling & snapping at each other & biting their own tails.”
I turned to Castle the elder. “Sir, how does a man die when he’s deprived of the consolation of literature?”
In one of two ways,” he said, “putrescence of the heart or atrophy of the nervous system.”
Neither one very pleasant, I expect,” I suggested.
No,” said Castle the elder. “For the love of God, both of you, please keep writing!”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Cat’s Cradle
05 Thursday Oct 2017
“What use is a god with boundless mercy, sir? You mock me as a pagan, yet the gods of my ancestors pronounce clearly their ways and punish severely when we break their laws. Your Christian god of mercy gives men licence to pursue their greed, their lust for land and blood, knowing a few prayers and a little penance will bring forgiveness and blessing.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Buried Giant
28 Thursday Sep 2017
“It is clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about. Everywhere they had run wild and taken possession of their habitat, breeding and multiplying, and clearly lacking any strong hand to keep them down.”
— Agatha Christie (The Clocks)
21 Thursday Sep 2017
“At various points in our lives, or on a quest, for reasons that often remain obscure , we are driven to make decisions which prove with hindsight to be loaded with meaning.”
— Dai Sijie, Once on a Moonless Night
14 Thursday Sep 2017
“The story is told that when Joe was a child his cousins emptied his Christmas stocking and replaced the gifts with horse manure. Joe took one look and bolted for the door, eyes glittering with excitement. ‘Wait, Joe, where are you going? What did ol’ Santa bring you?’ According to the story Joe paused at the door for a piece of rope. ‘Brought me a bran’-new pony but he got away. I’ll catch ’em if I hurry.’ And ever since then it seemed that Joe had been accepting more than his share of hardship as good fortune, and more than his share of shit as a sign of Shetland ponies just around the corner, Thoroughbred stallions just up the road.”
— Ken Kesey (Sometimes a Great Notion)
07 Thursday Sep 2017
Posted in Author, books, cat, Coffee, Quotables, Quote, science fiction, Thursday Quotables, Today, Writer
“Those two, in paradise, were given a choice: happiness without freedom, or freedom without happiness. There was no third alternative. Those idiots chose freedom, and what came of it? Of course, for ages afterward they longed for the chains.”
— Yevgeny Zamyatin, WE
31 Thursday Aug 2017
There are no principles, only events; there are no laws, only circumstances: a superior man espouses events and circumstances the better to influence them. If fixed principles and laws really existed, countries wouldn’t change them as often as we change shirts. One man can’t be expected to show more sense than an entire nation.
— Honore de Balzac, Father Goriot
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/b/balzac_honore_de_ii.html#ef3Am87lDhH8ydop.99
24 Thursday Aug 2017
“However stupid a fool’s words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man.”
― Nikolai Gogol, Dead Souls
