Quotes

"God help us — for art is long, and life so short." —Faust

yesiamapersonplease

12h

“Reports furthermore beginning to come in from gorcery stores all across the U.S.A. of Radio-Cheez shelf incidents, getting warmer and warmer till eventually exploding, sending once loyal customers running in blind panic down to nearby rivers to throw in all their as yet unexploded jars of the product, which were then carried away buoyant and glowing down stream, sometimes hundreds, even thousands of miles to coastal harbors and ports before detonating against the hulls of ships at anchor, any found still upstream being promptly labelled enemy mines, with duly sworn sharpshooters ordered to fire at them from a safe distance. Fish in the rivers and harbors were briefly puzzled by the bright new scatter of food potential, until deciding, all together the way fish do, that they didn't much care for Radio-Cheez either.”
—Narrator, Account of the fate of Radio-Cheez

yesiamapersonplease

12h

“Cheese, oh to be sure cheese is alive. Self-aware, actually, maybe not exactly the way we are, but still more than some clever simulation. We're at a pivot point in the history of food science, a strange new form of life that was deliberately invented, like Doctor Frankenstein or something--”
—snippet from the Bruno Airmont Dairy Metaphysics Symposium held annually at the Department of Cheese Studies at the UW branch in Cheboygan

permutant

“I hate solitude, but I am atraid of intimacy. The substance of my life is a private conversation with myself which to turn into a dialogue would be equivalent to self-destruction. The company which I need is the company which a pub or a café will provide. I have never wanted a communion of souls. It's already hard enough to tell the truth to oneself.”
—Jake Donaghue

permutant

“At that time too it had not yet become clear to me that the present age was not one in which it was possible to write an epic. At that time I naively imagined that there was no reason why one should not attempt to write anything that one felt inclined to write. But nothing is more paralysing than a sense of historical perspective, especially in literary matters. At a certain point perhaps one ought simply to stop reflecting.”
—Jake Donaghue

anaca

“Hunger is the kitten Willow-Lauri put in a sack, which scratches away with its small claws, causing searing pain; then more scratching, then more, until the kitten is exhausted and falls to the bottom of the sack, weighing heavily there, before gathering its strength and starting a fresh struggle. You want to lift the animal out, but it scratches so hard you dare not reach inside. You have no option but to carry the bundle to the lake and throw it into the hole in the ice.”
—Mataleena

anaca

“Ton défaut, mon Charles bien aimé, c’est le manque de relief. Cocteau disait qu’ Apollinaire avait une grosse goutte de gloire au bout de la plume. Comprends-tu ?.. Comment acquérir le relief ? me demandes-tu en levant vers ma vieille face ton regard humide et affectueux. Il faut penser son poème longuement ou sa strophe, ou son vers. Il faut “porter” longtemps avant d’écrire. Et, pour éviter que cette grossesse ne donne l’effet contraire, c’est-à-dire trop d’escargot individuel et d’obscurité, choisis des mots gros et voyants faisant image forte. Alors tu auras du relief et de la force. Il faut souvent faire appel à ton ventre, à ton bon sens, à la cuisinière. Cela donne du relief. Il faut se comprendre bien soi-même, même dans le mystère, le grand mystère. Même dans l’inspiration, il faut la survie.”
—Max Jacob

langue_dans_la_joue

“I told Marie about the old man's habits and it made her laugh. She was wearing one of my pajama suits, and had the sleeves rolled up. When she laughed I wanted her again. A moment later she asked me if I loved her. I said that sort of question had no meaning, really; but I supposed I didn't. She looked sad for a bit, but when we were getting our lunch ready she brightened up and started laughing, and when she laughs I always want to kiss her.”
—Arthur Meursault

oct

“When Mascis was asked in a Melody Maker interview what the band planned to do now that Barlow had gone, his reply may have defined the slacker ethos right then and there. “We have no plans for what we want to do next,” he said. “We have no plans about anything, really.””
—Narrator

oct

“Outside, the streets were slick with frost, and his boots, on the pavement, sounded unusually loud, it being so early on a Sunday. When he reached the yard gate and found the padlock seized with frost, he felt the strain of being alive and wished he had stayed in bed, but he made himself carry on and crossed to a neighbour’s house, whose light was on.”
—Narrator

oct

“That was the feeling which possessed her now—the feeling of being something rootless and ephemeral, mere spindrift of the whirling surface of existence, without anything to which the poor little tentacles of self could cling before the awful flood submerged them.”
—Narrator

oct

“The first two weeks after her return represented to Mrs. Peniston the domestic equivalent of a religious retreat. She “went through” the linen and blankets in the precise spirit of the penitent exploring the inner folds of conscience; she sought for moths as the stricken soul seeks for lurking infirmities. The topmost shelf of every closet was made to yield up its secret, cellar and coal-bin were probed to their darkest depths and, as a final stage in the lustral rites, the entire house was swathed in penitential white and deluged with expiatory soapsuds.”
—Narrator

oct

“And then, one night, a night so thin that two men, one standing in Tuesday and the other in Wednesday, could shake hands, she came to him completely transformed, so beautiful that the very sight of her frightened people away.”
—Narrator

oct

“I thought, he would have been happy, happy in his sense of the word, but he lacked the courage for such a decision, was incapable of performing the small about-face that I had often spoken of in his presence but that he never attempted. He wanted to be an artist, an artist of life wasn’t enough for him, although precisely this concept provides everything we need to be happy if we think about it, I thought. Ultimately he was enamored of failure, if not even a little smitten, I thought, had clung to this failure of his until the end.”
—Narrator

anaca

“Everything about yourself has been evened out, is now neutral and not especially interesting. You are your own companion, who seldom talks and never asks questions; a person you can live with. Your existence is turned out ward in calm observation of familiar things that constantly change, giving you a remarkable sense of security and excitement.”
—Tove Jansson

anaca

“It is astonishing the number of people who go around dreaming of an island. Sometimes they're deliberate people who search for their island and secure it and sometimes the island dream is a passive symbol of what lies one step out of reach. The island, privacy at last - distance, intimacy a self-contained universe without bridges and fences. Protected and isolated bv the water, which, at the same time, opens up the possibility of contact with others. A possibility never exploited.”
—Tove Jansson

anaca

“At the end of her notebook Ham wrote. underlined “We must not gild the lily.” Yes, yes, I know, probably from the Bible. And I know exactly what she meant - that we’ve tried to make the meadow into a garden, change the thicket into a park, tame the shore with a dock, and all the other things we’ve undeniably done wrong. Okay, we make mistakes. What of it? Sometimes it felt like unrequited love - everything exagerated. I had the feling that this immoderately pampered and badly treated island was a living thing that didn’t like us, or felt sorry for us, depending on the way we behaved, or iust because.”
—Tove Jansson

anaca

“When we tired of that game, we sat down and took stock. The sea was chalk white in every direction as far as the eye could see. It was only then that we noticed the absolute silence. And that we had started whispering. Now came the long wait. I was seized by a new feeling of detachment that was utterly unlike isolation, merely a sense of being an outsider, with no worry or guilt about anything at all. I don't know how it happened but life became very simple and I just let myself be happy.”
—Tove Jansson

anaca

16d

“Since I was brought here I've been convinced that I'm dead, but that in my particular case they've made an exception and allowed me to stay in the simulation. I'm like a plant where everything's withered away apart from a single green shoot that's still alive, and this shoot is my body and mind, and my mind is like a hand, it touches rather than thinks.”
—Statement 035

anaca

16d

“The fragrance in the room has will and intention. It's the smell of something old and decomposing, something musty. It's as if the smell wishes to initiate the same process in me: that I become a branch to break off, rot and be gone.”
—Statement 026

anaca

17d

“Whatever you don't have is only important to you because you don't have it. Something you want is very important to you until you get it, and then it's nothing after a while. This movement from anticipation to accomplishment to disillusionment is inevitable. All change is futile. The alternative kind of life — conservative, preserving beliefs, avoiding change, a kind of stagnation within the protected bounds of first-learned concepts — is an equally futile way to live. Both ways to live are merely playing tiddlywinks between predoom and postdoom. Willingness to face the abyss of meaninglessness is the power required to accomplish change. Whatever your main struggle is, it is insignificant in the face of your death; it is petty and unimportant and has no meaning at all. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”
—Brad Blanton