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eee09e6 Life is bearable even when it's unbearable: that is what's so terrible, that is the unbearable thing about it. life Geoff Dyer
176ece2 To be interested in something is to be involved in what is essentially a stressful relationship with that thing, to suffer anxiety on its behalf. Geoff Dyer
50d033c I am always on the edge of what I am doing. I do everything badly, sloppily, to get it over with so that I can get on to the next thing that I will do badly and sloppily so that I can then do nothing - which I do anxiously, distractedly, wondering all the time if there isn't something else I should be getting on with. work motivation purpose Geoff Dyer
715b65e I had read four thousand pages of letters by Lawrence and I wanted thousands of pages more... I wanted them not to end. And yet, at the same time that I was wishing they would not come to an end, I was hurrying through these books because however much you are enjoying a book, however much you want it never to end, you are always eager for it end. However much you are enjoying a book you are always flicking to the end, counting to see how .. reading Geoff Dyer
0a7f20a We'd never seen anything as green as these rice paddies. It was not just the paddies themselves: the surrounding vegetation - foliage so dense the trees lost track of whose leaves were whose - was a rainbow coalition of one colour: green. There was an infinity of greens, rendered all the greener by splashes of red hibiscus and the herons floating past, so white and big it seemed as if sheets hung out to dry had suddenly taken wing. All othe.. travel globetrotting southeast-asia verdant landscapes green travel-writing jungle Geoff Dyer
ab9752c When I'm working I'm wishing I was doing nothing and when I'm doing nothing I'm wondering if I should be working. I hurry through what I've got to do and then, when I've got nothing to do, I keep glancing at the clock, wishing it was time to go out. Then, when I'm out, I'm wondering how long it will be before I'm back home. work contrary rush idleness Geoff Dyer
06c2c2a My greatest urge in life is to do nothing. It's not even an absence of motivation, a lack, for I do have a strong urge: to do nothing. To down tools, to stop. Except I know that if I do that I will fall into despair, and I know that it is worth doing anything in one's power to avoid depression because from there, from being depressed, it is only an imperceptible step to despair: the last refuge of the ego. depression motivation philosophy idleness despair Geoff Dyer
96080d9 if mankind was put on earth to create works of art, then other people were put on earth to comment on those works, to say what they think of them. Not to judge objectively or critically assess these works but to articulate their feelings about them with as much precision as possible, without seeking to disguise the vagaries of their nature, their lapses of taste and the contingency of their own experiences, even if those feelings are of con.. Geoff Dyer
34d35a0 I always like to be in the presence of people who are good at and love their jobs, Irrespective of their jobs. work enthusiasm vocation job Geoff Dyer
8d2c311 The paradox is that some of the most artistically valuable contemporary photographs are content with being photographs, are not under the same compulsion to pass themselves off - or pimp themselves out - as art. The simple truth is that the best exponents of the art of contemporary photography continue to produce work that fits broadly within the tradition of what Evans termed 'documentary style'. photography documentary pretension contemporary Geoff Dyer
b5151eb The perfect life, the perfect lie, I realised after Christmas, is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, say, or written unpublishable poetry) but which, in fact, you have no wish to do. motivation life lie frustration Geoff Dyer
8cf3268 In the cramped confines of the toilet I had trouble getting out of my wet trousers, which clung to my legs like a drowning man. The new ones were quite complicated too in that they had more legs than a spider; either that or they didn't have enough legs to get mine into. The numbers failed to add up. Always there was one trouser leg too many or one of my legs was left over. From the outside it may have looked like a simple toilet, but once .. travel humour humor lmao drugs Geoff Dyer
918c9c8 although I was as zealous in my anti-faith as Paul was in his belief I would be lying if I did not confess to a slight chink in my armour of nonbelief. Geoff Dyer
00875a5 That is why Lawrence, like Rilke, hated photographs of himself. To both writers photographs prefigured an end of becoming. Geoff Dyer
2971c88 There was something very American about this ability to dwell constantly in the realm of the improvable superlative. progress optimism Geoff Dyer
f0996de I've always been intimidated by gyms, have never been able to enjoy the towel-round-the-shoulder confidence of somebody who knows he can bench-press 250 pounds, or even knows what that means or how much 250 pounds weighs. I just know I don't like lifting heavy things, especially since I had this wrist injury which stopped me playing tennis and which means that I've gone from being fit and thin-looking to just a feeble streak of unshouldered.. inspirational Geoff Dyer
f7c4156 Instead of spending his afternoons prowling the parks and jerking off like this he should have been working on his French, which was so poor that even the simplest tasks - deciphering menus, buying bleach to clean out the toilet, ordering sandwiches - became major exercises in pantomime diplomacy. Geoff Dyer
e47164a Lange claimed that every photograph was a self-portrait of the photographer. Geoff Dyer
151d43c He was the subject of a little respectful ribbing. But he was, of course, the captain, which meant he had to do lots of the ribbing himself. leadership respect Geoff Dyer
9d3c7ca If you help them (the crew) create good memories, they'll forget all the bad stuff memories teamwork Geoff Dyer
f16bbd7 In his book Real Presences, George Steiner asks us to "imagine a society in which all talk about the arts, music and literature is prohibited." In such a society there would be no more essays on whether Hamlet was mad or only pretending to be, no reviews of the latest exhibitions or novels, no profiles of writers or artists. There would be no secondary, or parasitic, discussion - let alone tertiary: commentary on commentary. We would have, .. criticism jazz Geoff Dyer
f77f061 People realize that a life that had seemed enjoyable (travel, social life, romance) and fulfilling (work) was actually empty and meaningless. So they urge you to join the child-rearing party: they want you to share the riches, the pleasures, the joys. Or so they claim. I suspect that hey just want to share and spread the misery. (The knowledge that someone is at liberty or has escaped makes the pain of incarceration doubly hard to bear). Of.. life-lessons humor Geoff Dyer
da3e701 So it comes about that the war [World War I] seems, to us, to have been fought less over territory than the way it would be remembered, that the war's true subject is remembrance. Indeed the whole war -- which was being remembered even as it was fought, whose fallen were being remembered before they fell -- seems not so much to be tinted by retrospect as to have been fought retrospectively. war retrospection wwi Geoff Dyer
9c713cf It occurred to Jeff that he had entered the vague phase of his life. He had a vague idea of things, a vague sense of what was happening in the world, a vague sense of having meant someone before. It was like being vaguely drunk all the time. Geoff Dyer
821c158 in Dillard it's the comedy of rapture. Or at least it's a comedy that permits prose and thought to soar while inoculating the rapturous against the three ills of which nature writers should live in permanent dread: preciousness, reverence, and earnestness... Geoff Dyer
794eb35 The discovery in art is often gradual, a process of minor discoveries riddled with uncertainties and the potential for making that which is discovered vanish before your eyes, like a mirage. Geoff Dyer
3f4d77c The perfect life, the perfect lie ... is one which prevents you from doing that which you would ideally have done (painted, say, or written unpublishable poetry) but which, in fact, you have no wish to do. People need to feel that they have been thwarted by circumstances from pursuing the life which, had they led it, they would not have wanted; whereas the life they really want is precisely a compound of all those thwarting circumstances. I.. Geoff Dyer
2055f14 Then he just let it ring, the phone pressed to his head like a pistol, her picture in his hands. Geoff Dyer
34f644a Mingus had always known that that was what the blues was: music played to the dead, calling them back, showing them the way back to the living. Now he realized part of the blues was the opposite of that: the desire to be dead yourself, a way of helping the living find the dead. Geoff Dyer
a760605 Rarely understanding how much shopkeepers and waiters were charging him, he paid for everything with fifty-or hundred-franc notes and came home with sagging pockets of change. Geoff Dyer
0b2127a It was so hot we spent our waking hours dozing and our sleeping hours lying awake, trying to sleep. Geoff Dyer
121732b Part of jazz is the illusion of spontaneity and Monk played the piano as though he'd never seen one before. Geoff Dyer
cc7a6b6 It was impossible to say where one gesture ended and the next began. Geoff Dyer
fbdd18d In Notes of a Jazz Survivor, a documentary about his drug- and jail-ravaged life, Art Pepper and his wife, Laurie, listen to his recording of "Our Song." The entry of the saxophone, Pepper explains, is "like the most subtle hello." Ramamani's voice is the response to this call; it is Laurie's hand reaching for her husband's as they listen. Ramamani tells us not only what it is like to love, but also what it is like to be loved. When I hear .. Geoff Dyer
957e614 You know that feeling when you first arrive in a new city? However tired you are, however shattered by the flight, you are impatient to get out and sample the streets, the life, the action. travel-writing Geoff Dyer
1b5b14b Arbus would later insist, 'the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture Geoff Dyer
878b0fd It occurred to Jeff that he had entered the vague phase of his life. He had a vague idea of things, a vague sense of what was happening in the world, a vague sense of having met someone before. It was like being vaguely drunk all the time. Geoff Dyer
fd03bdb metonymy into dinner-party chat back at London beach. I Geoff Dyer
cebf249 The recruits of 1914 have the look of ghosts. They are queuing up to be slaughtered: they are already dead. war somme soldiers ghosts Geoff Dyer
29169ce Most of all, he loved Celia Johnson, her hats,her face,her cracked porcelain voice: 'This can't last. This misery can't last.Nothing lasts really,neither happiness nor despair.Not even life lasts long....There'll come a time in the future when i shan't mind about this any more.... Geoff Dyer
1df49aa I was too irritable from the drive to go straight into the D. H. Lawrence Birthplace Museum and Gift Shop so I ordered a calming cup of tea in the White Peacock Cafe. 'Mug or cup?' 'Cup please,' I said, thinking that I could have said 'I said "cup".' I said cup because I have never enjoyed tea from a mug - and for that matter, only rarely from a cup. Basically I don't like tea but what else is there? Life is really no more than a search for.. inspirational Geoff Dyer
d21333a If the regular length of a shot is increased, one becomes bored, but if you keep on making it longer, it piques your interest, and if you make it even longer, a new quality emerges, a special intensity of attention.' This is Tarkovsky's aesthetic in a nutshell. Geoff Dyer
54e3e5b The most famous footballing episode was Captain Nevill's kicking a ball into No Man's Land on the first day of the Somme. A prize was offered to the first man to dribble the ball into the German trenches; Nevill himself scrambled out of the trench in pursuit of his goal and was cut down immediately. (Perhaps the Somme was not only an indictment of military strategy but also of the British propensity for the long-ball game.) Geoff Dyer
951b441 Most people don't want what they want: people love to be prevented, restricted. The hamster not only loves his cage, he'd be lost without it. Geoff Dyer
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