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56fc5d4
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He sits all day on the terrace of the Brokers' Club watching women pass, with the restless eye of someone endlessly shuffling through an old soiled pack of cards.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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f0ff406
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This is nothing of medical interest -- a small chill. Diseases are not interested in those who want to die.' And then with one of those characteristic swerves of association, like a swallow turning in mid-air she added, 'Oh! Nessim, I have always been so strong. Has it prevented me from being truly loved?
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Lawrence Durrell |
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3a0221b
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Suddenly at the end of the great couloir my vision is sharpened by a pale disjunctive shudder as a bar of buttercup-yellow thickening gradually to a ray falls slowly through the dark masses of cloud to the east. The ripple and flurry of the invisible colonies of birds around us increases. Slowly, painfully, like a half-open door the dawn is upon us, forcing back the darkness. A minute more and a stairway of soft kingcups slides smoothly dow..
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Lawrence Durrell |
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947dfb1
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Nature had combined in him the features of a degenerate pope and the torpor of a crocodile, and to these had added a voice of unconscionable harshness.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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6b11be3
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These notes, however they may be read, are intended only as a painstaking affectionate commentary on a world into which I have been born to share my most solitary moments -- those of coitus -- with Justine. I can get no nearer to the truth.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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d7a8f48
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A million muffin-eating moralists were waiting, not for us, Brother Ass, but for the plucky and tedious Trollope!
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Lawrence Durrell |
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1aa3f6d
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A puritan culture's conception of art is something which will endorse its morality and flatter its patriotism.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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c131484
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The telephone is a modern symbol for communications which never take place
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Lawrence Durrell |
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737a772
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God's real and subtle nature must be clear of distinctions: a glass of spring-water, tasteless, odourless, merely refreshing: and surely its appeal would be to the few, the very few, real contemplatives?
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Lawrence Durrell |
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0172a60
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he had discovered for himself the uselessness of having opinions and in consequence made a habit of usually saying the opposite of what he thought in a joking way. He was an ironist, hence he appeared often to violate good sense: hence too his equivocal air, the apparent frivolity with which he addressed himself to large subjects. This sort of serious clowning leaves footmarks in conversation of a peculiar kind. His little sayings stayed li..
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Lawrence Durrell |
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f20c1df
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If you are born of the artist tribe it is a waste of time to try and function as a priest. You have to be faithful to your angle of vision, and at the same time recognise its partiality. There is a kind of perfection to be achieved in matching oneself to one's capacities at every level. This must, I imagine, do away with strivings, and with illusions too.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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ad95ce1
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Words are the mirrors of our discontents merely; they contain all the huge unhatched eggs of the world's sorrows.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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b35b821
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Minds dismembered by their sexual part' Balthazar had said once 'never find peace until old age and failing power as persuade them that silence and quietness are not hostile.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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0b48e3b
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One night he woke to the soughing of great wings and saw a bat-like creature with the head of a violin resting upon the bedrail.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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0f235cf
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He felt that his mind had become a battle-ground for the forces of good and evil and that his task was to strain every nerve to recognize them, but it was not easy.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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63802bd
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Pensaba y sufria mucho, pero le faltaba la fuerza necesaria para atreverse, primer requisito del que hace algo.
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justine
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Lawrence Durrell |
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ea4b97d
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The cousin was made of different stuff; his biting air of laziness and superiority made one want to kick him.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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c8839a2
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In India when I was a boy they had great big green lizards there, and if you shouted or shot them their tails would fall off. There was only one boy in the school who could catch lizards intact. No one knew quite how he did it. He had a special soft way of going up to them, and he'd bring them back with their tails on. That strikes me as the best analogy I can give you. To try and catch your poem without its tail falling off.
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poetry
the-paris-review
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Lawrence Durrell |
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6f623cc
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n tdkhl lHqy'q hw lTryq@ lwHyd@ k~ tkwn 'myn m` lzmn, Hshd f~ kl lHZ@ bHtmlt lnhy'y@ ltkthr. wlHy@ ttwqf `l~ f`l lkhtyr, 'bdy@ ldynwn@, w'bdy@ lntq.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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db1685a
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nn~ '`tqd, 'nh mn l'fDl ln 'n ndyr Zhwrn bwDwH llklmt lrnn@ mthl "ljml" w"lHqyq@" wm l~ dhlk. hl tryn m 'r~? nn skhf llGy@, wD`f l`qwl `ndm ntnwl 'mwr lHy@,lknn `mlq@ `ndm nHkm `l~ lkwn."
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Lawrence Durrell |
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a67c192
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wyktb bwrswrdn: "f~ lbdy@ ns`~ k~ nml' blHb frG dhwtn wnstmt` lHZ@ qSyr@ bwhm lkml. lkn dhlk lys l whm. Hyth n hdh lmkhlwq lGryb ldh~ '`tqdn 'nh sySln bjsd l`lm, qd njH f~ lnhy@, f~ fSln`nh fSl tm. lHb ySl thm yfrq wl fkyf ln 'n nnmw?"
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Lawrence Durrell |
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54f7a9f
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she had been raped by one of her relations. One cannot help smiling at the commonplaceness of the thought.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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247b5ef
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Basle, Zurich, Baden, Paris -- the flickering of steel rails over the arterial systems of Europe's body: steel ganglia meeting and dividing away across mountains and valleys.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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fdadaa1
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There is never enough light." To which I responded without thought: "For women perhaps. We men are less exigent."
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Lawrence Durrell |
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245e3c0
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The oranges were more plentiful than usual that year. They glowed in their arbours of burnished green leaf like lanterns, flickering up there among the sunny woods. It was as if they were eager to celebrate our departure from the little island -- for at last the long-awaited message from Nessim had come, like a summons back to the Underworld. A message which was to draw me back inexorably to the one city which for me always hovered between ..
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Lawrence Durrell |
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9b13e4f
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A neni nove zeme, priteli, zadneho noveho more; ponevadz mesto pujde porad s tebou, naveky budes bloudit po stejnych ulicich, na stejnych predmestich ducha ustydnou tvoje sny a v stejnem dome pak i zesedivis - mesto je vezeni. Odejit nelze nikam, vzdycky se ocitnes znovu na tomto miste, a zadna lod te neodveze od tebe samotneho. Posetilce, tys jeste nepochopil, ze jak jsi promarnil svuj zivot tady na tomto kousku sveta, je stejne promarnen..
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Lawrence Durrell |
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108eae9
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the indifference of the natural world to the constructions of art
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Lawrence Durrell |
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53f1d5c
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Godami tebe prikhoditsia mirit'sia s tem, chto liudiam, v sushchnosti, net do tebia dela; i vot v odin prekrasnyi den' v tebe prorastaet trevoga, i ty ponimaesh', chto tot, kotoromu net dela, -- ne kto inoi, kak Bog, i emu ne prosto , no ne sushchestvuet .
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Lawrence Durrell |
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1dcec0f
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In the great quietness of these winter evenings there is one clock: the sea. Its dim momentum in the mind is the fugue upon which this writing is made. Empty cadences of sea-water licking its own wounds, sulking along the mouths of the delta, boiling upon those deserted beaches- empty, forever empty under the gulls: white scribble on the grey, munched by clouds.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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0cf0ae5
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There are two positions available to us - either crime which renders us happy, or the noose, which prevents us from being unhappy.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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1f3f85b
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Yet the presence of death always refreshes experience thus--that is its function: to help us deliberate on the novelty of time.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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09157eb
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I long to be musical in body and mind. I want style, consort. Not the little mental squirts as if through the ticker-tape of the mind.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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66274b2
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I suppose events are simply a sort of annotation of our feelings--the one might be deduced from the other. Time carries us (boldly imagining that we are discrete ego's modeling our own personal futures)--time carries us forward by the momentum of those feelings inside us of which we ourselves are least conscious.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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92f7429
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The lion-dust of desert: prophets' tombs turned to zinc and copper at sunset on the ancient lake.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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e126480
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These are the moments which possess the writer, not the lover, and which live on perpetually. One can return to them time and time again in memory, or use them as a fund upon which to build the part of one's life which is writing. One can debauch them with words, but one cannot spoil them.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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f7ffe80
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was horrified too at the banality of her dancing, which was bad beyond measure; yet watching her make those gentle and ineffectual movements of her slim hands and feet (the air of a gazelle harnessed to a water-wheel)
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Lawrence Durrell |
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276f9c7
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Idle, she writes, to imagine falling in love as a correspondence of minds, of thoughts,; it is a simultaneous firing of two spirits engaged in the autonomous act of growing up. And the sensation is of something having noiselessly exploded inside each of them. Around this event, dazed and preoccupied, the lover moves examining her or her own experience; her gratitude alone, stretching away towards a mistaken donor, creates the illusion that ..
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Lawrence Durrell |
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e22da8b
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I hunt everywhere for a life worth living. Perhaps if I could die or go mad it would provide a focus for all the feelings I have which find no proper outlet.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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e6c6d20
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In her there was a pliancy, a resilience which was Oriental -- a passion to serve.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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1b25558
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Pienso en la epoca en la que el mundo conocido apenas existia para nosotros cuatro; los dias eran simplemente espacios entre suenos, espacios entre capas moviles de tiempo, de actividades, de charla intrascendente... Un flujo y reflujo de asuntos insignificantes, un husmear cosas muertas, fuera de todo ambiente real, que no nos llevaba a ninguna parte, que no nos exigia nada salvo lo imposible: ser nosotros mismos. Justine decia que habiamo..
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Lawrence Durrell |
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4f96d0c
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Ia govoril o bespoleznosti iskusstva, no nichego ne skazal o tom oblegchenii, kotoroe ono sposobno prinesti. Uteshenie, kotoroe ia nakhozhu v takogo roda rabote uma i serdtsa, sostoit v sleduiushchem: tol'ko , v molchanii khudozhnika ili pisatelia, real'nost' mozhno perestroit', pererabotat' i zastavit' povernut'sia znachimoi storonoi. Obychnye nashi postupki sut' ne chto inoe kak deriuga, pod kotoroi sokryto zlatotkanoe pokryvalo -- istoc..
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life
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Lawrence Durrell |
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f470dde
|
Vysshee dostizhenie velikikh religii -- vozvedenie slozhnoi ierarkhii zapretov. No zapret rozhdaet tu samuiu strast', kotoruiu on prizvan izlechit'. My, kabbalisty, govorim -- . My prinimaem vse, daby priblizit' polnotu cheloveka k polnote vselennoi, -- dazhe udovol'stvie, razrushitel'nyi raspad dukha v naslazhdenii na otdel'nye monady.
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Lawrence Durrell |
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9d120c3
|
A drunken whore walks in a dark street at night, shedding snatches of song like petals. Was it in this that Anthony heard the heart-numbing strains of the great music which persuaded him to surrender for ever to the city he loved? The
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Lawrence Durrell |
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94a61f1
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There is always a philosophy behind the misadventures of men, even if they are unaware of it.' And
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Lawrence Durrell |