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2818a97
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But the remarkable thing about the beetles was their sensitivity to all the grammar and directives and slogans and even unstated desires of the ant world, which they learned to manipulate. They first memorized the proper antenna-vibration and foreleg-tap which the ants themselves used to request food. The poor workers, busy going here and there and back again all day and never getting a chance to think, automatically assumed that these fear..
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William T. Vollmann |
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6511c94
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Looking at her, thinking of her transported him, which struck him as vile because now it was hard for him not to despise the icy serenity of their earlier relations. And he knew that he should not love her, for she had been someone else whom he was supposed to love differently. -What is loneliness? Does the lonely space between two rocks vanish when spanned by a spider web?
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love
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William T. Vollmann |
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4c7f013
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Evil is one thing. Evil's only subjective. Illegal is another.
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William T. Vollmann |
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4869eaa
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Mr. Norris knew this hoard to be worth much less than the tall man believed, but as long he believed it, he'd stay honest. Thus ran Mr. Norris's theory, which was not only philosophical but also empirically scientific in the best sense.
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William T. Vollmann |
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c857903
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Nothing, brother. Everything's about nothing. You know that, but you prefer to pretend otherwise. We both do.
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William T. Vollmann |
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47104b7
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What do you get when you cross a nymphomaniac with a kleptomaniac? A rapist, said Tyler.
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William T. Vollmann |
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bcde586
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So you cheat on your wife and you want me to give you a gold star for it, said Domino. Well, mister, I pity your wife and I don't give a fuck about you. Now I've got to go outside for a minute and see a man about a dog. When I come back, if you want a flatback or a blow, you just lay down your money in my hand. But no more of your hypocritical bullshit. Who the hell do you think you are? You're just a kid in the candy store that can't decid..
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William T. Vollmann |
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37215ee
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Perhaps the sallow drunk should have taken the hint. But he needed to feel confident in his life. It was only when he drank that he felt he could be anything. He felt this precisely because his perceptions had grown so constricted that he could no longer be cognizant of his limitations, like those old people who when sight, hearing and memory slip away make unflattering remarks in loud voices about others who are still present but out of th..
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William T. Vollmann |
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1ba885b
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Even Tyler would be infected by this surprising outbreak of sadness, which he certainly would not have felt had he simply never happened to see Lily again. This taught him the vanity and egotism of grief, which so often compromises nothing except childish rebellion against the closing off of possibilities.
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William T. Vollmann |
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3c1ca3a
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In the Hitler years we still believed in books enough to burn them. Imagine,
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William T. Vollmann |
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ddb816a
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Lecktrickery?" grinned the fool boys, rubbing their rabbits' feet against the spell of these longest syllables in all Tarnation."
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William T. Vollmann |
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da0de0c
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It sure if terrific to be in the back seat of a car full of all the people in your affinity group, and as you zip down the center of the road the radio is going boodeley-boodeley-boo in some bluegrass heart song to open space, and, whoopee, you're hugging all the committed girls who love you just as the boys love you but even more so, maybe, because Bug never forgot that a Swiss army knife, for instance, does everything well and nothing exc..
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William T. Vollmann |
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c212fa7
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At the time that he had seriously begun to consolidate his organization, Parker was working in a custom photo lab. The reader who is not much taken by audiovisual pastimes may have a deficient picture of that place where Parker was employed; or perhaps not so much a deficient picture--the dyes faded, shoddily spotted, brutishly burned in and doltishly dodged by subhuman technicians under the glare of the enlargers--as an image which had bee..
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William T. Vollmann |
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7b01c9d
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Bug, meanwhile, had learned at Marshtown that might made right, and he got older and paler, his head downcast like a nodding flower that expects itself to be cut at any moment.
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William T. Vollmann |
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0f99ea0
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But on Thursday only the committed regulars are there, and they do what they do on Thursday, delving into pagan rituals of worship to the amber gods that let you see to the lurching anger that spins you round and round at the center of things beyond lines and angles and the very floorboards become crazy under your feet so that the floor goes YAAAWW up again down again and suddenly tunk! it hits you on the forehead and your nose bleeds and y..
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William T. Vollmann |
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10d2d9e
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Frank thought. Each time he became someone else's spy it got easier. The ideological virgin usually finds his first time an excruciating experience, just as an amateur hiker, used to the straight-and-narrow freeway of nine-to-five reliability, looks askance at the boulder-strewn path of mercenary betrayal, winding on up into the clouds and down into terrible moraines. But after the first time, the pain and intimacy and guilt becomes a habit..
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William T. Vollmann |
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a37eeaf
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The blood kept welling up and getting over things so that she couldn't see what she was doing, which annoyed her; but she knew that theoretical clarity was unattainable in times of action.
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William T. Vollmann |
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777baf1
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The smoke detectors began to ring; for they were battery-powered and thus still functioned, just as a record can still be played after the death of every member of the orchestra.
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time
music
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William T. Vollmann |
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3caa95f
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23 He dreamed that a bomb was singing to him. From far away, the bomb was coming to marry him. The bomb was his destiny, falling on him, screaming.
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William T. Vollmann |
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48a339d
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Plato says that as one learns to love, the image of any specific beloved can be left behind for knowledge of the Good.
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William T. Vollmann |
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1ed1fa2
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Before [Hitler] slammed the door behind him, he needed there to be nothing left, not even the door itself.
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William T. Vollmann |
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5a6e1d0
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I've never shot a civilian except when under orders.
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William T. Vollmann |
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cf8fd19
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But I don't think a river wants anything, except to be itself. Just like anybody and anything. I don't think it claimed a soul. I don't think it's at all vindictive or vicious, just itself. It just seemed very honest. If you hear a river moan, you know it has life.
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William T. Vollmann |
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560fa76
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Well let the gentlemen of the bourgeoisie remember Berlin any way they please. As Comrade Khruschev promised us, we will bury them.
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William T. Vollmann |
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7d61e39
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So even that doesn't make you happy? What about your Seventh Symphony? At least it rallied people. Once you told me how alive you felt then; you said you gave it your all-- Didn't you learn in school, he demanded in a hateful voice, that Ivan the Terrible, having coaxed his architect into, so to speak, putting the very best of himself into building Polrovsky Cathedral, afterwards put out his eyes? Anyway, things are so much easier in our c..
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William T. Vollmann |
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4a2d979
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That was how I learned that no is stronger than yes. (Shostakovich already knew that.) It takes two yesses for I to become we, but only one no for we to break apart, no matter what the other party wishes.
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William T. Vollmann |
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ffd4a4a
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as he walked up past the red and green tennis courts in east Berkeley and saw the swing of the women's hair in the breeze, the crisp strokes that sent the ball over the net like a little bone-white planetoid, it occurred to him that there was still a last chance for a pair of heavenly arms to reach out to him and save him.
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William T. Vollmann |
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4d9d2d8
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The times are new, but the informers are old.
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William T. Vollmann |
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85b7adc
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More aid, better directed! Couldn't we all use that? And what if the universe enacts less aid, more poorly directed?
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William T. Vollmann |
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e5391a1
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but in 1917 we had no cares except the mundane ones of starvation and occupation and civil war, and for those of us in our armored trains traveling up and down the front waging brilliant campaigns, or for our young Natashas and Alyoshas experiencing the education and class steeling of the Komsomol for the first time, learning to ask in every historical situation: How many workers are there? how many peasants, intellectuals? how do they stan..
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William T. Vollmann |
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64e1b32
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and the water and the grass and the white ripples on grey water, and white clouds among grey clouds and the wrinkled young silver skin of the water and life-bright lichens on black branches and on the still, bright river, a man and woman slowly poling their log canoe and the spiderweb (golden-green seed-wings already growing above the darker leaves of maples this early in August) and the smell of evergreens and the living grass, then the dy..
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William T. Vollmann |
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1f4b96a
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Excuse me, my sweetest little Tatianochka, sometimes I forget how time ticks! Well,
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William T. Vollmann |
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d3a2c25
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Everywhere that Torah is studied at night one thread-thin ray appears from that hidden light and flows down upon those absorbed in her. --Kabbalah (13th century)
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William T. Vollmann |
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839d0d7
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It's now widely agreed in progressive social circles that all humankind constitutes a single superorganism.
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William T. Vollmann |
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d05db95
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On the radio, Klavdia Sulzhenko sang "The Blue Kerchief." The war had died; that song was getting old; then again, so was I. But" --
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William T. Vollmann |
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3f76338
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but the little operative codenamed GREINER, whom I was frankly beginning to consider defeatist, insisted that the Soviets had antidotes to everything, even unfortunate facts. I
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William T. Vollmann |
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0a17707
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I'm sure you've noticed, continued Comrade Luria, how much aestheticians like to prate about the impotence of form without content, or content without form. But in music, perfect form and content together can remain as stillborn as a law without the seal of Heaven on it. There has to be emotion . . .
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William T. Vollmann |
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9701a80
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as a certain classical slaveholder once wrote, nothing is more painful than days of joy recollected in days of misery. So
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William T. Vollmann |
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50504c4
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But illusions don't die all at once--
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William T. Vollmann |
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665efa2
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By your command, sir, I said. But Elena was still the one I loved. Knowing that I loved her, I knew who I was.
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William T. Vollmann |
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081d6bc
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the skin of her naked throat was as perfect as a political idea. She
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William T. Vollmann |
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17cae7e
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After all, one of life's best pleasures is reading a book of perfect beauty; more pleasurable still is rereading that book; most pleasurable of all is lending it to the person one loves:
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William T. Vollmann |
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7222414
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Could it be that everything in this world remains so fundamentally pure that nothing can ever be more than half ruined?
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William T. Vollmann |
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754e671
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And so we all write stories to suit ourselves, and I wish happy endings, happy landings to all of us
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William T. Vollmann |