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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 98b3f6e | The Past just left. Its remnants, I claim, are mostly fiction. We're stranded here with the threadbare patchwork of memory, you with yours, I with mine. | Denis Johnson | ||
| 1f42935 | Once in a while I lie there, as the television runs, and I read something wild and ancient from one of several collections of folktales I own. Apples that summon sea maidens, eggs that fulfill any wish, pears that make people grow long noses that fall off again. Then sometimes I get up and don my robe and go out into our quiet neighborhood looking for a magic thread, a magic sword, a magic horse. | Denis Johnson | ||
| d9e9f91 | Glaciers had crushed this region in the time before history. There'd been a drought for years, and a bronze fog of dust stood over the plains. The soybean crop was dead again, and the failed, wilted cornstalks were laid out on the ground like rows of underthings. Most of the farmers didn't even plant anymore. All the false visions had been erased. It felt like the moment before the Savior comes. And the Savior did come, but we had to wait a.. | Denis Johnson | ||
| 0d4c715 | The movie's not over till everybody's dead. | Denis Johnson | ||
| 4f7ac3e | He was in his fifties. He'd wasted his entire life. Such people were very dear to those of us who'd wasted only a few years. | Denis Johnson | ||
| 6e84d80 | She took my heat. Traded it to the devil for some bauble. | Denis Johnson | ||
| 87b1b42 | Sex is a different medium, refracting time and sense, a biological hyperspace as remote from conscious existence as dreams, or as water is from air | Ian McEwan | ||
| 9c1a54d | Many questions were troubling the explorer, but at the sight of the prisoner he asked only: "Does he know his sentence?" "No," said the officer, eager to go on with his exposition, but the explorer interrupted him: "He doesn't know the sentence that has been passed on him?" "No," said the officer again, pausing a moment as if to let the explorer elaborate his question, and then said: "There would be no point in telling him. He'll learn it o.. | Franz Kafka | ||
| 41cbf69 | You do not need to accept everything as true, you only have to accept it as necessary. | Franz Kafka | ||
| f457e32 | I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head, what are we reading it for? (...) We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us. | Franz Kafka | ||
| 2ce966a | Comparisons deplete the actuality of the things compared... ("Conveyance: The Story I would Not Want Bill Wilson To Read")" | writing writing-craft | William S. Wilson | |
| 380950f | The hardest bones, containing the richest marrow, can be conquered only by a united crushing of all the teeth of all dogs. That of course is only a figure of speech and exaggerated; if all teeth were but ready they would not need even to bite, the bones would crack themselves and the marrow would be freely accessible to the feeblest of dogs. If I remain faithful to this metaphor, then the goal of my aims, my questions, my inquiries, appears.. | philosophy | Franz Kafka | |
| b60463d | The books were old and well worn, the cover of one of them had nearly broken through in its middle, and it was held together with a few threads. "Everything is so dirty here," said K., shaking his head, and before he could pick the books up the woman wiped some of the dust off with her apron. K. took hold of the book that lay on top and threw it open, an indecent picture appeared. A man and a woman sat naked on a sofa, the base intent of wh.. | Franz Kafka | ||
| 165cfb9 | People who walk across dark bridges, past saints, with dim, small lights. Clouds which move across gray skies past churches with towers darkened in the dusk. One who leans against granite railing | people inspire dim lights stones dusk | Franz Kafka | |
| 127e1dc | Then birds flew up like a shower of sparks, I followed them with my eyes and saw how they rose in a single breath, until they seemed no longer to be rising but I to be falling... | Franz Kafka | ||
| f5fcfd6 | Of course I'm ignorant, that remains true at all events and is extremely distressing for me, but it does have the advantage that the ignorant man dares more, so I shall gladly put up with ignorance and its undoubtedly dire consequences for a while, as long as my strength lasts. | Franz Kafka | ||
| ee48b22 | Was he an animal if music could captivate him so? It seemed to him that he was being shown the way to the unknown nourishment he had been yearning for. | Franz Kafka | ||
| 236f636 | Other opportunities arise from time to time that almost don't accord with the overall situation, opportunities whereby a word, a glance, a sigh of trust may achieve more than a lifetime of exhausting endeavour. | opportunities | Franz Kafka | |
| ae776e4 | Devilish in my innocence. | Franz Kafka | ||
| 2e0bc0b | When I meet a pretty girl and beg her: "Be so good as to come with me," and she walks past without a word, this is what she means to say: "You are no Duke with a famous name, no broad American with Red Indian figure, level, brooding eyes and a skin tempered by the air of the prairies and the rivers that flow through them, you have never journeyed to the seven seas and voyaged on them wherever they may be, I don't know where. So why, pray, s.. | Franz Kafka | ||
| 7eff2b1 | He had always believed that his father had not been able to save a penny from the business, at least his father had never told him anything to the contrary, and Gregor, for his part, had never asked him any questions. In those days Gregor's sole concern had been to do everything in his power to make the family forget as quickly as possible the business disaster which had plunged everyone into a state of total despair. And so he had begun to.. | Franz Kafka | ||
| 9d6ffa4 | Leroy interrupted Chantal's fantasies: "Freedom? As you live our your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom. You're free to melt your own individuality into the cauldron of the multitude either with a feeling of defeat or euphoria." | Milan Kundera | ||
| fd6e740 | hl blmkn dn@ mhw zy'l? n Gywm lmGyb lbrtqly@ tDfy `l~ kl shy 'lq lHnyn, Ht~ `l~ lmqSl@. | Milan Kundera | ||
| cce03fc | life is like weeds | Milan Kundera | ||
| 23a4c2e | You are beautiful," he said, "But I will have to leave you." | Milan Kundera | ||
| c341210 | Tenderness is the attempt to create a tiny artificial space in which it is mutually agreed that each will treat the other like a child. | Milan Kundera | ||
| e4c3617 | Facts mean little compared to attitudes. To contradict rumor or sentiment is as futile as arguing against a believer's faith in the Immaculate Conception. You have simply become a victim of faith, Comrade Assistant. | Milan Kundera | ||
| f08ff2e | Pick me up," is the message of a person who keeps falling. Tomas kept picking her up, patiently." | Milan Kundera | ||
| d8c399f | Children, you are the future,' he said, and today I realize he did not mean it the way it sounded. The reason children are the future is not that they will one day be grownups. No, the reason is that mankind is moving more and more in the direction of infancy, and childhood is the image of the future. | Milan Kundera | ||
| bb80126 | ws`dthm lm tkn `l~ lrGm mn lHzn bl bfDlh. | sex psychological political religion love philosophy جنس friedrich-nietzche milan-kundera neitzsche اجتماع كائن-لا-تحتمل-خفته ميلان-كونديرا نيتشه علم-نفس فلسفة فلسفة-حياة religion-and-philoshophy حب philosophy-of-life friedrich-nietzsche sociology novel psychology | ميلان كونديرا | |
| 9d1972d | It means what you are, wanting what you want and going after it without a sens od shame. People are slaves to rules. | Milan Kundera | ||
| 7aaca85 | In Spanish anoranza comes from the verb anorar (to feel nostalgia), which comes from the Catalan enyorar, itself derived from the Latin word ignorare (to be unaware of, not know, not experience; to lack or miss), In that etymological light nostalgia seems something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You are far away, and I don't know what has become of you. My country is far away, and I don't know what is happening there | Milan Kundera | ||
| f75db76 | Our historical experience teaches us that men imitate one another, that their attitudes are statistically calculable, their opinions manipulable, and that man is therefore less an individual (a subject) than an element in a mass. | man opinions | Milan Kundera | |
| 07e0b46 | But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak have to be strong enough to leave. pg 75 | Kundera Milan | ||
| 944d07e | Now, perhaps, we are in a better position to understand the abyss separating Sabina and Franz: he listened eagerly to the story of her life and she was equally eager to hear the story of his, but although they had a clear understanding of the logical meaning of the words they exchanged, they failed to hear the semantic susurrus of the river flowing through them. | Milan Kundera | ||
| b0a4dd5 | lqd t'Sl ldy `dm ltSdyq , l~ Hd 'nh Hyn yfDy lyW mrw' bm yHb 'w l yHb , lm 'kn 'Hml kl hdh `l~ mHml ljd 'w lm 'kn , bSwr@ 'kthr dq@ , 'r~ fyh sw~ mjrd shhd@ `l~ lSwr@ lty yryd `Th `n nfsh !. | Milan Kundera | ||
| b7fa002 | 'n tsh`r bldhnb 'w tush`ara bh. '`tqd 'n kl shy' ykmn hn. flHy@ h~ Sr` ljmy` Dd ljmy`. hdh m`rwf, lkn kyf ytjl~ hdh lSr` f~ mjtm` mtmdn l~ hdh lHd ? l ymkn llns 'n yhjmw b`Dhm b`Dan `ndm yltqwn. yHwlwn bdlan mn dhlk 'n ylqw `l~ lakhryn `r lsh`wr bldhnb. wsyfwz mn ynjH f~ j`l lakhr mdhnban. wsykhsr mn y`trf bkhTy'h. | Milan Kundera | ||
| 8da1cc7 | In that etymological light nostalgia seems something like the pain of ignorance, of not knowing. You are far away, and I don't know what has become of you. My country is far away, and I don't know what is happening there. | Milan Kundera | ||
| 9eb5d00 | Not for the first time in my life, and certainly not for the last, a self-righteous gloom had edged out all semblance of logic. | Nick Hornby | ||
| e64fc3e | Between the shadows of the earth and the dark depths of the sky, human life lay slumbering, with all its unsolved puzzles. | Theodor Storm | ||
| 4175c71 | As much as I think about sex, I can only with extreme difficulty conceive of myself actually performing the act. And here's another thing I wonder about. How could you ever look a girl in the eye after you've had your winkie up her wendell? I mean, doesn't that render normal social conversation impossible? Apparently not. | sex teens-sex-awkward-jocks satire teens | C.D. Payne | |
| f1598e2 | Life isn't, and has never been, a 2-0 home victory after a fish and chip lunch. | Nick Hornby | ||
| d689fad | People go on about the first time being important, but it's the second time that really matters. Or the second person, anyway. | Nick Hornby | ||
| d789828 | Several months later, and I have finally read one of the three (books), even though I wanted to read all three of them immediately. What happened in between? Other books, is what happened. Other books, other moods, other obligations, other appetites, other reading journeys. | Nick Hornby |