More And More Quotes (page 325)
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Once more the odious courtesies began, the first handed the knife across K. to the second, who handed it across K. back again to the first. K. now perceived clearly that he was supposed to seize the knife himself, as it traveled from hand to hand above him, and plunge it into his own breast. But he did not do so, he merely turned his head, which was still free to move, and gazed around him. He could not completely rise to the occasion, he could not relieve the officials of all their tasks;...
Franz Kafka
Your favorite colour . . . it's green?"That's right." Then I think of something to add. "And yours is orange."Orange?" He seems unconvinced."Not bright orange. But soft. Like the sunset," I say. "At least, that's what you told me once."Oh." He closes his eyes briefly, maybe trying to conjure up that sunset, then nods his head. "Thank you."But more words tumble out. "You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. And you always...
Suzanne Collins
(On Ralph Waldo Emerson)I love all men who dive. Any fish can swim near the surface, but it takes a great whale to go down stairs five miles or more; and if he don't attain the bottom, why all the lead in Galena can't fashion the plummet that will. I'm not talking of Mr Emerson now -but of the whole corps of thought-divers, that have been diving and coming up again with bloodshot eyes since the world began.
Herman Melville
Chimerical and empty being, your name alone has caused more blood to flow on the face of the earth than any political war ever will. Return to the nothingness from which the mad hope and ridiculous fright of men dared call you forth to their misfortune. You only appeared as a torment for the human race. What crimes would have been spared the world, if they had choked the first imbecile who thought of speaking of you.
Marquis de Sade
I know one thing for certain; it is much harder to tell whether you are lost than whether you were lost, for, on many occasions, where you are going is exactly where you are. On the other hand, if you often find that where you've been is not at all where you should have gone, and, since it's much more difficult to find your way back from someplace you've never left, I suggest you go there immediately and then decide.
Norton Juster
I heard them laugh. I turned off the light and tried to go to sleep. It was not necessary to read any more. I could shut my eyes without getting the wheeling sensation. But i could not sleep. There is no reason why because it is dark you should look at things differently from when it is light. The hell there isn't! I figured that all out once, and for six months I never slept with the electric light off. That was another bright idea. To hell with women, anyway. To hell with you,...
Ernest Hemingway
As a writer one doesn’t belong anywhere. Fiction writers, I think, are even more outside the pale, necessarily on the edge of society. Because society and people are our meat, one really doesn’t belong in the midst of society. The great challenge in writing is always to find the universal in the local, the parochial. And to do that, one needs distance.
William Trevor
I cannot live without brainwork. What else is there to live for? Stand at the window here. Was ever such a dreary, dismal, unprofitable world? See how the yellow fog swirls down the street and drifts across the duncoloured houses. What could be more hopelessly prosaic and material?
Arthur Conan Doyle
To live only to suffer—only to feel the injury of life repeated and enlarged—it seemed to her she was too valuable, too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be valuable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of precious things? Wasn't it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer?
Henry James
There should be more natural disasters. I like those because you can't blame anyone. You can't put an earthquake on trial. You can't send a flood to the chair. Look at the fucking zoo I live in. All these bent up little players running around through the ruins saying, "Isn't this groovy and decadent? Cool!" Looking like Death and thinking they're something. I would like to help. I really would. I wonder if the guy at the gun store would give me a discount on the bullets I'll need if I told...
Henry Rollins
We were made to enjoy music, to enjoy beautiful sunsets, to enjoy looking at the billows of the sea and to be thrilled with a rose that is bedecked with de? Human beings are actually created for the transcendent, for the sublime, for the beautiful, for the truthful... and all of us are given the task of trying to make this world a little more hospitable to these beautiful things.
Desmond Tutu