Something Quotes (page 349)
Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through is now like something from the distant past. We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about everyday, too many new things we have to learn. But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to...
Haruki Murakami
A written word is the choicest of relics. It is something at once more intimate with us and more universal than any other work of art. It is the work of art nearest to life itself. It may be translated into every language, and not only be read but actually breathed from all human lips; -- not be represented on canvas or in marble only, but be carved out of the breath of life itself.
Henry David Thoreau
I'm not saying I'm able to work consistently out of the premise, but it seems like the big distinction between good art and so-so art lies somewhere in the art's heart's purpose, the agenda of the consciousness behind the text. It's got something to do with love. With having the discipline to talk out of the part of yourself that can love instead of the part that just wants to be loved.
David Foster Wallace
One of the great functions of art is to help us imagine what it is like to be not ourselves, what it is like to be someone or something else, what it is like to live in another skin, what it is like to live in another body, and in that sense to surpass ourselves, to go out beyond ourselves.
Adrienne Rich
Oh, if only I did nothing simply as a result of laziness. Lord, how I’d respect myself then. I’d respect myself precisely because at least I’d be capable of being lazy; at least I’d possess one more or less positive trait of which I could be certain. Question: who am I? Answer: a sluggard. Why, it would have been very pleasant to hear that said about oneself. It would mean that I’d been positively identified; it would mean that there was something to be said about me. “A sluggard!” Why,...
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Oh, what a nuisance you are! I'm giving you my mouth, my arms, my whole body - and everything could be so simple...My trust! I haven't any to give, I'm afraid, and you're making me terribly embarrassed. You must have something pretty ghastly on your conscience to make such a fuss about my trusting you.
Jean-Paul Sartre
I am part of all that I have met; Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough. Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades. For ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnished, not to shine in use! As though to breath were life. Life piled on life. Were all too little, and of one to me. Little remains: but every hour is saved. From that eternal silence, something more, A bringer of new things; and vile it were. For some three suns to store and...
Alfred Lord Tennyson