The bearable lightness of beingsThe bearable lightness of beings
“Love is infinite and one. Women are not. Neither are men. The human condition. Nearly unbearable.” — Leonard Michaels, “City Boy”
Category: Lit & Crit
Here comes one now!Here comes one now!
“In a crisis you discover everything. Then it’s too late. Know yourself, indeed. You need a crisis every day.” — Leonard Michaels, “City Boy”
CDOs, anyone?CDOs, anyone?
“Old men are just as bad as young men when it comes to money. They can’t think. They always try to buy what they should have for free. And what they buy, after they have it, is nothing.” — James Alan McPherson, “A Solo Song: For Doc”
With men it’s violenceWith men it’s violence
“The great and almost only comfort about being a woman is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is and no one is surprised.” — Freya Stark (quoted in “East Is West” by Claudia Roth Pierpont)
Artists knowArtists know
“The great and tragic fact of experience is the fact of effort and passionate toil which never finds complete satisfaction. This eternal frustration of our ideals or will is an essential part of spiritual life, and enriches it just as the shadows enrich the picture or certain discords bring about richer harmony.” — Morris R. Cohen, The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XVII, Ch. XVI, Sec. 21
When science was kingWhen science was king
“Commonly we fix beliefs by reiterating them, by surrounding them with emotional safeguards, and by avoiding anything which casts doubt upon them—by ‘the will to believe.’ This method breaks down when the community ceases to be homogeneous. Social effort, by the method of authority, to eliminate diversity of beliefs also fails in the end to prevent reflective doubts from cropping up. Hence we must finally resort to the method of free inquiry and let science stabilize our ideas by clarifying them. How can this be done?” — Morris R. Cohen, The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XVII, Ch. XVI, Sec. 18
The view from without the caveThe view from without the cave
“Intellectual pioneers are rarely gregarious creatures. In their isolation they lose touch with those who follow the beaten paths, and when they return to the community they speak strangely of strange sights, so that few have the faith to follow them and change their trails into high roads.” — Morris R. Cohen, The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XVII, Ch. XVI, Sec. 18
Ideas whose time cameIdeas whose time came
“Out of unrestricted competition arise many wrongs that the State must redress and many abuses which it must check. It may become the duty of the State to reform its taxation, so that its burdens shall rest less heavily upon the lower classes; to repress monopolies of all sorts; to prevent and punish gambling; to regulate or control the railroads and telegraphs; to limit the ownership of land; to modify the laws of inheritance; and possibly to levy a progressive income-tax, so that the enormous fortunes should bear more rather than less than their share of the public burdens.” — Washington Gladden (quoted in The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XVII, Ch. XVI, Sec. 12)
Welcome to AmericaWelcome to America
“Dishonest men can be bought and ignorant men can be manipulated. This is the kind of government which private capital, invested in public-service industries, naturally feels that it must have.” — Washington Gladden (quoted in The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XVII, Ch. XVI, Sec. 12)
Better that than cursing blindBetter that than cursing blind
“While the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it always must be heard. There isn’t any other tale to tell, it’s the only light we’ve got in all this darkness.” — James Baldwin, “Sonny’s Blues”
Just add waterJust add water
“The beginning of everything is damp and small, but wide-armed oaks—according to myth, legend, and the folk tales of the people—from solitary acorns grow.” — Grace Paley, “In Time Which Made a Monkey of Us All”
That’s because they’re magiciansThat’s because they’re magicians
“Doctors mostly sustain themselves in a medium of false ideas, the word ‘doctor’ casting about them, so they think, a sort of magical aura.” — William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
Otherwise it’s senselessOtherwise it’s senseless
“There is only one thing a writer can write about: what is in front of his senses at the moment of writing.” — William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (emphasis in original)
It can be a sneaky beastIt can be a sneaky beast
“Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer.” — William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
There’s always room for improvement, verdad?There’s always room for improvement, verdad?
“Americans have a special horror of giving up control, of letting things happen in their own way without interference. They would like to jump down into their stomachs and digest the food and shovel the shit out.” — William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
Put down that weapon, pleasePut down that weapon, please
“Push your mind too hard and it will fuck up like an overloaded switchboard, or turn on you with sabotage.” — William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
Looks like it’s metastasizedLooks like it’s metastasized
“Democracy is cancerous, and bureaus are its cancer. A bureau takes root anywhere in the state, turns malignant like the Narcotic Bureau, and grows and grows, always reproducing more of its own kind, until it chokes the host if not controlled or excised.” — William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
But it’s been so upliftingishBut it’s been so upliftingish
“There can be no doubt that American literature has considerably suffered from the platitudinous didactic note.” — George S. Hellman, The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XVII, Book III, Ch. XIII, Sec. 16
Get it right, peopleGet it right, people
“A functioning police state needs no police.” — William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch (emphasis in original)
Is there an app for that?Is there an app for that?
“Western man is externalizing himself in the form of gadgets.” — William S. Burroughs, Naked Lunch
Call me any name you likeCall me any name you like
“Honor is conscious and willing loyalty to the highest inward leading. It is the quality which cannot be insulted.” — George William Curtis (quoted in The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Vol. XVII, Ch. XIII, Sec. 4)
Look out, it’s right beside youLook out, it’s right beside you
“It takes so little, so infinitely little, for a person to cross the border beyond which everything loses meaning: love, convictions, faith, history. Human life–and herein lies its secret–takes place in the immediate proximity of that border, even in direct contact with it; it is not miles away, but a fraction of an inch.” — Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (trans. Heim)
In America, it’s called public educationIn America, it’s called public education
“The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have somebody write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long the nation will begin to forget what it is and what it was. The world around it will forget even faster.” — Milan Hubl (quoted in Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, trans. Heim)
My ears are ringing and no lo entiendoMy ears are ringing and no lo entiendo
“Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and lack of understanding.” — Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (trans. Heim)
A plague upon the nationA plague upon the nation
“Graphomania (an obsession with writing books) takes on the proportions of a mass epidemic whenever a society develops to the point where it can provide three basic conditions: 1. a high enough degree of general well-being to enable people to devote their energies to useless activities; 2. an advanced state of social atomization and the resultant general feeling of the isolation of the individual; 3. a radical absence of significant social change in the internal development of the nation.” — Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (trans. Heim)
I’m ready for my close-upI’m ready for my close-up
“Police files are our only claim to immortality.” — Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (trans. Heim)
You can get a grant for thatYou can get a grant for that
“People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It’s not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.” — Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (trans. Heim)
The WeightThe Weight
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” — Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (trans. Heim)
Point zero-zeroPoint zero-zero
“Each person must, on some level, take himself as the calibration point for normalcy, must assume that the room of his own mind is not, cannot be, entirely opaque to him. Perhaps this is what we mean by sanity: that, whatever our self-admitted eccentricities might be, we are not the villains of our own stories.” — Teju Cole, Open City
ChristmasChristmas
“If you’re too loyal to your own suffering, you forget that others suffer, too.” — Teju Cole, Open City