Words are the first layer of a cocoon

What do we write to a woman whom we have kissed without declaring our love. To ask her forgiveness would be offensive, especially since she returned the kiss with passion. If on the other hand we did not say, upon kissing her, I love you, why should we invent the words now, at the risk of not being believed. The Romans assure us in the Latin tongue that actions speak louder than words, let us therefore consider the actions as done and the words superfluous, words are the first layer of a cocoon, frayed, tenuous, delicate. We should use words that make no promise, that seek nothing, that do not even suggest, let them protect our rear as our cowardice retreats, just like these fragmented phrases, general, noncommittal, let us savour the moment, the fleeting joy, the green restored to the budding leaves.

José Saramago, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (The Harvill Press, 1998) p. 218

Sympathise with a potato

We find it difficult to sympathise with the emotions of a potato; so we do with those of an oyster. Neither of these things makes a noise on being boiled or opened, and noise appeals to us more strongly than anything else, because we make so much about our own sufferings. Since, then, they do not annoy us by any expression of pain we call them emotionless; and so quâ mankind they are; but mankind is not everybody.

Samuel Butler, Erewhon (Penguin Books, 1970) p. 201

Reasoning without desiring is not reasoning

Reason and cognition cannot develop or exercise their functions normally if they are not supported by affects. Reasoning without desiring is not reasoning. In order to think, to want, to know, things must have a consistency, a weight, a value, otherwise emotional indifference annuls the relief, erases differences in perspective, levels everything.

Catherine Malabou, Ontology of the Accident (Polity Press, 2012) p. 22

Free of our activity

By silence, I mean the multiplicity of activity that constantly surrounds us. We call it ”silence” because it is free of our activity. It does not correspond to ideas of order or expressive feeling – they lead to order and expression, but when they do, it ”deafens” us to the sounds themselves.

John Cage, Every Day is a Good Day: The Visual Art of John Cage (Hayward Publishing, 2010) p. 71

Not my way of feeling

'What about the intensity, the excitement?'

'Oh, none of those aspects interested me. They're precisely the things about abstract expressionism which didn't interest me. I wanted to change my way of seeing, not my way of feeling. I'm perfectly happy about my feelings. I want to bring them, if anything, to some kind of tranquility. I don't want to disturb my feelings, and above all, I don't want somebody else to disturb my feelings. I don't spend my life being pushed around by a bunch of artists.'

Irving Sandler, 'To Open Our Eyes' in Every Day is a Good Day: The Visual Art of John Cage (Hayward Publishing, 2010) p. 50