Enough memories not to get bored

I ended up not being bored at all as soon as I learnt how to remember things. Sometimes I'd start thinking about my room and, in my imagination, I'd set off from one corner and walk round making a mental note of everything I saw on the way. At first it didn't take very long. But every time I did it, it took a bit longer. Because I'd remember every piece of furniture, and on every piece of furniture, every object and, on every object, every detail, every mark, crack or chip, and then even the colour or the grain of the wood. At the same time, I'd try not to lose track of my inventory, to enumerate everything. So that, by the end of a few weeks, I could spend hours doing nothing but listing the things in my room. And the more I thought about it the more things I dug out of memory that I hadn't noticed before or that I'd forgotten about. I realized then that a man who'd only lived for a day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He'd have enough memories not to get bored. In a way, that was a good thing.

Albert Camus, The Outsider (Penguin Modern Classics, 2000) p. 77

An oceanic feeling

I wish my friends to know that I am leaving their company in a peaceful frame of mind, with some timid hopes for a de-personalised after-life beyond due confines of space, time and matter and beyond the limits of our comprehension. This 'oceanic feeling' has often sustained me at difficult moments, and does so now, while I am writing this.

Arthur Koestler's suicide note, 1983

A solitary bee

The more I see of life the more I perceive that only through solitary communion with nature can one gain an idea of its richness and meaning. I know that in such contemplation lies my true personality, and yet I live in an age when on all sides I am told exactly the opposite and asked to believe that the social and cooperative activity of humanity is the one way through which life can be developed. Am I an exception, a herd-outcast? There are also solitary bees, and it is not claimed that they are biologically inferior. A planet of contemplators, each sunning himself before his doorstep like the mason-wasp; no one would help another, and no one would need help!

Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave (Hamish Hamilton, 1945) p. 19

Obstacles to wisdom

Three faults, which are always found together and which infect every activity: laziness, vanity, cowardice. If one is too lazy to think, too vain to do a thing badly, too cowardly to admit it, one will never attain wisdom. Yet it is only the thinking which begins when habit-thinking leaves off, which is ignited by the logic of the train of thought, that is worth pursuing. A comfortable person can seldom follow up an original idea any further than a London pigeon can fly.

Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave (Hamish Hamilton, 1945) p. 15

First love

We love only once, for once only are we perfectly equipped for loving: we may appear to ourselves to be as much in love at other times – so does a day in early September, though it is six hours shorter, seems as hot as one in June. And on how that first true love-affair shapes itself depends the pattern of our lives.

Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave (Hamish Hamilton, 1945) p. 8

Fountain of consideration

In my religion there would be no exclusive doctrine; all would be love, poetry and doubt. Life would be sacred, because it is all we have, and death, our common denominator, the fountain of consideration.

Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave (Hamish Hamilton, 1945) p. 6

What I believe

When I consider what I believe, which I can do only by proceeding from what I do not believe, I seem in a minority of one, –and yet I know there are thousands like me: Liberals without a belief in progress, Democrats who despise their fellow-men, Pagans who still live by Christian morals, Intellectuals who cannot find the intellect sufficient, –unsatisfied Materialists, we are as common as clay.

Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave (Hamish Hamilton, 1945) p. 5

Grace notes

The world is beset by volatility; objects that suggest something akin to an honest response to life help frame the questions that animate the culture. Life is also composed of grace notes, and when those notes become art, they lift our spirits through the modesty of their rendering. The materials used by many of today's artists are redeemed from the rubbish heap and are Franciscan in their simplicity. Extravagant gestures have given way to a handshake or a hug (maybe even a shrug). The best of the work defies a simple knee-jerk response because it tends to be conversational, it wants to slow the passerby down for a chat.

Richard Flood, 'Not about Mel Gibson' in Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century (Phaidon, 2007) p. 12

Baby Cakes Wisdom

Sex, life, death... I guess it all just happens. The only screwed up stuff is thinking about it afterwards.

Baby Cakes, Baby Cakes Diary #6, http://youtu.be/Ey8yqmYj8TA (10/10/13)

Diverging equity

He remembered Alejandra and the sadness he'd first seen in the slope of her shoulders which he'd presumed to understand and of which he knew nothing and he felt a loneliness he'd not known since he was a child and he felt wholly alien to the world although he loved it still. He thought that in the beauty of the world were hid a secret. He thought that the world's heart beat at some terrible cost and that the world's pain and its beauty moved in relationship of diverging eqity and that in this headlong deficit the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.

Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses (Picador, 2010) pp. 289-290

The might have been

In history there are no control groups. There is noone to tell us what might have been. We weep over the might have been, but there is no might have been. There never was. It is supposed to be true that those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it. I don't believe knowing can save us.

Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses (Picador, 2010) p. 245

Between the wish and the thing

In the end we all come to be cured of our sentiments. Those whom life does not cure death will. The world is quite ruthless in selecting between the dream and the reality, even where we will not. Between the wish and the thing the world lies waiting.

Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses (Picador, 2010) p. 244

Permanent orättvisa

Vi har vant oss vid en standard.
Vi betraktar den som vår rättighet.
Den är inte bara ett hån mot världen idag.
Den kommer alltid vara det.
Vi måste vara ensamma om den. För all framtid.
Vi har skapat en livsform som gör orättvisan permanent och ofrånkomlig.

Är slutsatsen klar?
Vi måste bli fattiga igen.
Eller med våld upprätthålla våra privilegier.
Ännu har inget folk, än mindre världsdel, valt frivillig fattigdom.
Det finns inga utsikter att vi kommer att göra det.

Sven Lindqvist, Myten om Wu Tao-tzu (Månpocket, 2013) p.174

Inlåst i konsten

Delta inte! Vägra! Det var mina imperativ. Jag vägrade erkänna den samtidighet i nu och liv som vi alla är underkastade. Jag ville nå fram till den samtidighet i konst som är oberoende av dagen. Jag låste in mig. Och därinne byggde jag den katapult som skulle slunga mig ut i världen.

Sven Lindqvist, Myten om Wu Tao-tzu (Månpocket, 2013) p.153

Bordet, trät

Här står bordet.
Flammorna i furun. Som eld, som insjöns vatten.
Ytans årsränder: de mörka vintrarna och de ljusa somrarna.
Hela Sverige. Hela mitt forna jag.
Det var detta jag ville: rent trä.
En yta som fortsätter inåt.
Ett material som lever i döden.
Ett hopp att sanning kan förenas med glädje.

Sven Lindqvist, Myten om Wu Tao-tzu (Månpocket, 2013) p.135