Benjamin Kunkel > Quotes

“You Up?' What a great question! Just to be asked was to know the answer.”
― Benjamin Kunkel, Indecision

“Un peu comme lorsque je rentre d'un voyage quelque part et que tout le monde me demande comment c'était : peu à peu mes différentes réponses n'en font plus qu'une, mes impressions se resserrent sur elles-mêmes, ouais, c'est cool, là-bas, et tiens, une anecdote marrante... puis ce discours unique se substitue à la réalité du souvenir.
Du coup, j'ai franchement eu peur. J'ai ressenti cette crainte familière, soudainement intense et sincère, qu'une fois toute sensation échappée de ma vie, il ne reste plus de celle-ci qu'un cliché. Et le jour de ma mort, saint Pierre me demanderait :
- C'était comment ?
- Vraiment super, en bas. J'aimais bien la bouffe. m'enfin, avec la tourista... Bon, les gens sont tous très sympas quand même.
Et ça serait tout. (...)
Et j'ai décidé de raconter quelque chose de nouveau sur mon séjour à chaque personne qui voudrait que je lui en parle, sans me répéter une seule fois.”
― Benjamin Kunkel, Indecision

“As you grow up, and you’ll find this, you keep getting involved with larger and larger illusions that take longer and longer to fall away. The great hope is eventually to find a delusion that will outlast your life.”
― Benjamin Kunkel, Indecision

“In truth, it is no more clear in our time than it was in Marx's how socialism will come about in either developed or undeveloped countries; what is clear is that for humanity to have a decent future, it must come about.”
― Benjamin Kunkel

“Mais tu crois que c'est quoi, une famille ! Sinon des gens dont on ne se remet pas ?”
― Benjamin Kunkel, Indecision

“I can't imagine any fairminded future person feeling there was an important moral difference between the Soviet gulag and the American one.”
― Benjamin Kunkel

“There is no worse preparation for adulthood than having been a child.”
― Benjamin Kunkel, Indecision

“Currently the party line I give myself, and do in part believe, is that what’s the happiest is just to be alive and sensitive when it comes to feeling the world, and if what your senses, honed beyond usefulness, end up registering is so much suffering out there that you become light-headed with it at times – well, those senses can still be used for extracting pleasures from fruits, nuts, beverages of all kinds, words on a page, a loved mammal in your arms, music (including sad kinds), and anyway this is only the tip of a list anyone could assemble. I know my list is basic but maybe to utter banalities is a type of solidarity in these lonelifying times?”
― Benjamin Kunkel, Indecision

“What solitary people my family were! It amazed me that two of its members had ever gotten together to produce the others. But then solitary people pretending not to be – that must be how families start up, and how the race of the lonely has grown so numerous.”
― Benjamin Kunkel, Indecision

“It was like when I’d taken a trip to some foreign land and everyone asked about it when I got back: my accounts would grow similar, focusing on this impression, that cool place, a certain funny anecdote, until there was just the one account which then substituted for my memory. Remembering this tendency, I felt an honest fear. It was the familiar fear, made honest through sudden intensity, that once all the sensation had evaporated from my life the residue would be a cliché. I’d die, St. Peter would be like, “So how was it?” and I’d say, “Great place. I liked the food. I was sick for part of it. But all the people were really nice.” And that would be it.”
― Benjamin Kunkel, Indecision

“Mais quelle famille solitaire avais-je donc ! J'étais même ébahi que deux de ses membres avaient pu s'assembler pour engendrer les deux suivants. Seulement, des solitaires qui feignent de ne pas l'être... voilà sans doute comment les familles se construisent, et comment la race des gens seuls est devenue si nombreuse.”
― Benjamin Kunkel, Indecision

“Però, spesso, quando ero in ufficio, rilassato e prigioniero, sovraqualificato e climatizzato, avevo il sospetto che la condizione dell'ape operaia di basso livello fosse ingiustamente deprecata dai sostenitori della giustizia sociale e del potenziale imano. Certo le paghe erano basse, i benefit inesistenti, le possibilità di fare carriera discutibili, e l'indifferenza aziendale verso i nostri talenti nascosti praticamente assoluta. Ma quale immensa pace, quasi vegetale, si godeva lavorando per l'Uomo! [...] Di notte potevo sentirmi male rendendomi conto della mia mediocrità, ma in un certo senso, mentre me ne stavo davanti al terminale e mi dondolavo leggermente avanti e indietro sulla mia dozzinale poltroncina da ufficio, avevo la sensazione che, se solo avessi continuato a svolgere con la doverosa diligenza quel mestiere molto attuale e molto americano che dopotutto qualcuno doveva pur fare, allora qualunque cosa fosse successa a me o al mio Paese non sarebbe stata colpa mia”
― Benjamin Kunkel, Indecision

“Capitalism is a purely cultic religion, perhaps the most extreme that ever existed.”
― Benjamin Kunkel, Utopia or Bust: A Guide to the Present Crisis