Garrett > Garrett's Quotes

“He vaguely desired to walk around and around the body and stare; the impulse of the living to try to read in dead eyes the answer to the Question.”
― Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage

“They were going to look at war, the red
animal--war, the blood-swollen god.”
― Stephen Crane, The Red Badge of Courage

“Life is a bucket of shit with a barbed wire handle.”
― Jim Thompson

“Am I walking toward something I should be running away from?”
― Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House

“The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West

“We are absurdly accustomed to the miracle of a few written signs being able to contain immortal imagery, involutions of thought, new worlds with live people, speaking, weeping, laughing. We take it for granted so simply that in a sense, by the very act of brutish routine acceptance, we undo the work of the ages, the history of the gradual elaboration of poetical description and construction, from the treeman to Browning, from the caveman to Keats. What if we awake one day, all of us, and find ourselves utterly unable to read? I wish you to gasp not only at what you read but at the miracle of its being readable.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

“I cannot disobey something which I do not know and the reality of which I have the right to deny.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

“for better or worse, it is the commentator who has the last word.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

“Reality is neither the subject nor the object of true art which creates its own special reality having nothing to do with the average "reality" perceived by the communal eye.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Pale Fire

“In their brief time together Slothrop forms the impression that this octopus is not in good mental health, though where's his basis for comparing?”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding.”
― Terence McKenna

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.”
― Richard P. Feynman

“Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Reality is not always probable, or likely.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“Instead of committing suicide, people go to work.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Correction

“It would be wrong to refuse to face the fact that everything is fundamentally sick and sad.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Gargoyles

“everything is ridiculous if one thinks of death”
― Thomas Bernhard

“You are never truly together with one you love until the person in question is dead and actually inside you.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Gargoyles

“After all, there is nothing but failure.”
― Thomas Bernhard

“I know nothing about nature. I hate nature, because it is killing me.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Wittgenstein’s Nephew

“Time destroys everything we do, whatever it is.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Concrete

“Nothing but disaster follows from applause.”
― Thomas Bernhard

“Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?”
― Emil Cioran

“Only those moments count, when the desire to remain by yourself is so powerful that you'd prefer to blow your brains out than exchange a word with someone.”
― Émile Michel Cioran, The New Gods

“Sometimes I wish I were a cannibal – less for the pleasure of eating someone than for the pleasure of vomiting him.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world.”
― Emil Cioran

“One can experience loneliness in two ways: by feeling lonely in the world or by feeling the loneliness of the world.”
― Emil Cioran

“A First Sign of the Beginning of Understanding is the Wish to Die.”
― Franz Kafka

“The meaning of life is that it stops.”
― Franz Kafka