Jim McCrory > Jim's Quotes

“I'll tell you something banal.We're emotional illiterates.And not only you and I-practically everybody,that's the depressing thing.We're taught everything about the body and about agriculture in Madagascar and about the square root of pi, or whatever the hell it's called,but not a word about the soul.We're abysmally ignorant,about both ourselves and others.There's a lot of loose talk nowadays to the effect that children should be brought up to know all about brotherhood and understanding and coexistence and equality and everything else that's all the rage just now.But it doesn't dawn on anyone that we must first learn something about ourselves and our own feelings.Our own fear and loneliness and anger.We're left without a chance,ignorant and remorseful among the ruins of our ambitions.To make a child aware of it's soul is something almost indecent.You're regarded as a dirty old man.How can you understand other people if you don't know anything about yourself?Now you're yawning,so that's the end of the lecture.”
― Ingmar Bergman

“الصداقة مثل الحب، وجوهر الصداقة يقوم على الصراحة والعاطفة والصدق. من المريح أن ترى وجه صديقك أو تسمع صوته بالهاتف وتتحدث معه حول أمور مؤلمة وملحّة، وتسمعه يعترف بما يخشى التفكير به. إن للصداقة لمسة من الحسيّة، فشكل الصديق ووجهه وعيناه وشفتاه وصوته وحركاته ونبرة صوته، كل هذا محفور فى ذهنك، مفتاح سرّى يمنحك الثقة لأن تبوح بنفسك فى صداقة حقيقية.

إن علاقة الحب تنفجر متحولة إلى صراعات لا يمكن تفاديها، أما الصداقة فلا تحتاج إلى الرغبة نفسها من الاهتياج والتعقيم. فى أحيان كثيرة يلتصق الرمل بين أسطحة التواصل القابلة للخدش ويلى ذلك الأسف والصعوبات. أفكر وأقول لنفسى إننى أستطيع تدبير أمورى جيداً دون هذا الأحمق، ثم يمضى بعض الوقت ويظهر إحساس غير سار بفقدان هذا الشخص، إحساس يعبّر عن نفسه بمستويات مختلفة، واضحة أحياناً ومتكتمة غالباً.

الصداقة لا تعتمد على الوعود والاحتجاجات أو على الزمان والمكان. الصداقة غير متطلبة إلا فى أمر واحد. انها تتطلب الصدق، وهو مطلبها الوحيد، ولكن الصعب.”
― Ingmar Bergman, The Magic Lantern

“I am carried in my shadow
like a violin
in its black case”
― Tomas Tranströmer, For the Living and the Dead

“In the middle of life, death comes
to take your measurements. The visit
is forgotten and life goes on. But the suit
is being sewn on the sly.”
― Tomas Tranströmer, The Deleted World

“Every person is a half-opened door
leading to a room for everyone.”
― Tomas Transtromer

“It is still beautiful to hear the heart beat
but often the shadow seems more real than the body.”
― Tomas Tranströmer

“الحقيقة موجودة على الأرض
لكن لا أحد يجرؤ على إلتقاطها
الحقيقة ممدّدة في الشارع
لا أحد يلتقطها !”
― Tomas Tranströmer

“Un día nos libraremos de todo.
Sentiremos el aire de la muerte bajo las alas y seremos más tiernos y más salvajes que aquí.”
― Tomas Tranströmer, For the Living and the Dead

“Frågar du mig var jag finns
så bor jag här bakom bergen
Det är långt men jag är nära
Jag bor i en annan värld
men du bor ju i samma
Den finns överallt om också sällsynt som helium
Varför begär du ett luftskepp att fara med
Begär i stället ett filter för kväve
ett filter för kolsyra, väte och andra gaser
Begär ett filter för allt som skiljer oss
ett filter för livet
Du säger att du nästan inte kan andas
Än sen! Vem tror du kan andas?
Den mesta tiden tar vi det ändå med jämnmod
En vis man har sagt :
>>Det var så mörkt att jag nätt och jämt kunde se stjärnorna<<
Han menade bara att det var natt”
― Gunnar Ekelöf, Strountes

“Every summer there are a number of nights, not many, but a number, when everything is perfect. The light, the warmth, the smells, the mist, the birdsong – the moths. Who can sleep? Who wants to?”
― Fredrik Sjöberg, The Fly Trap

“We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”
― Alan Watts

“Понякога животът ми очи отваря в мрака
и ме обзема чувството, че множества кръстосват улиците,
а аз стоя невидим и ги наблюдавам
как сляпо и тревожно търсят чудо.

Така детето се унася в сън - уплашено
от прокънтяващите стъпки на сърцето
далеч, далеч, догдето утрото не пъхне лъч в ключалката,
за да отвори дверите на мрака.”
― Tomas Tranströmer

“Now, that bird," he would say, "is, maybe, two hundred years old, Hawkins--they live forever mostly; and if anybody's seen more wickedness, it must be the devil himself. She's sailed with England, the great Cap'n England, the pirate. She's been at Madagascar, and at Malabar, and Surinam, and Providence, and Portobello. She was at the fishing up of the wrecked plate ships. It's there she learned 'Pieces of eight,' and little wonder; three hundred and fifty thousand of 'em, Hawkins! She was at the boarding of the viceroy of the Indies out of Goa, she was; and to look at her you would think she was a babby. But you smelt powder-- didn't you, cap'n?”
― Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island

“Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different results.”
― Narcotics Anonymous

“Precisely because she had tended and pitied, the desolation is hers as well.”
― Richard Selzer, Letters To A Young Doctor

“At midnight I looked about to discover that I was the oldest living human being in the world. A twinge of shame. I should be at home, I thought, in my slippers and my bronchitic scarf.”
― Richard Selzer, Letters To A Young Doctor

“One holds the knife as one holds the bow of a cello or a tulip-by-the stem. Not palmed not gripped not grasped, but lightly, with the tips of the finger. The knife is not for pressing. It is for drawing across the field of skin. Like a slender fish, it waits at the ready, then go! It darts, followed by a thin wake of red. The flesh parts, falling away to yellow globules of fat. Even now, after so many times, I still marvel at its power-cold, gleaming, silent. More, I am still struck with a kind of dread that it is I whose hand the blade travels, that my hand is its vehicle, that yet again, this steel-bellied thing and I have conspired for a most unnatural purpose, the laying open of a body of a human being.
Richard Selzer: Down from Troy”
― Richard Selzer

“You will see at precisely what moment the writer ceases to think of his character as an instrument to be manipulated and think of him as someone with whom he has fallen in love. For it is always, must always be, a matter of love.”
― Richard Selzer

“A man does not know whose hands will stroke from him the last bubbles of his life. That alone should make him kinder to strangers.”
― Richard Selzer, Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery

“Don’t tell the wealthy that the nightly humming they hear in order to sleep is made possible from the distant wheels of a midnight cart being rolled by a man who dreams of a bed.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“The best literary device I got from my people was their talk, rough, earthy, salty speech that starts dancing on me sometimes, crying on me other times whether I like it or not.”
― Máirtín Ó Cadhain

“When I die, I would sleep peacefully, I would not have to work, I would not think about the house or the weather, I would finally rest... Where did this velvet come from in the graveyard ground?”
― Máirtín Ó Cadhain, The Dirty Dust: Cré na Cille

“A sense of nostalgia for bygone days underlaid the cheerful vitality of their working-class neighbourhood.”
― Royakan Taigu, Anne's Cradle: The Life and Works of Hanako Muraoka, Japanese Translator of Anne of Green Gables

“Hanako had taken a Japanese translation of John Milton’s Paradise Lost from her father’s shelf last year. Although it was too difficult for a nine-year-old, she felt its worth even without understanding all the words and had basked in a strange sense of fulfilment. The joy she had experienced at the time surged through her at the memory.”
― Eri Muraoka, Anne's Cradle: The Life and Works of Hanako Muraoka, Japanese Translator of Anne of Green Gables