kyghostly > kyghostly's Quotes

“I want to explain about the Catallus poem (101). Catallus wrote poem 101 for his brother who died in the Troad. Nothing at all is known about the brother except his death. Catallus appears to have travelled from Verona to Asia Minor to stand at the grave. Perhaps he recited the elegy there. I have loved this poem since the first time I read it in high school Latin class and I have tried to translate it a number of times. Nothing in English can capture the passionate, slow surface of a Roman elegy. No one (even in Latin) can approximate Catullan diction, which at its most sorrowful has an air of deep festivity, like one of those trees that turns all its leaves over, silver, in the wind. I never arrived at the translation I would have liked to do of poem 101. But over the years of working at it, I came to think of translating as a room, not exactly an unknown room, where one gropes for the light switch. I guess it never ends. A brother never ends. I prowl him. He does not end.”
― Anne Carson, Nox

“Note that the word "mute" is regarded by linguists as an onomatopoeic formation referring not to silence but to a certain fundamental opacity of human being, which likes to show the truth by allowing it to be seen hiding. In cigarette-smoke-soaked Copenhagen, under a wide thin sorrowful sky, as swans drift down the water, I am looking a long time into the muteness of my brother. It resists me.”
― Anne Carson, Nox

“Because our conversations were few (he phoned me maybe 5 times in 22 years) I study his sentences the ones I remember as if I'd been asked to translate them.”
― Anne Carson, Nox

“He refuses, he is in the stairwell, he disappears”
― Anne Carson, Nox

“Whether you come as a lover or an executioner, I am ready to receive you.”
― Agustín Gómez Arcos, The Carnivorous Lamb

“Dear Milena,
I wish the world were ending tomorrow. Then I could take the next train, arrive at your doorstep in Vienna, and say: “Come with me, Milena. We are going to love each other without scruples or fear or restraint. Because the world is ending tomorrow.” Perhaps we don’t love unreasonably because we think we have time, or have to reckon with time. But what if we don't have time? Or what if time, as we know it, is irrelevant? Ah, if only the world were ending tomorrow. We could help each other very much.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena

“...because for me you were the measure of all things.”
― Franz Kafka, Letter to His Father

“The human mind has a primitive ego defense mechanism that negates all realities that produce too much stress for the brain to handle. It’s called Denial.”
― Dan Brown, Inferno

“And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good.”
― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“I have crossed the seas, I have left cities behind me,
and I have followed the source of rivers towards their
source or plunged into forests, always making for other
cities. I have had women, I have fought with men ; and
I could never turn back any more than a record can spin
in reverse. And all that was leading me where ?
To this very moment...”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“My brother once showed me a piece of quartz that contained, he said, some trapped water older than all the seas in our world. He held it up to my ear. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘life and no escape.”
― Anne Carson, Plainwater: Essays and Poetry

“Isn't love the emanation of desire or just a statement of emptiness in expectation? As we long for what is missing and finally hold it, could it be that we may not crave it anymore in the end? Still, if we learn to "enjoy" the precious moments of its presence, it can remain a captivating experience and a mesmerizing adventure. If it keeps on overwhelming us with "joy," love can turn into a magic prism and make it possible to discover a rainbow of twinkles and enchanting sceneries. As our imagination constantly discerns new qualities, the sparkle of love does not expire in the boredom of forgetfulness. (“Twilight of desire“)”
― Erik Pevernagie