Murray Porter > Murray's Quotes

“Before the real city could be seen it had to be imagined, the way rumours and tall tales were a kind of charting.”
― Michael Ondaatje, In the Skin of a Lion

“Then the world will be for the common people, and the sounds of happiness will reach the deepest springs. Ah! Come! People of every land, how can you not be roused.”
― Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

“The owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the coming of the dusk.”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right

“There's a huge seal called 'impossibility' pasted all over this world. And don't ever forget that we're the only ones who can tear it off once and for all.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea

“Next time I come here," he said to himself, "I must either bring sweets with me to make them like me or a stick to hit them with.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“You can only cruise the boulevards of regret so far, and then you've got to get back up onto the freeway again.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice

“There is a war that makes us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“This is to assuage our conscience, darling" she would explain to Blanca. "But it doesn't help the poor. They don't need charity; they need justice.”
― Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

“You must not pay too much attention to opinions. The written word is unalterable, and opinions are often only an expression of despair.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale

“She had been born to cradle other people's children, wear their hand-me-down clothing, eat their leftovers, live on borrowed happiness and grief, grow old beneath other people's roofs, die one day in her miserable little room in the far courtyard in a bed that did not belong to her, and be buried in a common grave in the public cemetery.”
― Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

“Only to live, to live and live! Life, whatever it may be!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“Dealing with the Hippie is generally straightforward. His childlike nature will usually respond positively to drugs, sex, and/or rock and roll, although in which order these are to be deployed must depend on conditions specific to the moment.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice

“But then, I suppose, when with the benefit of hindsight one begins to search one's past for such 'turning points', one is apt to start seeing them everywhere.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

“You’re a gentleman,” they used to say to him. “You shouldn’t have gone murdering people with a hatchet; that’s no occupation for a gentleman.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“What a fate: to be condemned to work for a firm where the slightest negligence at once gave rise to the gravest suspicion! Were all the employees nothing but a bunch of scoundrels, was there not among them one single loyal devoted man who, had he wasted only an hour or so of the firm's time in the morning, was so tormented by conscience as to be driven out of his mind and actually incapable of leaving his bed?”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis

“Judgement does not come suddenly; the proceedings gradually merge into the judgement.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“What a splendid king you'd make of a desert island - you and you alone.”
― Sophocles, Antigone

“D’you know what happens when you hurt people?’ Ammu said. ‘When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do. They make people love you a little less.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement.”
― Soren Kieregaaard

“That's why I like listening to Schubert while I'm driving. Like I said, it's because all his performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I'm driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of - that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally I find that encouraging.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“And the air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. Big Things lurk unsaid inside.”
― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

“The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.”
― Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

“My son, the Holy Church is on the right, but Jesus Christ was always on the left.”
― Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits

“it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.' 'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle.”
― Franz Kafka, The Trial

“He that is to govern a whole Nation, must read in himselfe, not this, or that particular man; but Man-kind;”
― Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

“In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Closing your eyes isn't going to change anything. Nothing's going to disappear just because you can't see what's going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That's the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won't make time stand still.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Chance encounters are what keep us going.”
― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore