Sadra > Sadra's Quotes

“The aim of literature ... is the creation of a strange object covered with fur which breaks your heart.”
― Donald Barthelme, Come Back, Dr. Caligari

“Some sort of pressure must exist; the artist exists because the world is not perfect. Art would be useless if the world were perfect, as man wouldn’t look for harmony but would simply live in it. Art is born out of an ill-designed world.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“We can express our feelings regarding the world around us either by poetic or by descriptive means. I prefer to express myself metaphorically. Let me stress: metaphorically, not symbolically. A symbol contains within itself a definite meaning, certain intellectual formula, while metaphor is an image. An image possessing the same distinguishing features as the world it represents. An image — as opposed to a symbol — is indefinite in meaning. One cannot speak of the infinite world by applying tools that are definite and finite. We can analyse the formula that constitutes a symbol, while metaphor is a being-within-itself, it's a monomial. It falls apart at any attempt of touching it.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“Love Poem
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It's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more.”
― Richard Brautigan

“I know only one thing. when i sleep, i know no fear, no, trouble no bliss. blessing on him who invented sleep. the common coin that purchases all things, the balance that levels shepherd and king, fool and wise man. there is only one bad thing about sound sleep. they say it closely resembles death.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky, Solaris

“A man writes because he is tormented, because he doubts. He needs to constantly prove to himself and the others that he’s worth something. And if I know for sure that I’m a genius? Why write then? What the hell for?”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“The film [Stalker] needs to be slower and duller at the start so that the viewers who walked into the wrong theatre have time to leave before the main action starts.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“...what nobody seems to understand is that love can only be one-sided, that no other love exists, that in any other form it is not love. If it involves less than total giving, it is not love. It is impotent; for the moment it is nothing.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“What is art? (...) Like a declaration of love: the consciousness of our dependence on each other. A confession. An unconscious act that none the less reflects the true meaning of life—love and sacrifice.”
― Andrei Tarkovsky

“Music is, to me, proof of the existence of God. It is so extraordinarily full of magic, and in tough times of my life I can listen to music and it makes such a difference.”
― Kurt Vonnegut

“I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don't really exist if you don't.”
― Nabokov Vladimi, Lolita

“Because when I read, I don't really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel.”
― Bohumil Hrabal, Too Loud a Solitude

“Even in my bad luck I have always been lucky.”
― Bohumil Hrabal, Closely Watched Trains

“Probably the closest things to perfection are the huge absolutely empty holes that astronomers have recently discovered in space. If there's nothing there, how can anything go wrong?”
― Richard Brautigan

“I had a good-talking candle last night in my bedroom. I was very tired but I wanted somebody to be with me, so I lit a candle and listened to its comfortable voice of light until I was asleep.”
― Richard Brautigan

“One day
Time will die
And love will bury it”
― Richard Brautigan

“Your Catfish Friend

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, “It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,”
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, “I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them.”
― Richard Brautigan, The Pill vs. the Springhill Mine Disaster

“All girls should have a poem
written for them even if
we have to turn this God-damn world
upside down to do it.”
― Richard Brautigan

“I’m haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.”
― Richard Brautigan

“Messy, isn't it?”
― Richard Brautigan

“It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
― Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature

“Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness.”
― Italo Calvino

“I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The death of God left the angels in a strange position.”
― Donald Barthelme

“He is mad about being small when you were big, but no, that's not it, he is mad about being helpless when you were powerful, but no, not that either, he is mad about being contingent when you were necessary, not quite it... he is insane because when he loved you, you didn't notice.”
― Donald Barthelme

“See the moon? It hates us.”
― Donald Barthelme

“How can you be alienated without first having been connected?”
― Donald Barthelme, Sixty Stories

“Goals incapable of attainment have driven many a man to despair, but despair is easier to get to than that -- one need merely look out of the window, for example.”
― Donald Barthelme