AK > AK's Quotes

“You can learn more by going to the opera than you ever can by reading Emerson. Like that there are two sexes.”
― David Markson

“How can I tell what I think until I see what I say?”
― David Markson, Vanishing Point

“In fact one frequently seemed to gather all sorts of similar information about subjects one had less than profound interest in.”
― David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress

“Can Protagonist think of a single film that interests him as much as the three-hundredth best book he ever read?”
― David Markson, Reader’s Block

“Or was it possibly...nothing more than a read?”
― David Markson, This Is Not a Novel

“Tennessee Williams choked to death on the plastic cap of a nasal spray.”
― David Markson, This Is Not a Novel

“One never does solve what it is about watching fires, really.”
― David Markson

“I also believe I met William Gaddis once. He did not look Italian.”
― David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress

“if one wishes to see a cat badly enough, one will doubtless see one.”
― David Markson

“An information bureau of the human condition, Theodor Adorno called Kafka.”
― David Markson

“Trying to imagine E. M. Forster, who found Ulysses indecorous, at a London performance of Lenny Bruce—to which in fact he was once taken.

Trying to imagine the same for a time-transported Nathaniel Hawthorne—who during his first visit to Europe was even shocked by the profusion of naked statues.”
― David Markson, The Last Novel

“I'm writing my autobiography one poem at a time.”
― RC deWinter

“Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed to those who seek the higher places.”
― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

“My father...was a man who understood all dogs thoroughly and treated them like human beings.”
― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

“Is it about a bicycle?”
― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

“Never before had I believed or suspected that I had a soul but just then I knew I had. I knew also that my soul was friendly, was my senior in years and was solely concerned for my own welfare. For convenience I called him Joe. I felt a little reassured to know that I was not altogether alone. Joe was helping me.”
― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

“Everything is composed of small particles of itself and they are flying around in concentric circles and arcs and segments and innumerable other geometrical figures too numerous to mention collectively, never standing still or resting but spinning away and darting hither and thither and back again, all the time on the go. These diminutive gentlemen are called atoms. Do you follow me intelligently?”
― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

“The first beginnings of wisdom...is to ask questions but never to answer any.”
― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

“...it is a great thing to do what is necessary before it becomes essential and unavoidable.”
― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

“A man who takes into consideration the feelings of others even when arranging the manner of his own death shows a nobility of character which compels the admiration of all classes.”
― Flann O'Brien, The Third Policeman

“Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”
― William Butler Yeats, The Wind Among the Reeds

“Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.”
― W.B. Yeats

“What can be explained is not poetry.”
― W.B. Yeats

“There is another world, but it is in this one.”
― William Butler Yeats

“In dreams begin responsibilities.”
― William Butler Yeats, Responsibilities

“Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.”
― William Butler Yeats

“Think like a wise man but communicate in the language of the people.”
― William Butler Yeats

“All empty souls tend toward extreme opinions.”
― William Butler Yeats

“This world's a city full of straying streets, and death's the market-place where each one meets.”
― William Shakespeare, The Two Noble Kinsmen

“Postmodern irony and cynicism’s become an end in itself, a measure of hip sophistication and literary savvy. Few artists dare to try to talk about ways of working toward redeeming what’s wrong, because they’ll look sentimental and naive to all the weary ironists. Irony’s gone from liberating to enslaving. There’s some great essay somewhere that has a line about irony being the song of the prisoner who’s come to love his cage.”
― David Foster Wallace