Kelly > Kelly's Quotes

“Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“I have forgotten my mask, and my face was int it.”
― Kenneth Patchen, The Journal of Albion Moonlight

“The question is not: do we believe in God? but rather: does God believe in us? And the answer is: only an unbeliever could have created our image of God: and only a fake God could be satisfied with it.”
― Kenneth Patchen, The Journal of Albion Moonlight

“People don't want to be healed. They want a nice juicy wound that will show well when they put neon lights around it.”
― Kenneth Patchen, The Journal of Albion Moonlight

“Ah I can see that....
You can see anything once you've been told it's there to see”
― Kenneth Patchen, The Journal of Albion Moonlight

“You look nice in those old slacks, but in the raw you are Beauty herself.”
― Kenneth Patchen, The Journal of Albion Moonlight

“There are so many little dyings
How do we know which one of them
is death?


”
― Kenneth Patchen

“Purgatory surpasses heaven and hell in poetry, because it represents a future and the others do not.”
― François-René de Chateaubriand, Mémoires d'Outre-Tombe

“God break me out of this stiff life I've made”
― Jean Valentine

“Poetry leads to the same place as all forms of eroticism — to the blending and fusion of separate objects. It leads us to eternity, it leads us to death, and through death to continuity. Poetry is eternity; the sun matched with the sea.”
― Georges Bataille, Erotism: Death and Sensuality

“Do not be frightened. Death is instantaneous and passes in a flash. I know, for I have just died with the girl. Forgive my dying. It was unavoidable.”
― Clarice Lispector, The Hour of the Star

“A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism.”
― Georges Bataille

“I believe that truth has only one face: that of a violent contradiction.”
― Georges Bataille, Violent Silence: Celebrating Georges Bataille

“I don't want your love unless you know i am repulsive,and love me even as you know it.”
― Georges Bataille

“In what will survive me
I am in harmony
with my annihilation.”
― Georges Bataille

“To others, the universe seems decent because decent people have gelded eyes. That is why they fear lewdness. They are never frightened by the crowing of a rooster or when strolling under a starry heaven. In general, people savor the "pleasures of the flesh" only on condition that they be insipid.
But as of then, no doubt existed for me: I did not care for what is known as "pleasures of the flesh" because they really are insipid; I cared only for what is classified as "dirty." On the other hand, I was not even satisfied with the usual debauchery, because the only thing it dirties is debauchery itself, while, in some way or other, anything sublime and perfectly pure is left intact by it. My kind of debauchery soils not only my body and my thoughts, but also anything I may conceive in its course, that is to say, the vast starry universe, which merely serves as a backdrop.”
― Georges Bataille, Story of the Eye

“The sexual act is in time what the tiger is in space.”
― Georges Bataille

“I think that knowledge enslaves us, that at the base of all knowledge there is a servility, the acceptation of a way of life wherein each moment has meaning only in relation to another or others that will follow it.”
― Georges Bataille, The Unfinished System of Nonknowledge

“Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.”
― Georges Bataille

“There lived a redheaded man who had no eyes or ears. He didn’t have hair either, so he was called a redhead arbitrarily. He couldn’t talk because he had no mouth. He had no nose either. He didn’t even have arms or legs. He had no stomach, he had no back, he had no spine, and he had no innards at all. He didn’t have anything. So we don’t even know who we’re talking about. It’s better that we don’t talk about him any more.”
― Daniil Kharms, Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings

“I was most happy when pen and paper were taken from me and I was forbidden from doing anything. I had no anxiety about doing nothing by my own fault, my conscience was clear, and I was happy. This was when I was in prison.”
― Daniil Kharms, Today I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings

“I am interested only in "nonsense"; only in that which makes no practical sense. I am interested in life only in its absurd manifestations.”
― Daniil Kharms

“I would like to write a Book which would drive men mad, which would be like an open door leading them where they would never have consented to go, in short, a door that opens onto reality.”
― Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings

“Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

“If we believe that self-preservation is an act of political warfare, then we must not forget to ask the question: Who are we at war with? Who are we fighting?”
― Virginia Grise, Your Healing is Killing Me

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
― Simone Weil

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”
― Simone Weil

“All sins are attempts to fill voids.”
― Simone Weil

“Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we've ever met.”
― Marguerite Duras

“Very early in my life it was too late.”
― Marguerite Duras, The Lover