Banal Quotes

“Banality is like boredom: bored people are boring people, people who think that things are banal are themselves banal.
Interesting people can find something interesting in all things.”
― Idries Shah, Reflections

“If any woman opens her legs for you, don't feel so lucky to be fed with nonsense, she has been a bitch for a long time, and now its your own turn to get a share from her itching tunnel.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“You are quite right, I changed my mind and do no longer speak of “radical evil.” … It is indeed my opinion now that evil is never “radical,” that it is only extreme, and that it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension. It can overgrow and lay waste the whole world precisely because it spreads like a fungus on the surface. It is “thought-defying,” as I said, because thought tries to reach some depth, to go to the roots, and the moment it concerns itself with evil, it is frustrated because there is nothing. That is its “banality.” Only the good has depth that can be radical.

(letter to Scholem from December 1964)”
― Hannah Arendt

“The miracle is that the brilliance of the miraculous can live in the blandness of the mundane. The greater miracle is that we have enough brilliance in our own blandness to see it.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“He was permanently impressed by the most irrelevant banalities and impossible to impress with real novelty, meaning, or conflict. And he was too moronic to be properly self-loathing--so it was my duty to loathe him instead.”
― Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn

“Many writers make the mistake of making their readers appear like Lazarus, without any iota of care, throwing down books to readers to crunch as if they are dogs.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“Existence is in a way so banal, you may as well try and make a kind of grandeur of it.
Francis Bacon in conversation in Daniel Farson”
― Francis Bacon

“Incomprehensible is no better than banal – it’s just its flip-side.”
― Tom McCarthy, Satin Island

“Pure wisdom is the 'fruit of life'; banal platitudes are the 'bane of existence'.”
― Criss Jami, Healology

“Lo superfluo no es eterno. Lo banal tiene un final. Lo material no tiene fundamento y no todo lo que parece verdad es real.”
― Dulce María

“Întotdeauna se găsește ceva banal la culme în tragediile altora.”
― Necunoscut

“How nice that must be, to blend in with unexceptional people in that banal, work-a-day banter. Like regular people.”
― Rasmenia Massoud, Tied Within

“But in all that suffering, the most painful suffering of all was the consciousness that it was banal, had all been discovered a long time ago, and was known to all the generations past, all just a repeated series, stamped out by our genes, That the universe was filled to its edges groans as alike as two notes, that those particular groans formed one great groan similar to the shrill parliament of the sparrows and that groan became an interstellar roar, the inaudible groan of the aging cosmos.”
― Tadeusz Konwicki, A Minor Apocalypse

“Then a thought occurs to me that nice can turn to annoying or dull if a person isn’t careful, or stops paying attention.”
― Rasmenia Massoud, Tied Within

“The inmates of Belsen or Buchenwald did not have to die hallowed by their sufferings, or with a brave resignation to their fate, or conscious of themselves as world-historical figures, or exulting in the thought that, though they themselves might perish, the human spirit itself is invincible, in order to earn the title of tragic. They simply had to be men and women in an intolerable situation. The banal truth is that one does not need to do anything in particular to qualify as a tragic protagonist. One simply has to be a human being at the end of one’s tether. One does not have to be virtuous, only virtuous enough not to deserve the wretchedness to which you are reduced.”
― Terry Eagleton, Tragedy

“Sex has become so easy, so banal,
that it is difficult to convince a person
to go out with you just to talk.”
― Augusto Branco

“Jalang

Ada sekuntum mawar di dadamu
dan dusta di mulutmu.
Sesungguhnya,
Kau tak menggonggong
serupa anjing yang tolol.
Kau hanya tak mengindahkan hal lain, selain rasa laparku.
Kaugigit tulang
dari kedalamanku yang perih.
Mata yang tak peduli
dan hasrat untuk membunuh.

Gelegak darah ini
sama kejinya dengan tikam amarah.
Api yang kau sembunyikan
di balik mata pisau beringas.
Pada dadamu yang terbelah
jantungmu yang memerah.
Kejalangan yang kau tunjukkan
tanpa penyesalan dan rasa malu.

Lagak lagumu tak semerah gincu
yang kau kenakan malam itu.
Dan apakah itu...
secarik kain sewarna darah
yang tak mampu menutupi kemesumanmu dari dunia?

Dari dulu sekali,
Kau sudah bukan milikku lagi!
...
Kau sudah jadi milik semua orang.

Semua kata cinta
yang kau obral dengan murah.
Haram jadah yang terlahir
dari mimpi basah di siang bolong.
Mimpi tempatku
menghabiskan waktu.
Waktu dan seluruh kesia-siaan.
Waktu yang tak bernilai;
Onggokan sampah!
Sumpah serapah dan omong kosong.

Waktu yang membusuk
dalam pikiran semua orang.
Mereka yang tak lebih anjing
dari diriku sendiri.
Mereka yang penuh gairah menanti
saat tiba jam pertunjukan
dengan air liur menetes.

Mereka, yang menyulam
benang laba-laba itu
ke dalam pikiranmu.
Seutas rambut yang lebih tipis
dari harga diri dan kehormatan.
Nilai yang kau sendiri
Bahkan tak peduli.

Bodohnya lagi,
seperti yang selama ini terjadi...
Aku masih saja duduk terpaku
di depan layar menyesatkan itu
menunggu...

Merasa lebih, memiliki dirimu
Lebih dari siapa pun, Kay!

2024 - 2025”
― Titon Rahmawan