Han Far

“What do you do from morning to night?"

"I endure myself.”
― Emil Cioran, The Trouble With Being Born

“We must allow ourselves to think, we must dare to think, even though we fail. It is in the nature of things that we always fail, because we suddenly find it impossible to order our thoughts, because the process of thinking requires us to consider every thought there is, every possible thought. Fundamentally we have always failed, like all the others, whoever they were, even the greatest minds. At some point, they suddenly failed and their system collapsed, as is proved by their writings, which we admire because they venture farthest into failure. To think is to fail, I thought.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Extinction

“Whenever I see someone thinking, can I therefore infer from this how he walks? I ask myself, says Oehler, if I see someone walking can I infer how he thinks? No, of course, I may not ask myself this question, for this question is one of those questions that may not be asked because they cannot be asked without being nonsense. But naturally we may not reproach someone who walks, whose walking we have analyzed, for his thinking, before we know his thinking. Just as we may not reproach someone who thinks for his walking before we know his walking. How carelessly this person walks we often think and very often how carelessly this person thinks, and we soon come to realize that this person walks in exactly the same way as he thinks, thinks the same way as he walks. However, we may not ask ourselves how we walk, for then we walk differently from the way we really walk and our walking simply cannot be judged, just as we may not ask ourselves how we think, for then we cannot judge how we think because it is no longer our thinking.”
― Thomas Bernhard, Walking: A Novella

“... uten en ekstrem velvilje overfor livet i sin alminnelighet, en gjennomstrømmende sympati for alt omkring en, ingen litteratur overhodet. Eller med Handkes ord altså: hengivenhet. Hengivenhet til en verden man ikke nødvendigvis ønsker eller klarer å ha så altfor mye med å gjøre. Hengivenhet også til verden som et bedritent sted å være. Hengivenhet, åkkesom, til verden og de mennesker som bebor dem. Hengivenhet hinsides godt og ondt.”
― Stig Sæterbakken, Der jeg tenker er det alltid mørkt