sarah

“how is a Greek chorus like a lawyer
they’re both in the business of searching for a precedent
finding an analogy
locating a prior example
so as to be able to say
this terrible thing we’re witnessing now is
not unique you know it happened before
or something much like it
we’re not at a loss how to think about this
we’re not without guidance
there is a pattern
we can find an historically parallel case
and file it away under
ANTIGONE BURIED ALIVE FRIDAY AFTERNOON
COMPARE CASE HISTORIES 7, 17 AND 49
now I could dig up those case histories
tell you about Danaos and Lykourgos and the sons of Phineus
people locked up in a room or a cave or their own dark mind
it wouldn’t help you
it doesn’t help me
it’s Friday afternoon
there goes Antigone to be buried alive”
― Anne Carson, Antigonick

“Do you know what a poem is, Esther?'
No, what?' I would say.
A piece of dust.'
Then, just as he was smiling and starting to look proud, I would say, 'So are the cadavers you cut up. So are the people you think you're curing. They're dust as dust as dust. I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together.'
And of course Buddy wouldn't have any answer to that, because what I said was true. People were made of nothing so much as dust, and I couldn't see that doctoring all that dust was a bit better than writing poems people would remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick or couldn't sleep.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“You ought to try this out sometime, dear reader. Sit yourself down on the sofa of a coffee shop or bar, facing the fireplace beside the madam of the house, so that the both of you are staring at the flames, and talk as if you’re speaking to the fire — I promise, up against even the dullest mind, you’ll be able to sustain a lively conversation for hour after hour. But take heed, reader: you must not look into each other’s eyes, not even once.”
― Osamu Dazai

“This was the way we loved, until the night became a silent day...The universe was exploding, each particle away from the next, hurtling us into dark and lonely space, eternally tearing us away from each other -- child out of the womb, friend away from friend, moving from each other, each through his own pathway toward the goal-box of solitary death.

But this was the counterweight, the act of binding and holding. As when men to keep from being swept overboard in the storm clutch at each other's hands to resist being torn apart, so our bodies fused a link. in the human chain that kept us from being swept into nothing.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon