Favour

“الحياة تكمن في العادي، وأكثر العظيم - شخصا كان أم حدثا - هو نتيجة لسياق رتيب، متراكم، وبطيء غالبا. أم التجارب التي تلخص تلك النتائج الهائلة الحاسمة، والشخصيات التي تمثلها لتصل بنا إلى استنتاجات تضاهي الكون ضخامة؛ ليست سوى ذروة مختزله، معرضة للهشاشة، وربكة التأويل، وفتنة التعليب”
― أحمد الحقيل, أيام وكتب: عامٌ أوّل

“I am the twentieth century. I am the ragtime and the tango; sans-serif, clean geometry. I am the virgin's-hair whip and the cunningly detailed shackles of decadent passion. I am every lonely railway station in every capital of Europe. I am the Street, the fanciless buildings of government. the cafe-dansant, the clockwork figure, the jazz saxophone, the tourist-lady's hairpiece, the fairy's rubber breasts, the travelling clock which always tells the wrong time and chimes in different keys. I am the dead palm tree, the Negro's dancing pumps, the dried fountain after tourist season. I am all the appurtenances of night.”
― Thomas Pynchon, V.

“التَّجارب الشخصية هي التي تصنع قِيمةً للأمَاكن، وإلَّا فالأماكِنُ في حَدِّ ذاتها جَمَاداتٌ، وجَمَالُها أو قُبحُهَا انعِكاسٌ للحَالةِ المزَاجيَّةِ والتَّركِيبةِ السِّياقيَّةِ للشَّخصِ الذي يَتَقاطَعُ مَعها”
― أحمد الحقيل, طرق ومدن

“We must take our sentences seriously, which means we must understand them philosophically, and the odd thing is that the few who do, who take them with utter sober seriousness, the utter sober seriousness of right-wing parsons and political saviors, the owners of Pomeranians, are the liars who want to be believed, the novelists and poets, who know that the creatures they imagine have no other being than the sounding syllables which the reader will speak into his own weary and distracted head. There are no magic words. To say the words is magical enough.”
― William H. Gass, The World Within the Word