Zidan

“I know you, I know you. You're the only serious person in the room, aren't you, the only one who understands, and you can prove it by the fact that you've never finished a single thing in your life. You're the only well-educated person, because you never went to college, and you resent education, you resent social ease, you resent good manners, you resent success, you resent any kind of success, you resent God, you resent Christ, you resent thousand-dollar bills, you resent Christmas, by God, you resent happiness, you resent happiness itself, because none of that's real. What is real, then? Nothing's real to you that isn't part of your own past, real life, a swamp of failures, of social, sexual, financial, personal...spiritual failure. Real life. You poor bastard. You don't know what real life is, you've never been near it. All you have is a thousand intellectualized ideas about life. But life? Have you ever measured yourself against anything but your own lousy past? Have you ever faced anything outside yourself? Life! You poor bastard.”
― William Gaddis, The Recognitions

“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

“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

“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