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“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.”
― V.
― V.
“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.”
― The World Within the Word
― The World Within the Word
“ربما ليس كل فعل يَصدُر من الإنسَان أو حَالةٍ تَطرأُ عليه تَكون نَابعَةً مِنه. أحيانًا المَكان، الزَّمَن والليْل والنَّهار، الحَر والبَرد، الطَّقس، تَدفَعُ الشَّخصَ إلى الإحسَاس بأشيَاء حقيقيَّة تتمظهَرُ على خَارجِهِ، وتؤثِّرُ عليه. وربما كِلاهما. وربما على حسب الشخص. ليسَ واضحًا.”
―
―
“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”
― أيام وكتب: عامٌ أوّل
― أيام وكتب: عامٌ أوّل
“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.”
― The Recognitions
― The Recognitions
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