brian annan
https://www.goodreads.com/bignothing00
Different cultures and life styles in America use the same words with different shades of meaning. All belong to one society yet live in different worlds.
“Only a simple black pencil will do for making a notation of a benchmark. Ink will run, be dissolved by the tree sap, be washed away by rain, dew, fog, and snow. Nothing as artificial as ink will do for recording eternity and immortality. Graphite is carbon that has been subjected to enormous pressure for millions of years and that might have become coal or diamonds. Instead, however, it has been transformed into something more precious than a diamond; it has become a pencil that can record all that it has seen… A pencil is a greater miracle than a diamond, although the chemical make-up of graphite and diamond is identical.”
― Kolyma Tales
― Kolyma Tales
“Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping ground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the chief literary output.”
― Anarchism and Other Essays
― Anarchism and Other Essays
“But whether it be faith or agnosticism, it must be nothing external to me. Its symbols must be of my own creating. Only that is spiritual which makes its own form. If I may not find its secret within myself, I shall never find it: if I have not got it already, it will never come to me.”
― Complete Works of Oscar Wilde
― Complete Works of Oscar Wilde
“Destruction and humiliation didn’t matter. Only memory and integrity did. Was the hour I was living through right now different from the hour they were living through then? Did it matter? From what hour does one recite the evening Sh’ma?”
― People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present
― People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present
“The man who dies rich dies disgraced,”
― The Illuminati
― The Illuminati
brian’s 2025 Year in Books
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