Lucy Simon

“Stream of consciousness is a muddle-headed phrase. It is not a stream, it’s a pool, a sea, an ocean.”
― Dorothy M. Richardson

“The question is not: Can I write about Wittgenstein. The question is: Can I be Wittgenstein for one moment without destroying either Wittgenstein or myself… Wittgenstein is a summons to which I cannot respond... Thus, I do not write about Wittgenstein not because I can’t write about him, but rather because I cannot answer him.”
― Thomas Bernhard

“The woman who presents herself to the spectator as a 'picture' forever arranged, is, for the contemplative mind, the chiefest danger. Sometimes one meets a woman who is beast turning human. Such a person's every movement will reduce to an image of a forgotten experience; a mirage of an eternal wedding cast on the racial memory; as insupportable a joy as would be the vision of an eland coming down an aisle of trees, chapleted with orange blossoms and bridal veil, a hoof raised in the economy of fear,stepping in the trepidation of flesh that will become myth; as the unicorn is neither man nor beast deprived, but human hunger pressing its breast to its prey.
Such a woman is the infected carrier of the past; before her the structure of our head and jaws ache -- we feel that we could eat her, she who is eaten death returning, for only then do we put our face close to the blood on the lips of our forefathers.”
― Djuna Barnes, Nightwood

“When an important writer recommends a work to you -- whether by openly naming the title; or by shy=covert use of it (which perhaps is the greater praise) then go right ahead and follow his [sic!, etc] momentous hint ! A man with expertise and taste has done trusty spade-work for you : {pre=reading} and winnowing 1000 volumes of antiquated chaff for you. Not to make grateful use of such a hint would mean my thoughtless=arrogant shoving aside all the precious, irreplaceable hours that a venerable predecessor spent reading for me.”
― Arno Schmidt, Radio Dialogs II