Mag

“Most of us prefer to believe we are the active subjects of our victories but only the passive objects of our defeats. We triumph, but it is not really we who fail - we are ruined by forces beyond our control.”
― Hernan Diaz, Trust

“A year and an instant are equivalent in a monotonous life.”
― Hernan Diaz, In the Distance

“They merely stood, completely absorbed by nothing. Time dissolved into the sky. There was little difference between landscape and spectators. Insensible things that existed in one another.”
― Hernan Diaz, In the Distance

“Kitsch. Can't think of Engl. trans. for this word. A copy that's so proud of how close it comes to the original that it believes there's more worth in this closeness than in originality itself. "It looks like...!" Imposture of feeling over actual emotion; sentimentality over sentiment. Kitsch can also be in the eye: "The sunset looks like a painting!" Because artifice is now the ultimate standard, the original (sunset) has to be turned into a fake (painting), so that the latter may provide the measure of the former's beauty. Kitsch is always a form of inverted Platonism, prizing imitation over archetype. And in every case, it's related to an inflation of aesthetic value, as seen in the worst kind of kitsch: "classy" kitsch. Solemn, ornamental, grand. Ostentatiously, arrogantly announcing its divorce from authenticity.”
― Hernan Diaz, Trust