Muzzy

“I realized that Joyce had gone as far as one could in the direction of knowing more, in control of one's material. He was always adding to it; you only have to look at his proofs to see that. I realised that my own way was impoverishment, in lack of knowledge and in taking away, subtracting rather than adding. When I first met Joyce, I didn't intend to be a writer. That only came later when I found out that I was no good at all at teaching. When I found I simply couldn't teach. But I do remember speaking about Joyce's heroic achievement. I had a great admiration for him. That's what it was: epic, heroic, what he achieved. I realized that I couldn't go down that same road.”
― Samuel Beckett

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance: An Excerpt from Collected Essays, First Series

“Ce n'est pas pour devenir écrivain qu'on écrit. C'est pour rejoindre en silence cet amour qui manque à tout amour. C'est pour rejoindre le sauvage, l'écorché, le limpide. On écrit une langue simple. On ne fait aucune différence entre l'amour, la langue et le chant. Le chant c'est l'amour. L'amour c'est un fleuve. Il disparaît parfois. Il s'enfonce dans la terre. Il poursuit son cours dans l'épaisseur d'une langue. Il réapparaît ici ou là, invincible, inaltérable. ”
― Christian Bobin, La part manquante

“specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”
― Weber Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism