Ian Towart

“and indeed the artists in their degradation were down on their knees, showering ardent kisses on the foul-smelling feet of the high-placed chisellers and low-born despots on whose charity they lived!”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“At the funeral the next day, having skillfully obtained more whiskey, Chester appeared at first poised and sober. Signs of drunkenness, however, soon appeared, and the patient proceeded to make a shocking and memorable impression. Vomiting and defecating while in the aisle of the church contributed to this effect.”
― Hervey M. Cleckley, The Mask of Sanity: An Attempt to Clarify Some Issues about the So-Called Psychopathic Personality

“All this activity was taking place on the waterfront, and in vast warehouses washed by the dark, scummy waters of an imaginary Thames, amid a forest of masts, a thicket of beams which pierced the sky’s leaden clouds; high up, on the skyline, trains were racing along at full speed, and down below, in the sewers, other trains were running, emitting hideous shrieks and belching forth clouds of smoke through the shaft openings, while along all the boulevards and streets—where, in an eternal twilight, blazed the monstrous, garish depravities of advertising—streams of carriages flowed between two columns of silent, preoccupied pedestrians who stared straight ahead as they walked, their elbows pressed to their sides.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

“History may well judge that the most important long-term consequence of 9/11 was the way the attacks that day distracted America from the biggest strategic shift of our time. They stopped America recognising China’s rise, made it easier for China to challenge US leadership, and harder for America to remain a significant power in Asia.”
― Hugh White, How to Defend Australia