cardulelia carduelis

“His romance and charm lay in how well he did with what might have been and how gracefully he accepted what was.”
― Mark Vonnegut, Just Like Someone Without Mental Illness Only More So

“But in some ways parties were serious and important too, she thought. They were a way of suspending life, all the serious business of life, in order to do something unimportant: and wasn't that an important thing to do?”
― César Aira, Ghosts

“At this I am good, for I am a mover of betweens. I slip amongst classifications like water in cupped palms, leaving bits of myself behind. I am quick and deft, for there is no greater fear than the fear of being caught wanting to belong. I am a chameleon. And the best chameleon has no center, no truer sense of self than what he is in an instant.”
― Andrew X. Pham, Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam

“[...]Imagine one of those people who don't think, a man whose only activity is reading novels, which for him is a purely pleasurable activity, and requires not the slightest intellectual effort; it's simply a matter of letting the pleasure of reading carry him along. Suddenly, some gesture or sentence, not to speak of a "thought", reveals that he is a philosopher in spite of himself. Where did he get that knowledge? From pleasure? From novels? Knowledge comes through the novels, of course, but not really from them. They are not the ground; you couldn't expect them to be. They're suspended in the void like everything else.”
― César Aira, Ghosts