But_i_thought_

“A vast distance exists between a protester and his slogan; the entire history of politics exists in that gap.”
― Hisham Matar, My Friends

“Sanity and insanity were not opposites but rather were the two faces of inanimate matter, the point at which the existence of consciousness can get no further in breaking down the existence of substance, of the body. Art, rooted in insanity, transforms itself through process into sanity: it is matter, the body, that is insane.”
― Rachel Cusk, Parade

“Because in fact we don’t want to see the thing itself, on a screen or on a stage, we don’t want to see actual pain or suffering or death, but its representation. Our awareness of the performance is what allows us to enjoy the emotion, to creep close to it and breathe in its atmosphere, performance allows this dangerous proximity.”
― Katie Kitamura, Audition

“Before he became a father, he imagined the relationship as being like an intensive version of owning a pet. The child, he thought, was essentially a passive, a vessel into which you poured your love. On TV that’s how it looked. Children were silent, dormant; you went into their bedrooms, gazed down at them fondly, drew the blankets over them as they slept.

But in life, he discovered, parenthood was like – it was – living with a person. A new person, with strong opinions, strong tastes, arbitrary swings of emotion, all of them addressed at you. You were the passive one: the work of care was primarily to endure, to weather the endless, buffeting storms of unmediated will.”
― Paul Murray, The Bee Sting