Katia N
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(page 155 of 320)
"Thomas Vyre’s identity had been stolen. Some might have found this troubling; Vyre was happy about it. It hadn’t suited him anymore. He had long since grown weary of the man he had been, or, at least, the man that others had thought him. Anyone who wanted his identity was welcome to it. (His bank account less so; fortunately no one had tried a hit on that yet.)" — Apr 16, 2026 07:11AM
"Thomas Vyre’s identity had been stolen. Some might have found this troubling; Vyre was happy about it. It hadn’t suited him anymore. He had long since grown weary of the man he had been, or, at least, the man that others had thought him. Anyone who wanted his identity was welcome to it. (His bank account less so; fortunately no one had tried a hit on that yet.)" — Apr 16, 2026 07:11AM
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(page 667 of 742)
"I think every writer is a born actor. In first place, the writer takes on the role of themselves and really inhabits the part. A writer is someone who tires easily, and ends up feeling slightly bored with herself, since her intimate contact with herself is, of necessity, too prolonged." — Apr 02, 2026 01:20PM
"I think every writer is a born actor. In first place, the writer takes on the role of themselves and really inhabits the part. A writer is someone who tires easily, and ends up feeling slightly bored with herself, since her intimate contact with herself is, of necessity, too prolonged." — Apr 02, 2026 01:20PM
“Le vrai pessimiste sait qu'il est déjà trop tard pour l'être.”
― L'Anomalie
― L'Anomalie
“Brodsky said, Darkness restores what light cannot repair.”
― Postcolonial Love Poem
― Postcolonial Love Poem
“What Beckett is dramatising here is a quite different view of the notion that man is the storytelling animal. What he is showing is that we may indeed have an innate capacity to tell stories, but that far from this being the royal road to truth it is simply a way of avoiding the truth, of avoiding the sense that something nameless is taking its course, that our lives are passing us by, that we are moving inexorably towards a death we do not understand or want and certainly do not know how to cope with.
But what does that do to the feeling that something nameless is taking its course, something that needs to be dealt with that otherwise will drive him mad? This, it seems to me, is the paradox that lies at the heart of all modern art: the need to speak of that which cannot be uttered, together with the recognition that the utterance perverts or destroys the thing that needed to be spoken of.”
― The Teller and the Tale: Essays on Literature and Culture
But what does that do to the feeling that something nameless is taking its course, something that needs to be dealt with that otherwise will drive him mad? This, it seems to me, is the paradox that lies at the heart of all modern art: the need to speak of that which cannot be uttered, together with the recognition that the utterance perverts or destroys the thing that needed to be spoken of.”
― The Teller and the Tale: Essays on Literature and Culture
“We so often think of the past as a something like a nature reserve: a discrete, bounded place we can visit in our imaginations to make us feel better. I wonder how we could learn to recognise that the past is always working on us and through us, and that diversity in all its forms, human and natural, is strength.”
―
―
“The truth is that we never know from whom we originally get the ideas and beliefs that shape us, those that make a deep impression on us and which we adopt as a guide, those we retain without intending to and make our own.
From a great-grandparent, a grandparent, a parent, not necessarily ours? From a distant teacher we never knew and who taught the one we did know? From a mother, from a nursemaid who looked after her as a child? From the ex-husband of our beloved, from a ġe-bryd-guma we never met? From a few books we never read and from an age through which we never lived? Yes, it's incredible how much people say, how much they discuss and recount and write down, this is a wearisome world of ceaseless transmission, and thus we are born with the work already far advanced but condemned to the knowledge that nothing is ever entirely finished, and thus we carry-like a faint booming in our heads-the exhausting accumulated voices of the countless centuries, believing naively that some of those thoughts and stories are new, never before heard or read, but how could that be, when ever since they acquired the gift of speech people have never stopped endlessly telling stories and, sooner or later, everything is told, the interesting and the trivial, the private and the public, the intimate and the superfluous, what should remain hidden and what will one day inevitably be broadcast, sorrows and joys and resentments, certainties and conjectures, the imagined and the factual, persuasions and suspicions, grievances and flattery and plans for revenge, great feats and humiliations, what fills us with pride and what shames us utterly, what appeared to be a secret and what begged to remain so, the normal and the unconfessable and the horrific and the obvious, the substantial-falling in love-and the insignificant-falling in love. Without even giving it a second thought, we go and we tell.”
― Poison, Shadow, and Farewell
From a great-grandparent, a grandparent, a parent, not necessarily ours? From a distant teacher we never knew and who taught the one we did know? From a mother, from a nursemaid who looked after her as a child? From the ex-husband of our beloved, from a ġe-bryd-guma we never met? From a few books we never read and from an age through which we never lived? Yes, it's incredible how much people say, how much they discuss and recount and write down, this is a wearisome world of ceaseless transmission, and thus we are born with the work already far advanced but condemned to the knowledge that nothing is ever entirely finished, and thus we carry-like a faint booming in our heads-the exhausting accumulated voices of the countless centuries, believing naively that some of those thoughts and stories are new, never before heard or read, but how could that be, when ever since they acquired the gift of speech people have never stopped endlessly telling stories and, sooner or later, everything is told, the interesting and the trivial, the private and the public, the intimate and the superfluous, what should remain hidden and what will one day inevitably be broadcast, sorrows and joys and resentments, certainties and conjectures, the imagined and the factual, persuasions and suspicions, grievances and flattery and plans for revenge, great feats and humiliations, what fills us with pride and what shames us utterly, what appeared to be a secret and what begged to remain so, the normal and the unconfessable and the horrific and the obvious, the substantial-falling in love-and the insignificant-falling in love. Without even giving it a second thought, we go and we tell.”
― Poison, Shadow, and Farewell
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