Lorenza

“Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire's flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It's not desiring the fall; it's terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling 'Don't!' and 'Hang on!', can understand the jump. Not really.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“«E la storia è su di loro che…?»
«Cazzeggiano. Cioè, in realtà viaggiano e cercano la Pietra Filosofale, che annulla lo scambio equivalente.»
«Per riavere i loro corpi.»
«Esatto. Lo aspetto con ansia perché voglio vedere se trombano.»
«Tra loro?»
«Sì.»
«…ma sono fratelli.»
«E…?»
Lui tace, sprofonda nella poltrona e continua a guardare. Dopo un po’ si sporge in avanti con slancio. «No, sul serio, sono fratelli!»
«Ebbè, c’è tensione sessuale.»
«Come fa a esserci tensione sessuale tra fratelli, uno dei quali è un’armatura?»
«Sono giapponesi, creerebbero tensione sessuale tra un ravanello e il piatto.»
Ci riflette e poi, persuaso, torna ad appoggiare la schiena. «Va bene, ha senso.»”
― Eleonora C. Caruso, Comunque vada non importa

“Do those things that incline you toward the big questions, and avoid the things that would reduce you and make you trivial.”
― George Saunders

“So here I am, in the middle way, having had twenty years-
Twenty years largely wasted, the years of l'entre deux guerres-
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholy new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”
― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets