Basem Essam

“The more he identifies with the dominant images of need, the less he understands his own life and his own desires. The spectacle’s estrangement from the acting subject is expressed by the fact that the individual’s gestures are no longer his own; they are the gestures of someone else who represents them to him.”
― Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle

“I hesitate in everything, often without knowing why. How often I've sought – as my own version of the straight line, seeing it in my mind as the ideal straight line – the longest distance between two points. I've never had a knack for the active life. I've always taken wrong steps that no one else takes; I've always had to make an effort to do what comes naturally to other people. I've always wanted to achieve what others have achieved almost without wanting it. Between me and life there were always sheets of frosted glass that I couldn't tell were there by sight or by touch; I didn't live that life or that dimension. I was the daydream of what I wanted to be, and my dreaming began in my will: my goals were always the first fiction of what I never was.”
― Fernando Pessoa

“If happy I can be I will, if suffer I must I can.”
― William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!

“‎بين اليقظة الواعية في طرف ، و الموت البارد في طرف آخر ، هنالك حالات متدرجة من الغيبوبة و النعاس ، و سيأخذك العجب حين أزعم لك أن قلة ضئيلة من الناس هي اليقظانة الواعية ، و أما الكثرة الغالبة منهم ففي غيبوبة و نعاس ، في وجوههم أعين مفتوحة ، لكنها تنظر ولا ترى”
― زكي نجيب محمود, الكوميديا الأرضية