Avery Rota

“Il cielo mi appariva viola, con una strana nota di gravità a dominarlo: il cielo, quel cielo, mi sembrava premesse con una forza inaudita sulla città, era livido e pesante, come se non ce la facesse più a stare là sopra e da un momento all'altro dovesse cedere. E poi lo schianto a terra delle stelle e della luna, corpi celesti infiniti tra le automobili parcheggiate in strada. Quel cielo era il mio cuore che aveva ripreso a battere all'impazzata.”
― Aldo Nove, La vita oscena

“Il senso del possesso che lui osserva nelle altre solitudini gli appare esagerato. In alcuni diventa vera e propria tirchieria, in altri essenzialità, in altri ancora frugalità o nevrosi di ordine, pulizia, attenzione maniacale per la disposizione abituale delle cose e dei sentimenti. Come se la solitudine, quella accettata e rielaborata, avesse costruito, nel cuore dell'individuo, un atlante di percorsi sbarrati, di strade senza uscita, di sensi unici, di dighe, di barriere antisismiche in modo che qualsiasi sentimento o oggetto nuovo abbia un percorso prestabilito, all'interno, per vagare senza arrecare danno.”
― Pier Vittorio Tondelli, Camere separate

“Only man has turned away from the law of survival of the fittest, taken up the weak and ailing, and guaranteed their right to survival. So heroes perish, but the weak live on. One measure of a civilisation, in fact, is the percentage of misfits in its society. There's even a political scientist (anonymous) who claims that our modern age is an age "of the patient, by the patient, for the patient".”
― Kōbō Abe, Secret Rendezvous

“Once he had seen a reproduction of an engraving called “Hell of Loneliness” and had thought it curious. In it a man was floating unsteadily in the air, his eyes wide with fright, and the space around him, far from being empty, was so filled with the semi-transparent shadows of dead persons that he could scarcely move. The dead, each with a different expression, were trying to push one another away, talking ceaselessly to the man. What was this “Hell of Loneliness”? he wondered. Perhaps they had misnamed it, he had thought then, but now he could understand it very well. Loneliness was an unsatisfied thirst for illusion. And so, one bit ones nails, unable to find contentment in the simple beating of ones heart. One smoked, unable to be satisfied with the rhythm of ones brain. One had the shakes, unable to find satisfaction in sex alone.”
― Kōbō Abe, The Woman in the Dunes