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“It is already hard enough to understand what someone is saying. Discussion is just an exercise in narcissism where everyone takes turns showing off. Very quickly, you no longer have any idea what is being discussed.”
― Two Regimes of Madness: Texts And Interviews 1975 1995
― Two Regimes of Madness: Texts And Interviews 1975 1995
“The miraculous moment is the moment when anticipation dissolves into NOTHING. It is the moment when we are relieved of anticipation, man's customary misery, of the anticipation that enslaves, that subordinates the present moment to some anticipated result. Precisely in the miracle, we are thrust from our anticipation of the future into the presence of the moment, of the moment illuminated by a miraculous light, the light of the sovereignty of life delivered from its servitude”
― The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy; Volume II. The History of Eroticism and Volume III. Sovereignty
― The Accursed Share: An Essay on General Economy; Volume II. The History of Eroticism and Volume III. Sovereignty
“So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, thing that might be worth saying.”
― Negotiations 1972-1990
― Negotiations 1972-1990
“The fear of death distresses a man with a guilty conscience, but the man with a good witness within himself longs for death as for life.’ Count no man truly wise who, because of this temporal life, enslaves his mind to timidity and fear.”
― Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian
― Ascetical Homilies of St. Isaac the Syrian
“Lord let me suffer much and then die Let me walk through silence and leave nothing behind not even fear Make the world continue let the ocean kiss the sand just as before Let the grass stay green so that the frogs can hide in it so that someone can bury his face in it and sob out his love Make the day rise brightly as if there were no more pain And let my poem stand clear as a windowpane bumped by a bumblebee’s head tr. by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak”
― Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair
― Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair
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