Brodolomi

“U mladosti duhovni saputnici su nam prijatelji i knjige. Ali najveća razlika između prijatelja i knjiga je ta da se prijatelji menjaju, a knjige ne. Knjiga, čak i ako skuplja prašinu na polici ili u nekom uglu sobe, uporno čuva svoj karakter i svoju filozofiju. Prihvatajući je ili odbacujući je, čitajući je ili ne, mi samo možemo da promenimo naš stav prema njoj, i to je sve.”
― Yukio Mishima, The Way of the Samurai

“She wanted to die, but she also wanted to live in Paris.”
― Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

“If I had to hold up the most heavily guarded bank in Europe and I could choose my partners in crime, I’d take a gang of five poets, no question about it. Five real poets, Apollonian or Dionysian, but always real, ready to live and die like poets. No one in the world is as brave as a poet. No one in the world faces disaster with more dignity and understanding. They may seem weak, these readers of Guido Cavalcanti and Arnaut Daniel, these readers of the deserter Archilochus who picked his way across a field of bones. And they work in the void of the word, like astronauts marooned on dead-end planets, in deserts where there are no readers or publishers, just grammatical constructions or stupid songs sung not by men but by ghosts. In the guild of writers they’re the greatest and least sought-after jewel. When some deluded kid decides at sixteen or seventeen to be a poet, it’s a guaranteed family tragedy. Gay Jew, half black, half Bolshevik: the Siberia of the poet’s exile tends to bring shame on his family too. Readers of Baudelaire don’t have it easy in high school, or with their schoolmates, much less with their teachers. But their fragility is deceptive. So is their humor and the fickleness of their declarations of love. Behind these shadowy fronts are probably the toughest people in the world, and definitely the bravest. Not for nothing are they descended from Orpheus, who set the stroke for the Argonauts and who descended into hell and came up again, less alive than before his feat, but still alive. If I had to hold up the most heavily fortified bank in America, I’d take a gang of poets. The attempt would probably end in disaster, but it would be beautiful.”
― Roberto Bolaño, Between Parentheses: Essays, Articles and Speeches, 1998-2003

“Men are generally right in what they affirm and wrong in what they deny. What we deny is generally something that lies outside our experience, and about which we can therefore say nothing.”
― H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture: 50th Anniversary Edition―Being True to Christ in a Materialistic Age