Chris Tempel

“The characteristic feature of contemporary literary radicalism is that it rarely addresses the question of its own determination by the conditions of its production and the class location of its agents. In the rare case where this issue of one's own location-- hence of the social determination of one's own practice-- is addressed at all, even fleetingly, the stance is characteristically that of a very poststructuralist kind of ironic self- referentiality and self-pleasuring.”
― Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures

“There are so many different kinds of stupidity, and cleverness is one of the worst.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“From Koltovitch's copse and garden there came a strong fragrant scent of lilies of the valley and honey-laden flowers. Pyotr Mihalitch rode along the bank of the pond and looked mournfully into the water. And thinking about his life, he came to the conclusion that he had never said or acted upon what he really thought, and that other people had repaid him in the same way. And so the whole of life seemed to him as dark as this water in which the night sky was reflected and water-weeds grew in a tangle. And it seemed to him that nothing could ever set it right.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Love was a country he knew nothing about.”
― James Baldwin, Another Country