Edda Kristjánsdóttir > Recent Status Updates

Rereading

“Det er en tavshed, en frygt for at være dum, der sætter in der, hvor økonomien begynder.
Jeg ved ikke helt hvilket ord, der er det rigtige at bruge. Hvad er forskellen på en virksomhed, et selskab og et firma? Er det forskelle, er det ord for det samme?” (p71)

“… wait for summer’s gaggle of tourists, the trampoline of kids.” (p24)

“The armrests were frayed with years of arms resting.” (p167)

“Við ímyndum okkur alltaf að eilífðin sé hugtak sem ómögulegt sé að skilja, eitthvað gríðarlega stórt! En hví skyldi hún endilega vera svo stór? Hugsið yður að í þess stað væri hún eitt lítið herbergi, álíka stórt og baðhús í sveit, og köngulær í hverju horni, og þetta væri svo öll eilífðin! Stundum fæ ég hugdettur af þessu tagi.” (250)

“När mamma ringer … och inte får tag i mig, lämnar hon meddelanden (ofta flera efter varandra) på min mobilsvarare. Ibland är förbindelsen så dålig att det bara finns brottstycken kvar - som om mobilsvararmeddelandet är en tusen år gammal dikt där bara enstaka ord har överlevt och man måste gissa sig till resten.” (51)

“Af því að ekki er hægt að segja mörg orð samtímis, þá virðast hlutirnir gerast einn á eftir öðrum, atburðirnir skipa sér í orðflokka, sem skipa sér í láréttar línur í frásögn minni…” (161)

“But the rules of writing are different, and great wealth has almost the same relationship to creating great writers as it does great basketball players.” (229)

Staðreyndir afsanna allar kenníngar. (p 181)

“‘You don’t know that! You can’t read the future. No one can.’
‘You can,’ I said, if you want to. It’s scary, but once you get past the fear, it’s easy….’”

“Tornadoes are smashing hell out of Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, and two or three other states. … And there’s a blizzard freezing the northern midwest, killing even more people. In New York and New Jersey, a measles epidemic is killing people. Measles!” p. 49

“November 6, 2024 President William Turner Smith lost yesterday’s election. Christopher Charles Morpeth Donner is our new President - President-elect. So what are we in for? … Donner has a plan for putting people back to work. He hopes to get laws changed, suspend ‘overly restrictive’ minimum wage, environmental, and worker protection laws …” p. 26

First published in 1993, the book begins on Saturday, July 20, 2024.

“Everywhere in the world where knowledge is being suppressed, knowledge that, if it were made known, would shatter our image of the world and force us to question ourselves—everywhere there, Heart of Darkness is being enacted.” ch 168

“Officially, it was, of course, denied. But man to man, everyone knew. That is why Marlow can tell his story as he does in Conrad’s novel. He has no need to count up the crimes Kurtz committed. … And when what had been done in the heart of darkness was repeated in the heart of Europe, no one recognized it. No one wished to admit what everyone knew.” ch 167

My screentime is down 10%.

“‘The idea of extermination lies no farther from the heart of humanism than Buchenwald lies from the Goethehaus in Weimar.’” p272

“What if our books, and our movements as they are currently constructed …, are only changing words? What if words—written on the page or shouted in protest—change only what people and institutions say, and not what they do?” p152

xxxix ‘[A]ny honest traveler has the right to walk as he chooses, all over that globe which is his.’

“…education was at first against the law. Then, after emancipation, it became rare, inferior, and unfunded. Such is progress.”

“Mindre än sex dagar tog det för gisslan på Norrmalmstorg att lära sig älska fångenskapen, men jag, jag vande mig aldrig.” (169)

Re-reading <3

p. 40 ‘“In three hundred feet, turn left. You will have arrived at your final destination,” her car announced a bit grandiloquently. But had she?’

p. 28 “The city across the river had recently become fashionable, but was still studied by urban planning graduates as a cautionary tale.” #GreatTransition

p101 ‘“Death demands ceremony. An inquiry is just a kind of ceremony.”
… “The inquiry, yes. Call it ceremony. But not your report. It was something else.”’

p44 “An awkward feeling grew: these mourners had survived a tragedy in which they’d somehow played a role, and no one knew what to do. “

‘Wie zou blijken de taal van het heden te spreken, wie voorspelde de toekomst? Wiens stem had de klank van de macht, wiens boek voelde de honger aan waar de mensen op dit moment aan leden? Welk boek vertelde wat iedereen wilde weten — zonder dat men zich dat bewust was? Ik was de Frankfurter Buchmesse meer en meer als een soort cultureel Las Vegas gaan beschouwen..’ p.88

“No one really cares about what you said or how you said it. They are all too busy agonizing over what they said or how they said it.”

p52 “Patterns to the language that I hadn’t been aware of when I was writing. … The reader undergoes a process of discovery that the writer side of myself is not involved in.”

“Lies may make people feel better, but they do not help them to know love.” (49)