Maya Spektorov > Recent Status Updates

“walking down the road, there’s a taste of something darker in the air, of something that might fall and blow and change things.”

“‘at the end of the lane there’s a long, white house with trees whose limbs are trailing the ground.
‘da,’ I say. ‘the trees.’
‘what about ‘em?’
‘they’re sick,’ I say.
‘they’re weeping willows,’ he says, and clears his throat.”

“‘ah, Cheri,’ she sighed.
but it was no longer the hoarse hungry outcry of the past nor the tears nor the revolt of the whole body which suffers and mutinies when a sickness of the soul tries to destroy it…”

“her pretty body shook, racked by grief, jealousy, anger and a servility of which she was unaware; and yet like a wrestler fighting for his life, like a swimmer in the hollow of a wave, she felt bathed in an element which was strange, natural and bitter.”

“she felt cautious and full of distrust against an enemy she had never known—grief.”

“who can be in doubt of what followed? when any two young people take it into their heads to marry, they are pretty sure by perseverance to carry their point, be they ever so poor, or ever so imprudent, or ever so little likely to be necessary to each other’s ultimate comfort. this may be bad morality to conclude with, but i believe it to be truth.”

“men have had every advantage of us in telling their own story. Education has been theirs in so much higher a degree; the pen has been in their hands. I will not allow books to prove anything.”

“but still she heard him, lying next to him, listened with delight to the delicate vibration, the distant and defeated tumult throbbing in a body that denies its agony, its gratitude, and its love.”

“‘what have you found out? that your mouth pleased me? my poor boy, ive kissed uglier…’she smiled down upon him, sure of herself, but she did not know that something rested on her face, a sort of faint palpitation, an attractive sadness, and that her smile looked like those that follow on a fit of weeping.”

“the day when a woman,” he retorted, “lives Nd for my brains, i shall be done for….”

“one half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.”

“i have never yet known what it was to separate esteem and love.”

“little Newt held his hands six inches apart and spread his fingers. ‘see the cat? see the cradle?”

“they were all employed full time as actors in a play they understood, that any human being anywhere could understand and applaud.’
‘so life become a work of art.”

“‘i understand you were dr. hoenikker’s supervisor during most of his professional life…’
‘on paper,’ he said.
‘i don’t understand.’ i said
‘if i actually supervised Felix,’ he said, ‘then i’m ready now to take charge of volcanoes, the tides, and the migrations of birds and lemmings. the man was a force of nature no mortal could possibly control.”

“after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, ‘Science has now known sin.’ and do you know what Father said? he said, ‘what is sin?’

“‘mon âme prend son élan vers l’infini,’ said the devil with an ironic smile, the way he had smiled for all eternity.”

“she was convinced that nostalgia had nothing to do with memory, that we actually feel it most strongly for things we have never experienced.”

“and so we and the world took turns flowing into and through each other: bekker said he could feel his heart swell and when i shut my eyes tight it was as though my head was filled with golden light and blue water, and wonderful shivers ran up and down my spine. i felt the world that lay around me.”

“we are shaped not by what is strong in us but by the anomaly, by whatever is weak and not accepted. if you, young person, were to ask me what the soul is, i would answer like this: the soul is the weakest thing within us. your soul is in your morbid symptoms.”

“but even if i could have flown off the top of the tower into that distance, i would have found only that the distance had turned into the nearby, and my heart would have gone out to the distance once more. and what good did it do me—the wisdom that taught me that nothing would ever change, it would be like this forever?”

“we were on top of the world and the world was on top of us, weighing down heavily.”

“and we thought it was a shame to have to go to bed, people should be able to stay up forever. that was one of the things we’d change.”

“im not a poet and im not a nature-lover and im not an anarchist. i am, thank God, absolutely nothing.”

“we’re making good time’ bavink said, just to have something to say. ‘well,’ japi said. ‘time doesn’t mean much to me.’”

“‘people are always going to pay for their curiosity and their desire to improve the world, that is inscribed in our destiny,’ said Frommer, ‘ but progress must be accompanied by the development of the human spirit.’”

“[thoughts] are wisps of sensations carried by time like gossamer, moved by the wind, trails of tiny reactions that arrange themselves into random sequences eager for meaning. but their nature is volatile and impermanent, they appear and disappear, leaving behind an impression that something really did happen and that we took part in it. and that what we are stuck inside is stable and certain. that it exists.”

“this wonder of technology radiated such overwhelming optimism that for all who came to admire it, death must have seemed an archaic part of the old order, a primordial failing from which humankind would escape as soon as it achieved its desire for modernity and a permanent trust in technology.”

“the ritual of the fall had started, as if the proximity of death activated reserves of extraordinary energy in these trees that, instead of continuing to support life, allowed them to celebrate dying.”

“he is overcome by a familiar sense of sadness, typical of those convinced of their own impending death. the world around him feels like a strange scenery painted on a paper screen, as if he could stick a finger in this monumental landscape and drill a hole in it leading straight to nothingness. and as if nothingness will start pouring out of there in a flood, and will catch up to him too, grab him by the throat”