ALEC S > Recent Status Updates

“He heard the silence of the winter night, and it seemed to him that he somehow felt the sounds that were absorbed by the delicate and intricately cellular being of the snow. Nothing moved upon the whiteness; it was a dead scene, which seemed to pull at him, to suck at his consciousness just as it pulled the sound from the air and buried it within a cold white softness.”

“In her white dress she was like a cold light coming into the room.”

“The scholar should not be asked to destroy what he has aimed his life to build.”

“Monotonous? Well, maybe also monotonous: they fight and fight, they fight now, and fought before, and fought afterwards - you’ll agree it’s even all too monotonous. In short anything can be said about world history, anything that might just enter the head of the most disturbed imagination. Only one thing cannot be said - that it is sensible. You’d choke on the first word.”

“… as it turns out, there isn’t even anyone to be angry with; that there is no object to be found, and maybe never will be; that it’s all a slight-of-hand, a stacked deck, a cheat, that it’s all just slops - nobody knows what and nobody knows who, but in spite of all the uncertainties and stacked decks, it still hurts, and the more uncertain you are, the more it hurts!”

“I love most fondly - I love madly - I love as a man who would give his life-blood to save her a tear”

“I have but one promise and but one heart to give; that promise is pledged to you, and that heart is also yours.”

“For as long as I lived, I would travel far and wide, meeting with people who’s languages I did or did not know, and everywhere I went, I would be looking for Maria Puder. In every pair of eyes, I would be searching for the Madonna in a Fur Coat.”

“Every day, every hour, was full, even when I was asleep. It was not just my tired limbs that were coming to life. It was also my soul, revealing to me the sublime vista it had kept buried for so long. Maria Puder had taught me I had a soul.”

“What does he live for? What does he find in life? What logic compels him to keep breathing? What philosophy drives him as he wanders the earth? But we ask in vain if we fail to look beyond the surface - if we forget that beneath each surface lurks another realm, in which a caged mind whirls alone.”

“The peak of Monte Cristo, reddened by the burning sun, was seen across the azure sky.”

“The worst part of it was I couldn’t come straight out and tell him what I thought of him, because he caught TB before I could do that, and now I had to humor him along till he got well again and could take the unvarnished truth.”

“Joy takes a strange effect at times - it seems to oppress us almost the same as sorrow.”

“How odd it feels, to move along the same streets, the route in reverse, like inking over old words, her feet the quill, going back over work, rewriting, erasing. Partings are strange.”

“Death is violent, death is a struggle. The body clings to life, as ivy to a wall, and will not easily let go, will not surrender its grip without a fight.”

“She puts her hand to his chest, where she feels his heart tap against her palm, over and over, over and over, as if asking the same question and getting no answer.”

“Every life has its kernel, its hub, its epicentre, from which everything flows out, to which everything returns.”

“The law of gravity applies to memories too.”

“And in the eyes of the people there is a failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”

“And the people listened, and their faces were quiet with listening. The story tellers, gathering attention into their tales, spoke in great rhythms, spoke in great words because the tales were great, and the listeners became great through them.”

“And in the south he saw golden oranges hanging on the trees, the little golden oranges on the dark green trees; and guards with shotguns patrolling the lines so a man might not pick an orange for a thin child, oranges to be dumped if the price was low.”

“And now the group was welded to one thing, one unit, so that in the dark the eyes of the people were inward, and their minds played in other times, and their sadness was like rest, like sleep.”

“The stars went out, few by few, toward the west. And still the family stood about like dream walkers, their eyes focused panoramically, seeing no detail, but the whole dawn, the whole land, the whole texture of the country at once.”

“The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.”

“He asks if I’m still writing a book about him, and I lie, I say yes, and he knows it’s a lie, and I know it’s a lie, and it’s a lie that pleases him, and I wish for more lies, a hundred lies, a thousand beautiful lies, any ugliness that will nourish him.”

“Maybe the biggest fiction I want to create is that it all matters. It matters so much. It matters and matters.”