Sunday Night
"I'm the space between what I'd like to be and what others made of me.
Or half that space because there's life there too.
So that's what I finally am.
Turn off the lights, close the door, stop shuffling your
slippers out there in the hall.
Just let me be at ease and all by myself in my room.
It's a cheap world."
Fernando Pessoa, "I'm beginning to know myself. I don't exist" from The Poems of Fernando Pessoa Honig and Brown translation
*****
"The closer the hero gets to divinity, the greater are the loses he incurs, and the greater are the dangers he willingly faces."
George Bataille, from The Accursed Share p. 107
*****
"But it is human nature to search, from lure to lure, for a life that is at last autonomous and authentic"
George Bataille, Ibid. p. 153
*****
"The laughter or the tears break out in the vacuum of thought created by their object in the mind. But these moments, like the deeply rhythmed movements of poetry, of music, of love, of dance, have the power to capture and endlessly recapture the movement that counts, the moment of rapture, of fissure."
George Bataille, Ibid. p. 203
*****
"I've often thought that the best way of life for me would be to have writing materials and a lamp in the innermost room of a spacious locked cellar"
Franz Kafka, in a letter to Felice
*****
"A writer should never install himself before a panorama, however grandiose it may be. Like Saint Jerome, a writer should work in his cell. Turn the back. Writing is a view of the spirit."
Blase Cendrars, in a Paris Review Interview
*****
"Don't your eyes ever get tired of being so wide and beautiful?"
Velimir Khlebinikov, from The King of Time, p. 37
*****
"The reappearance of someone they once loved attracts them in quite a peculiar way--like some morbid fragrance."
Robert Musil, from The Diaries, p. 105
*****
"Come solemnly
come most solemnly full
of secret yearning to weep
because the soul is immense and life so meager, perhaps
and all our gestures go no further than our bodies
and we can only reach as far as our arms go
and we see only as far as our sight allows."
Fernando Pessoa, from "Maritime Ode" from Poems of Fernando Pessoa (Honig and Brown translation)
*****
"I conceived of Molloy and what followed the day I became aware of my stupidity. Then I began to write the things I feel."
Samuel Beckett, from an interview.
Or half that space because there's life there too.
So that's what I finally am.
Turn off the lights, close the door, stop shuffling your
slippers out there in the hall.
Just let me be at ease and all by myself in my room.
It's a cheap world."
Fernando Pessoa, "I'm beginning to know myself. I don't exist" from The Poems of Fernando Pessoa Honig and Brown translation
*****
"The closer the hero gets to divinity, the greater are the loses he incurs, and the greater are the dangers he willingly faces."
George Bataille, from The Accursed Share p. 107
*****
"But it is human nature to search, from lure to lure, for a life that is at last autonomous and authentic"
George Bataille, Ibid. p. 153
*****
"The laughter or the tears break out in the vacuum of thought created by their object in the mind. But these moments, like the deeply rhythmed movements of poetry, of music, of love, of dance, have the power to capture and endlessly recapture the movement that counts, the moment of rapture, of fissure."
George Bataille, Ibid. p. 203
*****
"I've often thought that the best way of life for me would be to have writing materials and a lamp in the innermost room of a spacious locked cellar"
Franz Kafka, in a letter to Felice
*****
"A writer should never install himself before a panorama, however grandiose it may be. Like Saint Jerome, a writer should work in his cell. Turn the back. Writing is a view of the spirit."
Blase Cendrars, in a Paris Review Interview
*****
"Don't your eyes ever get tired of being so wide and beautiful?"
Velimir Khlebinikov, from The King of Time, p. 37
*****
"The reappearance of someone they once loved attracts them in quite a peculiar way--like some morbid fragrance."
Robert Musil, from The Diaries, p. 105
*****
"Come solemnly
come most solemnly full
of secret yearning to weep
because the soul is immense and life so meager, perhaps
and all our gestures go no further than our bodies
and we can only reach as far as our arms go
and we see only as far as our sight allows."
Fernando Pessoa, from "Maritime Ode" from Poems of Fernando Pessoa (Honig and Brown translation)
*****
"I conceived of Molloy and what followed the day I became aware of my stupidity. Then I began to write the things I feel."
Samuel Beckett, from an interview.
posted by Todd Colby at 10:47 PM
1 Comments:
What a wonderful list.
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