S. > S.'s Quotes

“The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me.”
― Joyce Carol Oates

“I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.”
― Steven Wright

“I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley -- in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered -- or simply to sit here and do nothing?'
That is a hard question,' said Candide.”
― Voltaire, Candide

“My heart is small, like a love of buttons or black pepper.”
― S. Jane Sloat, In the Voice of a Minor Saint

“For a moment the radio wavered between stations
and I was so busy
making myself marvelous.”
― S. Jane Sloat, In the Voice of a Minor Saint

“God have pity on the smell of gasoline
which finds its way like an arm
through a car window,
more human than kerosene,
more unctuous, more manly.”
― S. Jane Sloat, In the Voice of a Minor Saint

“Look for the ridiculous in everything and you will find it.”
― Jules Renard

“.



My philosophy is fundamentally sad, but I’m not a sad man, and I don’t believe I sadden anyone else. In other words, the fact that I don’t put my philosophy into practice saves me from its evil spell, or, rather, my faith in the human race is stronger then my intellectual analysis of it; there lies the fountain of youth in which my heart is continually bathing.



.”
― Antonio Machado

“...all his longings came out as a kind of disdain for what he longed for.”
― Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty

“Build a house?" exclaimed John.

"For the Wendy," said Curly.

"For Wendy?" John said, aghast. "Why, she is only a girl!"

"That," explained Curly, "is why we are her servants.”
― James M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“Je m'appelle Erik Satie comme tout le monde.”
― Erik Satie