Momus > Quotes

“God is a tender pervert, and the angels are voyeurs.”
― Momus, Lusts of a Moron: The Lyrics of Momus

“The fact that novels and films about confidence tricksters are usually highly successful is based on the observation that the topical and temporary creation of micro-realities (or ‘tricks’) is not a million miles away from what we’re all doing every day.”
― Momus, Herr F

“A writer spinning out the manuscript of a book is like a banker generating debts he knows can never be repaid. From one perspective it’s a waste of time, ‘the deliberate pouring of water through a sieve’, in Dostoyevsky’s phrase. The effort will not be repaid. From another, however, it’s an incredibly important process in which cultural charisma – intellectual glamour – is generated via a mechanism of guilt. A bookshelf is a glamorous row of reproaches. We know that there are books we ought to read, and ought to have read, because they are said to be wonderful and capable of making us better people. They sit there on the shelf, seeming to watch us, waiting for our best moment of spiritual preparedness. Yet we fail to read them. As a result we feel guilty. The books seem to say to us: – You are trivial and lazy. Your life could be so much richer and more creative, yet you fritter away your attention on television and Facebook, or idle gossip, or sports, or Olafur Eliasson installations. This guilt is much more wonderful than the contents of the books themselves could ever be, and spiritually much more uplifting. The unreadness of books outstrips their readness in beauty and in utility. It’s tremendously important to believe that there are heights which we’ve failed to attain, mountains we can glimpse in the distance but not climb. It’s almost like believing in heaven. To quote Kafka once more: Theoretically there is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible element in oneself and not striving towards it.”
― Momus, HERR F

“What you discovered, gradually, was that only by structuring your own life pitilessly could you achieve anything fulfilling. Only by applying yourself to something arbitrary and pointless – and yet, crucially, of your own devising – could you escape the emptiness of unstructured diversion. In order to transcend pointlessness, you needed to become the merciless organiser of pointlessness.”
― Momus, Herr F

“Life on earth survives thanks to diversity, says Sekunda, because changing circumstances means today's winners can suddenly become tomorrow's losers. When the meteor hits, when the Green Revolution fails, when the bees unexpectedly die, the kind of anomalous diversity found in the Galapagos Islands—or in the technology of Japan—is exactly what will save us from the most dangerous failure of all: global success.”
― Momus, Solution 214-238: The Book of Japans

“I already see what kind of man he is, this Valentin. The sort who will adduce an array of liberal reasons for voting for a conservative.”
― Momus, Herr F

“The government ought to intervene in flag design the way they have in cigarette-packet design. Flags kill far more, and make the air around them far filthier. All flags ought to be blank white rectangles, with the name of the country printed in Helvetica in the centre at a strictly regulated size and weight.”
― Momus, Popppappp: English Version

“I personally find books sexy [...] Reading a book is a sublimating process. You have to sublimate your immediate desires, your immediate needs, in order to get into a book. I find this appeal to sex and this appeal to reading somewhat conflicting, somewhat contradictory.”
― Momus

“Her sex – a series of complicated floral folds – is clearly visible in the pale-yellow bioluminescence emitting from my abdomen, where the enzyme luciferase is igniting magnesium and oxygen.”
― Momus, HERR F