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You’ll appreciate it in time. People soon get tired of things that aren’t boring, but not of what is boring. What’s that all about. For me, I might have the leisure to be bored, but not to grow tired of something. Most people can’t distinguish between the two.”
It’s all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. It’s just as Yeats said: In dreams begin responsibility. Turn this on its head and you could say that where there’s no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise. Just as we see with Eichmann.
In dreams begin responsibility. The words hit home.
There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s as Tolstoy said: happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.
“Kafka, in everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward any more. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.”
“You build up relationships like that one after another and before you know it you have meaning. The more connections, the deeper the meaning. Doesn’t matter if it’s eel, or rice bowls, or grilled fish, whatever. Get it?”
“Connections change too. Who’s the capitalist, who’s the proletarian. Who’s on the right, who’s on the left. The information revolution, stock options, floating assets, occupational restructuring, multinational corporations – what’s good, what’s bad. Boundaries between things are disappearing all the time. Maybe that’s why you can’t speak to cats any more.”
The purity of her beauty gives me a feeling close to sadness – a very natural feeling, though one that only something extraordinary could induce.
“Most great poetry is like that. If the words can’t create a prophetic tunnel connecting them to the reader, then the whole thing no longer functions as a poem.”
People are by and large a product of where they were born and raised. How you think and feel’s always linked to the lie of the land, the temperature. The prevailing winds, even.
