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Kindle Notes & Highlights
What is the difference, in morality, between the totally anarchic criminality of the artist, which is endemic in all fine creative minds, and the artistry of the criminal?’”
“Home is childhood re-created, Mr. Brotherhood. If defection is a self-renewal, it requires also a rebirth.”
In every operation there is an above the line and a below the line. Above the line is what you do by the book. Below the line is how you do the job.
Love is whatever you can still betray, he thought. Betrayal can only happen if you love.
As so often when on the crest of a phoney triumph, he is gripped by an unfocussed sense of God’s approaching retribution.
He is thinking, like every artist before or since him, of the only member of the audience who did not applaud.
Is it Pym’s wistful soul or God’s wry humour that contrives to deal him a spell of Paradise before every Fall?
Life is seeing people right if it kills you.
I sometimes think he is entirely put together from bits of other people, poor fellow.”
In life, says Proust, we end up doing whatever we do second best.
Even when you are telling the truth, you lie. You have loyalty and you have affection. But to what? To whom?
