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the familiar cold, wet air that reminds us every winter that the world was not created for Mankind, and for at least half the year it shows us how very hostile it is to us.
It’s a feature of flashlights that they’re only visible in the daytime.
one day we shall all be nothing more than corpses.
It’s no pleasure, but our duties to our neighbors aren’t always going to be pleasant.”
What a joy it is in life when you happen to have a clean, warm kitchen.
The Police use lots of extremely off-putting words, such as “cadaver” or “cohabitee.”
And that he was the type of Person who despises anything he can’t understand.
pyknic
The air had turned blue, sharp as a razor.
Death is at the gates, I thought. But then death is always at our gates, at every hour of the day and Night, I told myself. For the best conversations are with yourself. At least there’s no risk of a misunderstanding.
It’s easier to cope with a snowstorm than a death.
It is at Dusk that the most interesting things occur, for that is when simple differences fade away. I could live in everlasting Dusk.
I love crossing borders.
In fact I could have done all the calculations by hand, and perhaps I’m a little sorry that I didn’t. But who still uses a slide rule nowadays?
In any case, I know the date of my own death, and that lets me feel free.
Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion.
They told me to wait there, and as I was hungry, I fetched some biscuits sprinkled with coconut out of my bag and tucked into them.
Perhaps he believed that the cure for an allergic rash had to be just as spectacular as the rash itself.
a foehn wind
Every Night & every Morn Some to Misery are Born Every Morn & every Night Some are Born to sweet delight, Some are born to Endless Night.
My stove had gone out, but I hadn’t enough strength to go down to the boiler room, which had never been a pleasure.
pissed red, and can confirm that a toilet bowl filled with red liquid is a dreadful sight.
Urizen’s
Just then I saw a fast and agile swarm of Fieldfares. These are Birds that I only ever see in a flock.
For as a flock they’re capable of fighting, in a very special, perfidious way, and also of taking revenge—they swiftly soar into the air, then in perfect unison they defecate on their oppressor—dozens of white droppings land on the predator’s lovely wings, soiling them, gluing them together, and coating the feathers in corrosive acid. This forces the Hawk to come to its senses, cease its pursuit and land on the grass in disgust. It may well die of revulsion, so badly polluted are its feathers.
“That’s too much. You can’t want all those things,” he said. “Oh yes I can! And I’m the one to define what I can want,” I shouted furiously.
The old method for dealing with bad dreams is to tell them aloud above the toilet bowl, and then flush them away.
I regard my profession as a mental attitude rather than a set of isolated activities.
Winter mornings are made of steel; they have a metallic taste and sharp edges.
“A man’s free to do what he wants with his life, until he falls foul of the banks,” Dizzy sermonized with contagious certainty.
It occurred to me that every unjustly inflicted death deserved public exposure. Even an Insect’s. A death that nobody noticed was twice as scandalous.
“Why don’t people smell like that?” I asked. “Who told you that they don’t?” “I can’t smell anything.” “Maybe you don’t know you can, my dear, and in your human pride you persist in believing in your free will.”
And it was a good thing he had his Ailments. Being healthy is an insecure state and does not bode well. It’s better to be ill in a quiet way, then at least we know what we’re going to die of.
There are some things we may not understand, but we can sense them perfectly well.”
Everything will pass. The wise Man knows this from the start, and has no regrets.
People who spend all day tramping about the forest in search of mushrooms are bound to be deadly boring.
