Devin > Devin's Quotes

“Emigration does not only involve leaving behind, crossing water, living amongst strangers, but, also, undoing the very meaning of the world and—at its most extreme—abandoning oneself to the unreal which is the absurd. […] to emigrate is always to dismantle the center of the world, and so to move into a lost, disoriented one of fragments.”
― John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos

“One’s death is already one’s own. It belongs to nobody else: not even to a killer. This means that it is already part of one’s life.”
― John Berger, And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos

“I tried to fit language into the shape of usefulness. The world moves through words as if the bodies the words reflect do not exist.”
― Claudia Rankine, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric

“Hegel argued that death is used as a threat to keep citizens in line. The minute you stop feating death you are no longer controlled by governments and councils. In a sense you are no longer accountable to life.”
― Claudia Rankine, Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric

“There is no such thing as a natural death: nothing that happens to a man is ever natural, since his presence calls the world into question. All men must die: but for every man his death is an accident and, even if he knows it and consents to it, an unjustifiable violation.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, A Very Easy Death

“Whether you think of it as heavenly or as earthly, if you love life immortality is no consultation for death.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, A Very Easy Death

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“Let there be nothing harmonious about our children's playthings, lest they grow up expecting peace and order, and be eaten alive.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“There is no reason why good cannot triumph as often as evil. The triumph of anything is a matter of organization. If there are such things as angels, I hope that they are organized along the lines of the Mafia.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

“The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody. Thank you for using me, even though I didn't want to be used by anybody.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan