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#1

“It used to be a gentleman was known by his books; nowadays he is known by the ones he has not returned.”
― William Faulkner, The Sound and The Fury / As I Lay Dying

tags: books, bookworm, faulkner, literature, the-sound-and-the-fury

1 likes

#3

“I love life to be romantic.”
― Milan Kundera

tags: literary-quotes, milan-kundera, romance, the-joke

0 likes

#8

“In a big city, there are always fires somewhere. And there are always crimes somewhere, too. God, despairing of burning away crime with fire , perhaps distributed crime and fire in equal quantities. Thus crime is never consumed by fire, while innocence can be burned up. That's why insurance companies prosper. My guilt, however--in order that it might become a pure thing immune to fire, must not my innocence first pass through the fire?”
― Yukio Mishima, Forbidden Colors

tags: crime, fire, innocence, innocence-lost, philosophy

1 likes

#8

“True beauty makes men dumb [...] criticism, like beauty, sought above all to strike men dumb [...] Criticism's method was to evoke silence without calling on beauty [...] At some time, however, the faith that beauty must strike dumb became a thing of the past. Beauty has not only failed to silence people, it has gotten so even when it passes through the middle of a banquet people don't stop talking. Those of you who have gone to Kyoto do not fail to go to the Stone Garden at the Ryoanji Temple [...]It is a garden to strike men dumb. The amusing thing , though, is that [...] saying that it would not do not to say a word, they screw up their faces trying to squeeze out a haiku [...] It has gotten so we feel we must say something in a great hurry. It has gotten so feel we must convert beauty right away. If we don't convert it, it's dangerous. [...] With this, the age of criticism began.”
― Yukio Mishima, Forbidden Colors

tags: apathy, beauty, criticism, philosophy

2 likes

#10

“Beautiful things always intimidate me [...] More than that, they drag me down. How can that be? Is it a superstition that beauty elevates mankind?”
― Yukio Mishima, Forbidden Colors

tags: beauty, nihilism, philosophy

3 likes

#10

“A work of art is by no means the property of its creator.”
― Yukio Mishima, Forbidden Colors

tags: art, artist, philosophy

1 likes

#11

“It was a big thing to be a king. It meant that you were getting the feeling that you lived in a big room all by yourself where no one could see you and you were your own man. Free and alone.”
― George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

tags: aristocracy, king

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#11

“They watched each other at times as a cat would watch a mouse, playfully but seriously. The inspector smiled and the teacher smiled back, and the cat in each smiled too.”
― George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

tags: cat, cats, personality

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#12

“The newspaper was always behind the news, not in front. You shouldn't ever go to the papers for information. They usually printed what they thought people wanted to see, and they had no explanation to give. It wasn't the king they saw. That wasn't the king at all. It was the king's shadow. [...] The shadow king was a part of the English tradition. The English, the boy said, were fond of shadows. [...] Somebody asked if you were ever talking to a real man or a shadow when you talked to an Englishman [...] Some of them were the man and the shadow at the same time, but more shadow than man. [...] It was always difficult to distinguish between the man and the shadow, and sometimes it was all shadow. (p.49)”
― George Lamming

tags: british-culture, britishness, colonialism, shadow, shadows

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#13

“Was it like that with other people? Life went on flowing happily or stupidly like a sea, while here in one spot something tremendous was happening.”
― George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

tags: life, philosophy-of-life, sea

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#14

“He had been seen by another. He had become a part of the other's world, and therefore no longer in complete control of his own. The eye was another kind of cage. When it saw you the lid came down, and you were trapped.”
― George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

tags: control, eyes, soul, trap

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#15

“The darkness brought a strange kind of release, and you wished secretly in your heart that darkness would descend on the whole earth so that you could get a chance to see how much energy there was stored in your little self. You could get a chance to leave the cage. You would be free.”
― George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

tags: cage, dark, darkness, freedom, soul

4 likes

#15

“Tis only right he say that every man should own his own piece o' land at some time or other. 'Tis the ambition of every man to do that same said thing, an' he say it ain't only poor, simple people like you an' me, but 'tis the way the big folks think too.”
― George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

tags: class-struggle, home-ownership, ownership

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#16

“You can't carry it with you, and 'tis that that frighten me. It frighten the life out of me sometimes [...] I ask myself why. Why can't you take it with you, and if it ain't matter what you do or not do since it all got to go in the six-foot hole. [...] Sometimes to tell the truth I wonder what it feel like to die. [...] I get so frighten sometimes when I ask myself what next, and I ain't see no answer comin' to help. [...] 'Tis a hell of a thing, Ma, to have to live with something inside you that you don't know. (p.87)”
― George Lamming

tags: death, fear-of-death, fear-of-unknown, philosophy, spirituality

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#17

“They had the unlettered man's respect for the written word. There was something formidable, even sacred, about a book. Only truth, it seemed, could be put in print.”
― George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

tags: books, class-struggle, education, truth

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#17

“If you ask him for a shilling, or two or three shillings, he'll give freely freely, but if he know that he got to spend a few hundred dollars, which is no more than three shillings compare to what he got, boys, he will cry buckets of tears.”
― George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

tags: capitalism, class-struggle, materialism, money, the-ruling-class, the-working-class

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#18

“These colonial governors, who were not always very educated or even very educable, could convince themselves that what was merely a temporary privilege should become a permanent right. (p.97)”
― George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

tags: colonialism

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#19

“Times goin' change again an' things too, and that great British Empire goin' change too, 'cause time ain't got nothin' to do with these empires. God don't like ugly, an' whenever these big great empires starts to get ugly with the thing they does the Almighty puts His hands down once an' for all. He tell them without talkin', fellows, you had your day. (p.101)”
― George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

tags: empires, kingdoms, nothing-lasts-forever, providence

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#20

“If you tell have of them that work in those places that they have somethin' to do with Africa they'd piss straight in your face."

But why you goin' to tell a man that for," said Mr. Foster, "Why tell a man he's somebody brother when he ain't?"

"'Tis true," said Bob's father, "no man like to know he black." (p.102)”
― George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

tags: blackness, race-issues, racial-construct

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#21

“Some hours ago we had discovered a giant. Now we had discovered a man. The giant was the man, but being a man he could no longer be a giant. The man had undermined the giant.”
― George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

tags: giants, humanity, humanness, philosophy

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#22

“Language was a kind of passport. You could go where you like if you had a clean record. p.155”
― George Lamming, In the Castle of My Skin

tags: language, passport, sociology, travel, words

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#23

“Wagner: Yet elocution makes the orator;
I'm far behind, I feel it more and more.

Faust: Seek thou an honest retribution!
Be thou no motley, jingling fool!
It needs but little elocution
To speak good sense by reason's rule.
It ye've a message to deliver,
Need ye for words be hunting ever?”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

tags: faust, goethe, wagner

3 likes

#24

“Did they murder each other more gently because in the woods sweet songbirds sang?”
― John Gardner, Grendel

tags: death-and-dying, monsters-of-men, monsters-within, murder, philosophy, war, warrior

1 likes

#25

“Faust: What cheerful light breaks on my gloomy
fancies,
As in the midnight woods when moonlight
floods the skies?”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

tags: beautiful-quote, faust, goethe, midnight, moonlight, poetry

6 likes

#26

“They were doomed, I knew, and I was glad. (p.45)”
― John Gardner, Grendel

tags: doom, monsters-within, nihilism

3 likes

#27

“While the Growing went on, this god of their market-place was their true god, their familiar and spirit-control. They did not know that they were his helplessly obedient slaves, nor could they ever hope to realize their serfdom (as the first step to becoming free men) until they should make the strange and hard discovery that matter should serve man’s spirit. (p.211)”
― Booth Tarkington, The Magnificent Ambersons

tags: american-culture, american-history, american-spirit, americanness, capitalism, cog-in-the-machine, economics, serfdom

0 likes

#28

“Except in the life of a hero, the whole world's meaningless. The hero sees the value beyond what's possible. That's the nature of a hero. It kills him of course, ultimately. But it makes the whole struggle of humanity worthwhile. (p.77)”
― John Gardner, Grendel

tags: beowulf, grendel, heroes, heroism, optimism

3 likes

#29

“Madame, it is always a mistake to know an author. (p.215)”
― Ernest Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon

tags: author, death-in-the-afternoon, fiction, hemingway, writer, writing

4 likes

#30

“My enemies define themselves (as the dragon told me) on me. As for myself, I could finish them off in a single night […] yet I hold back. I am hardly blind to the absurdity. Form is function. What will we call the Hrothgar-Wrecker when Hrothgar has been wrecked? (p.79)”
― John Gardner, Grendel

tags: absurdity, balance, grendel, johngardner, purpose, villain, yin-and-yang

2 likes

#31

“Maria knelt down on the boat, removed his jacket, and pulled down his suspenders. When she unbuttoned his fly Carsten said, "I would like to point out that I am, if I may say so, a classic sexual neurotic." (p.356)”
― Peter Høeg, The History of Danish Dreams

tags: funny-quotes, humor, neurotic, sex, sexuality

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