Materiality Quotes

“There are very few, very fuckin' few people, Kia, who get what's precious in this world. They work their asses off for pure shit and think they'd fight and die to keep it. You don't fight and die for shit. You fight and die for things that matter. You are the first woman I've met outside a life that leads you to understand that shit who gets that. And straight up, baby, you gotta know, I like that a fuckuva lot.”
― Kristen Ashley, Heaven and Hell

“Those who count things are not worthy of assisting the people.”
― Zhuangzi, The Book of Chuang Tzu

“Because of this Christian materialism, a catholic postmodernism (or postmodern catholicity) affirms sacramentality on two levels. On the one hand, it affirms a general sacramentality: the whole world has potential to function as a window to God and a means of grace from God because God himself affirms materiality as a good thing. We see this not only in creation itself but also in the reaffirmation of it in the incarnation, in which God is happy to inhabit the goodness of flesh. Furthermore, materiality receives an eschatological affirmation in our hope for the resurrection of the body. Even the future kingdom will be a material environment of sacramentality. On the other hand, when an incarnational ontology and anthropology are linked with our earlier affirmation of time and tradition, a catholic postmodernism also affirms a special sacramentality - a special presence and means of grace in the sacraments of baptism and Eucharist.”
― James K.A. Smith, Who's Afraid of Postmodernism?: Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church

“I do not know how old I was when I learned to play chess. I could not have been older than eight, because I still have a chessboard on whose side my father inscribed, with a soldering iron, “Saša Hemon 1972.” I loved the board more than chess—it was one of the first things I owned. Its materiality was enchanting to me: the smell of burnt wood that lingered long after my father had branded it; the rattle of the thickly varnished pieces inside, the smacking sound they made when I put them down, the board’s hollow wooden echo. I can even recall the taste—the queen’s tip was pleasantly suckable; the pawns’ round heads, not unlike nipples, were sweet. The board is still at our place in Sarajevo, and, even if I haven’t played a game on it in decades, it is still my most cherished possession, providing incontrovertible evidence that there once lived a boy who used to be me.”
― Aleksandar Hemon, The Book of My Lives

“Your mind is real, materiality is simulated.”
― Alex M. Vikoulov, Is Reality a Simulation?

“The physical sciences focus on reality’s shiny, superficial veneer, the materiality of which can be easily measured and observed.”
― Debra Gavant, POST QUANTUM REALITY: Simple Answers to the Toughest Questions in Science and Religion

“But this is where literature’s failing comes to the fore: it can describe, document and eulogize this loss, but can never intervene materially. This is what architecture can do, precisely because it cannot afford to linger over loss.”
― Christoph Grafe, OASE 70: Architecture and Literature

“Mon cœur, le couteau existent. Mon cœur parce qu'il saigne, le couteau parce qu'il taille ma chair.”
― René Barjavel, La Faim du tigre