هتان

“الإنسان بطبعه جشعٌ منوع.. يؤوسٌ هلوع.. قنوطٌ جزوع.. مع علمه أن أجله مقطوع.. وأنه لن يموت من جوع!
لو كنت إنسيًا وأعلم أنني لن أعمّر سوى ستين أو سبعين سنة فقط، فسأقضي هذه السنين القليلة بين أحبابي، أشبع منهم قبل أن أفارقهم وأندم.. كما تندمون أنتم.”
― Ibraheem Abbas, حوجن [Ḥawjan]

“لا أعتقد أن أيا منكم أحسّ بهذا الشعور من قبل، شعور طاقيّة الإخفاء: أن ترى شخصًا لا يراك، أن تحمل هموم الدنيا وبجوارك شخص يضحك على مشهد كوميدي في التلفزيون، أو أن تستيقظ من نومك فجأة على صوت شجار عائلي محتدم لا يخصّك”
― Ibraheem Abbas, حوجن [Ḥawjan]

“We must take our sentences seriously, which means we must understand them philosophically, and the odd thing is that the few who do, who take them with utter sober seriousness, the utter sober seriousness of right-wing parsons and political saviors, the owners of Pomeranians, are the liars who want to be believed, the novelists and poets, who know that the creatures they imagine have no other being than the sounding syllables which the reader will speak into his own weary and distracted head. There are no magic words. To say the words is magical enough.”
― William H. Gass, The World Within the Word

“I am the twentieth century. I am the ragtime and the tango; sans-serif, clean geometry. I am the virgin's-hair whip and the cunningly detailed shackles of decadent passion. I am every lonely railway station in every capital of Europe. I am the Street, the fanciless buildings of government. the cafe-dansant, the clockwork figure, the jazz saxophone, the tourist-lady's hairpiece, the fairy's rubber breasts, the travelling clock which always tells the wrong time and chimes in different keys. I am the dead palm tree, the Negro's dancing pumps, the dried fountain after tourist season. I am all the appurtenances of night.”
― Thomas Pynchon, V.