Nathanimal

“The true elitists in the literary world are the ones who have become annoyed by literary ambition in any form, who have converted the very meaning of ambition so totally that it now registers as an act of disdain, a hostility to the poor common reader, who should never be asked to do anything that might lead to a pulled muscle. (What a relief to be told there's no need to bother with a book that might seem thorny, or abstract, or unusual.) The elitists are the ones who become angry when it is suggested to them that a book with low sales might actually deserve a prize (...) and readers were assured that the low sales figures for some of the titles could only mean that the books had failed our culture's single meaningful literary test.”
― Ben Marcus

“Even then she wore the look of certain fanatics who think of themselves as leaders without once having gained the respect of a single human being.”
― Jane Bowles, Two Serious Ladies

“You have asked a question: "Are we by chance a lie?" you say. The possibility disturbs you, but it is necessary for you to reconcile yourselves to being part of an unfinished set of events. You might, for example, be the characters in a literary work of the fantastic genre who have suddenly gained autonomous life. On the other hand, we might be a conglomeration of dreams dreamt by various people in different parts of the world. We are somebody else's dream. Why not? Or a lie. Or perhaps we are the materialization, in human terms, of a chess game ending in a stalemate. Or perhaps we are a film, a film that lasts barely an instant. Or the image of others, not ourselves, in a mirror. Perhaps we are the thoughts of a madman. Perhaps one of us is real and others, his hallucination, There is still another possibility. Perhaps we are a printing error that has inadvertently slipped by, that makes an otherwise clear text, confusing. Perhaps it is the transposition of the lines of a text that brings us to life in this prodigious manner. Or perhaps we are a text that being revealed in a mirror takes on a totally different meaning from the one it really has. Perhaps we are a premonition - the image formed in someone's mind long before the events in which we participate in real life take place. Perhaps we are a fortuitous event that has not yet occurred, which is barely gestating in the cracks of time, or a future event that has not yer occurred. We are an incomprehensible sign drawn on a moist windowpane on a rainy afternoon. We are the memory, nearly lost, of a remote event. We are beings and objects invoked by a magician's spell. We are something has been forgotten. We are an accumulation of words, an event told by means of illegible writing, a testimony no one hears. We are part of an entertaining magic show. A bill sent to the wrong address. We are the fleeting, involuntary image that crosses the minds of lovers as they meet, at the instant they lust, at the moment they die. We are a secret thought. . .”
― Elizondo Salvador, Farabeuf

“The younger people with the ache of youth were eating all the cheese.”
― Grace Paley, Later the Same Day