Alan

“Ich komme gerade von einem ungleichen Zweikampf auf Messer und Knochensäge, – große Sache, wissen Sie, Rippenresektion. Früher blieben fünfzig Prozent dabei auf dem Tisch des Hauses. Jetzt haben wir's besser 'raus, aber öfters muß man doch mortis causa vorzeitig einpacken. Na, der von heute konnte ja Spaß verstehen, blieb für den Augenblick ganz stramm bei der Stange... Doll, so ein Menschenthorax, der keiner mehr ist. Weichteil, wissen Sie, unkleidsam, leichte Trübung der Idee, sozusagen. Na, und Sie? Was macht die werte Befindität? Ist wohl ein fidelerer Lebenswandel zu zweien, was, Ziemßen, alter Schlauberger? Warum weinen Sie denn, Sie Vergnügungsreisender?", wandte er sich auf einmal an Hans Castorp. "Öffentliches Weinen ist hier nicht erlaubt. Hausordnungsverbot. Da könnte jeder kommen.”
― Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain

“Most of the big shore places were closed now and there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of a ferryboat across the Sound. And as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes — a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.

And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Gatsby’s wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy’s dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no matter — to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther… . And one fine morning ——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

“He thought there could be deathships out there yet, drifting with their lolling rags of sail. Or life in the deep. Great squid propelling themselves over the floor of the sea in the cold darkness. Shuttling past like trains, eyes the size of saucers. And perhaps beyond those shrouded wells another man did walk with another child on the dead gray sands. Slept but a sea apart on another beach among the bitter ashes of the world or stood in their rags lost to the same indifferent sun.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Freedom is merely privilege extended
Unless enjoyed by one and all.

- The Internationale”
― Billy Bragg, A Lover Sings: Selected Lyrics