Cora

“Ik waardeer het vanavond gevoerde debat. Het was precies, concies. Maar ik weet dat er onder jullie nog te veel spreken. Ieder woord in de klas moet bevel zijn. Het bevel is kort. Het woord in de klas kan korter zijn.Wij moeten de spreekwoordelijke wijdlopigheid van de Nederlander bekampen, logenstraffen. De taal van de regering, hoog en laag, de taal van de wetten, de taal van de kranten is mij een gruwel. Ik lees geen kranten meer omdat van de tien woorden er niet één is verantwoord.Wij misbruiken onze taal steeds roekelozer. Wij prostitueren haar. Prostitutie is zedenbederf. Aan zedenbederf gaat een volk onder. Wij zijn op de helling. Als wij ons niet weten af te werken van de helling gaan wij onder aan onze taal, met onze taal.”
― F. Bordewijk

“Imagine a person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the true cat-green.”
― Sax Rohmer, The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu

“A peels an apple, while B kneels to God,
C telephones to D, who has a hand
On E’s knee, F coughs, G turns up the sod
For H’s grave, I do not understand
But J is bringing one clay pigeon down
While K brings down a nightstick on L’s head,
And M takes mustard, N drives to town,
O goes to bed with P, and Q drops dead,
R lies to S, but happens to be heard
By T, who tells U not to fire V
For having to give W the word
That X is now deceiving Y with Z,
Who happens, just now to remember A
Peeling an apple somewhere far away.”
― Howard Nemerov

“How many years have passed since that far-off June afternoon? More than thirty. And yet, if I close my eyes, Micòl Finzi-Contini is still there, leaning over her garden wall, looking at me and talking to me. In 1929 Micòl was little more than a child, a thin, blond thirteen-year old with large, clear, magnetic eyes. And I was a boy in short trousers, very bourgeois and very vain, whom a small academic setback was sufficient to cast down into the most childish desperation. We both fixed our eyes on each other. Above her head the sky was a compact blue, a warm already summer sky without the slightest cloud. Nothing, it seemed, would be able to alter it, and nothing indeed has altered it, at least in memory.”
― Giorgio Bassani, The Garden of the Finzi-Continis