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... because at that time no one except him knew that all he had left in he pockets of his memory were a few odd scraps of the vestiges of the past, that he was alone in the world, deaf as a post, dragging his thick decrepit feet through dark offices where someone in a frock coat and starched collar had made an enigmatic signal to him with a handkerchief, hello, he said to him, the mistake became law ....

The second time he was found, chewed away by vultures in the same office, wearing the same clothes and in the same position, none of us was old enough to remember what had happened the first time, but we knew that no evidence of his death eas final, because there was always another truth behind the truth.

In the year 8000, if there are still people around, a new religion will have arrived -- one that allows the immaterial to materialize, one that is not afraid of death, since that is a purely personal problem.

Somebody has to be tireless, my boy, or the fast buck operators would asphalt the entire coast, fill every bay and slay every living thing incapable of carrying a wallet.

When something has ended, you can't start it all over from the beginning. It was the beginning of the affair that I missed -- that perhaps we both missed -- but all we could do would be to start it up once more at the end, and thus end it again.

"You've got plenty on me now," she said glumly. "Now you could put me away for a long time."
"I'm not interested in doing that. I'd like to find a place for you where old men won't beat you, where young men won't die on you."

Specific phobias are much more common in children than adults, that the rates halve among the elderly, and that women are twice as phobic as men.

Josiah Royce called the early California settlers "a community of irresponsible strangers" and "a blind and stupid and homeless generation of selfish wanderers."

And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelt a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that the grey rain curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.

Though here at journey's end I lie
in darkness buried deep,
beyond all towers strong and high,
beyond all mountains steep,
above all shadows rides the Sun
and Stars for ever dwell:
I will not say the Day is done,
nor bid the Stars farewell.

So we come to it in the end ... the great battle of our time, in which many things shall pass away. But at least there is no longer need for hiding. We will ride the straight way and the open road and with all our speed.

Again she was motionless. It was an odd feeling to be so close to her. It made me aware of the uncounted millions of men all over the world who had stared at her image, coveted her, lusted after her, mentally stripped her and plundered those silky little loins.

Hawaiians received a few benefits and many woes in return for their hospitality to visitors from the great world beyond their horizons. Whereas they could have continued to live comfortably enough without the benefits, they were almost annihilated by the harmful effects of their association with foreigners.

One of these revisionists has summed up the entire course of Hawaiian history since 1978 in a single sentence: "Dose focking [sic] haoles: dey come heah, dey keel us all off, dey steal all ouah lan'."

The gods expected nothing for themselves from a sick person save his return to piety from the excursion into error which had drawn upon him their wrath in the first place.

Success is a mistake, a false reality. Rage has saved my life. Without it wha would become of me?

Time rushes by: time is short: I need to hurry, but, at the same time, I need to live as if this, my life, were eternal. And then dying will be the end of something dazzling: dying will be one of the most important acts in my life. I'm afraid of dying: I don't know what nebulae and milky ways await me. I want to die emphasizing both life and death.

I saw a thing. A real thing. It was ten o'clock at night in Praça Tiradentes and the taxi was moving pretty fast. Then I saw a street I will never forget. I'm not going to describe it: it's mine. All I can say is: it was empty and it was ten o'clock at night. Nothing more. But the seed had been planted.

The scaffold was outside the prison gate. The ten men, in white gowns and white caps and in leg-irons, were led out to it. After each man was dropped the hangman, a Negro, slid down the rope and sat on the shoulders of the hanged man. The bodies were then decapitated and cut into quarters.

"'Me, me,' he kept on saying. 'A man of the cheferie -- they were going to put me on the diète noire.' You know about that famous black diet, don't you? They put you in a cell without food or water and leave you to die. It's what the president does to his enemies."

So I went [to an authors dinner] and sat in the place marked with his name. The occasion was as dull as he had said it would be. I sat next to a middle-aged woman who was obsessed with her family; that was where her mind and heart were. When I stood up to go I saw that I had sat all evening with my trouser zip undone.

[Women] soon find out that I am aware of what every single unwed person knows -- that the world is always a little out of focus when there is no one who gives the final total damn about whether you live or die. It is the price you pay for being a rambler, and if you don't read the price tag, you are a dull one indeed.

If you are wise, Matson said to himself grimly, you never take one-way trips. Anywhere. Even to Boise, Idaho ... even across the street. Be certain, when you start, that you can scramble back.

Near the congested bridge, a woman had pushed back her sable hood; on her knees, she was cutting open a donkey's stomach with a knife and plunging her head in to take a bite of its liver while being berated by a burgher in a fur-lined coat who wanted his share.

To show his satisfaction, the Emperor [Napoleon] either pulled your ear until it practically came off, or slapped you as hard as he could. Sebastian had the pleasure of feeling all five imperial fingers on his cheek, which was equivalent to being decorated.

The only permanent thing in this world is impermanence. Since you know the world is an illusion, why are you fooled by it?

Joseph Conrad is, it must be said straight away, a brilliant novelist, one of the highest peaks of English literature, and at the same time a writer uncomfortable on that privileged Olympus.

In the interviews I've read [Gao Xingjian] speaks little of that time. As always happens in an authoritarian state, where decisions are made only within the leadership, one fine day the governing group, led by the widow of Mao, collapsed with a roar.

I do not feel any pity for Gollum. He deserves death.
Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some die that deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.

Where now the horse and rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the helm and the hauberk, and the bright hair flowing?
Where is the hand on the harpstring, and the red fire glowing?
Where is the spring and the harvest and the tall corn growing?
They have passed like rain on the mountain, like a wind in the meadow;
The days have gone down in the West behind the hills into shadow.