Thomas Desforges > Recent Status Updates

Pourquoi fallait-il que Gregor fût condamné à travailler dans une affaire où, au moindre manquement, on concevait aussitôt les pires soupçons ? Les employés étaient-ils donc tous sans exception des frippons ? N’y avait-il parmi eux aucun de ces serviteurs fidèles et dévoués qui, s’il leur arrivait un matin de laisser passer une ou deux heures sans les consacrer au magasin, fussent aussitôt saisis …

Lorsque Gregor Samsa s’éveilla un matin au sortir de rêves agités, il se retrouva dans son lite changé en un énorme cancrelat.

‘It was all right,’ said Billy. ‘Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. I learned that on Tralfamadore.’

Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.
So it goes.

There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.

Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.

‘That’s one thing Earthlings might learn to do, if they tried hard enough: Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones.’

‘How nice — to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.’

She upset Billy simply by being his mother. She made him feel embarrassed and ungrateful and weak because she had gone to so much trouble to give him life, and to keep that life going, and Billy didn’t really like life at all.

… polished amber with three ladybugs embedded in it.
‘Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.’

‘Welcome aboard, Mr. Pilgrim,’ said the loudspeaker. ‘Any questions?’
Billy licked his lips, thought a while, inquired at last: ´Why me?’
‘That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?’
‘Yes.’ Billy, in fact, had a paperweight in his office which was a blob of …

‘Where have all the years gone?’

… violet light — and a hum.

Billy Pilgrim had stopped in the forest. He was leaning against a tree with his eyes closed. His head was tilted back and his nostrils were flaring. He was like a poet in the Parthenon.
This was when Billy first came unstuck in time. His attention began to swing grandly through the full arc of his life, passing into death, which was violet light. There wasn’t anybody else there, or any thing. There was just …

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist.

Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time.
Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day. He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all the events in between.
He says.

It is so short and jumbled and jangled, Sam, because there is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre. Everybody is supposed to be dead, to never say anything or want anything ever again. Everything is supposed to be very quiet after a massacre, and it always is, except for the birds.
And what do the birds say? All there is to say about a massacre, things like ‘Poo-tee-weet?’

And, even if wars didn’t keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death.

« La Vérité est simple, mais la Voie de l’Homme est difficile. Avant tout, il faut que vous appreniez à contrôler le soi. Le reste s’ensuivra. Béni est celui qui se connaît et se contrôle, car le monde lui appartient et l’amour, le bonheur et la paix l’accompagnent partout où il va. »

La patience fait partie intégrante de la discipline. Il ne faut jamais se presser.

De Catulus : ne jamais être indifférent aux plaintes d’un ami, même s’il arrive que ce soit sans raison qu’il se plaigne, mais essayer même de rétablir nos relations familières ; souhaitee du fond du cœur du bien à ses maîtres, ainsi que faisaient, comme on le rapporte, Domitius et Athénodote ; avoir pour ses enfants une véritable affection.

… regarder en face, et vous avez pris la fuite.

L’amour est un état sain et normal, tandis que la jalousie est une maladie. L’esprit insuffisament mûr les confond souvent, et présume qu’ils sont corollaires, alors qu’en fait ils sont pratiquement incompatibles. Lorsque par hasard ils coexistent, ils créent un tumulte intolérable ; je crois que c’était votre cas. Lorsque votre jalousie releva la tête, vous n’avez pas eu le courage de la …