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At last he embraced his daughter, and she pressed his cheeks with her small hands and kissed him. Hungry to feel her, to breathe in her childish fragrance, to look in her face, her black eyes, touch her hair, the skin under her dress, he pressed her little bones, stammering, “Junie, sweetie. I’ve missed you.” His happiness was painful...

Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is.

I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And then? I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And what next? I get laid, I take a short holiday, but very soon after I fall upon those same thorns with gratification in pain, or suffering in joy-who knows what the mixture is! What good, what lasting good is there in me? Is there nothing else between birth and death but what I can get out of this perversity-...

Survival! he noted. Till we figure out what’s what. Till the chance comes to exert a positive influence. (Personal responsibility for history, a trait of Western culture, rooted in the Testaments, Old and New, the idea of the continual improvement of human life on this earth. What else explained Herzog’s ridiculous intensity?)

Sitting in a dirty plush seat he took out a book and read “For dying means that it is all over, but dying the death means to experience death”, trying to think what this might signify. IF...Yes...No...on the other hand, if existence is nausea then faith is an uncertain relief. Or else-be demolished by suffering and you will feel the power of God as he restores you...

Now: the first requirement of stability in a human being was that the said human being should really desire to exist. This is what Spinoza says. It is necessary for happiness (felicitas). He can’t behave well (bene agere), or live well (bene vivere), if he himself doesn’t want to live. But if it’s also natural, as psychology says, to kill mentally (one thought-murder a day keeps the psychiatrist away), then...

Dealing with Valentine was like dealing with a king. He had a thick grip. He might have held a scepter. He was a king, an emotional king, and the depth of his heart was his kingdom. He appropriated all the emotions about him, as if by divine or spiritual right. He could do more with them, and therefore he simply took them over. He was a big man, too big for anything but the truth. (Again, the truth!)..

Come to the point.But what was the point?The point was that there were people who could destroy mankind & that they were foolish and arrogant, crazy,& must be begged not to do it. Let the enemies of life step down.Let each man now examine his heart.Without a great change of heart,I would not trust myself in a position of authority.Do I love mankind? Enough to spare it,if I should be in a position to blow it to hell?

“Dear Doktor Professor Heidegger,I should like to know what you mean by the expression “the fall into the quotidian.” When did this fall occur? Where were we standing where it happened?
“Mr. Emmett Strawforth,U.S. Public Health Service, Dear Emmett, I saw you on television making a damn fool of yourself. Since we were undergraduates together (M.E.Herzog ’38) I feel free to tell you what I think of your philosophy.”

He saw twenty paces away the white soft face and independent look of a woman in a shining black straw hat which held her head in depth and eyes that even in the signal-dotted obscurity reached him with a force she could never be aware of. Those eyes might be blue, perhaps green, even gray-he would never know. But they were bitch eyes, that was certain..

Soberly deliberating, Herzog decided it would be better not to accept Ramona’s offer. She was 37 or 38 years of age, he shrewdly reckoned, and this means that she was looking for a husband. This, in itself, was not wicked, or even funny. Simple and general human conditions prevailed among the most seemingly sophisticated.

‘Tutto fa brodo.’
Resuming his self-examination, he admitted that he had been a bad husband – twice. Daisy, his first wife, he had treated miserably. Madeleine, his second, had tried to do him in. To his son and his daughter he was a loving but bad father. To his own parents he had been an ungrateful child. To his country, an indifferent citizen. To his brothers and his sister, affectionate but remote. ...

Why the hell does everybody want to succeed? I’d like to meet somebody who wanted to fail. That’s the only sublime thing.
It’s all right if you have a comfortable income.
That’s all bunk…Herfy I think you’re the only sensible person in this town. You have no ambitions.
How do you know I haven’t?
But what can you do with success when you get it? You can’t eat it or drink it. Of course I understand that people who...

You’re damn lucky Herfy, never to have gone to college.
Didn’t I graduate from Columbia you big cheese, that’s more that you could do?
That doesn’t count.
God I like sun, cried Jimmy, I wish it’d been real Colombia…
Do you mean Hail Columbia?
No I mean Bogota and the Orinoco and all that sort of thing.
I knew a darn good feller went down to Bogota. Had to drink himself to death to escape dying of elephantiasis.

Gosh what time is it?Jimmy sat up in bed digging his knuckles into his eyes.
Stan’s face was red & brown & laughing under the chalky mask of dust. ‘Eleven thirty’,he was saying.
Let’s see that’s six hours & a half. I guess that’ll do. But Stan what the hell are you doing here?
You haven’t got a little nip of liquor anywhere have you Herf? Dingo and I are extraordinarily thirsty.We came all the way from Boston and...

Gad, burst out Phil Sandbourne suddenly. The girls in this town get prettier every year.
Like these new fashions, do you?
Sure. All I wish is that I was gettin younger every year instead of older.
Yes about all us old fellers can do is watch em go past.
That’s fortunate for us or we’d have our wives out after us with bloodhounds…Man when I think of those mighthavebeens!

Morris I feel that we are going to be very happy from now on, I feel it. You’re going to get a fine job, I’m sure you are.
I aint so sure..I’m not so young as I was Cassie. I aint got any time to lose.
Why you’re terribly young, you’re only thirtyfive Morris..And I think that something wonderful is going to happen. I’m going to get a chance to dance.
Why you ought to make more than that redhaired girl.

Why did she marry him?
Why that girl'd marry a trolleycar if she thought she could get anything by it.
Ruth honestly I think you've got the whole thing sized up wrong.
Jimmy you're too innocent to live. But let me finish the tragic tale...

Whee I feel so drunk,it went straight to my head.Isn’t it terrible?
Well what were these shocking goingson at 105th Street?
O you missed it.It was a shriek.Everybody was out in the hall,Mrs Sunderland with her hair in curlpapers,& Cassie was crying &Tony Hunter was standing in his door in pink pyjamas
Who’s he?
Just a juvenile.But Jimmy I must have told you about Tony Hunter.Peculiar poissons Jimmy,peculiar poissons.

Jimmy fed in a tape in and out the revolving doors, noon and night and morning, the revolving doors grinding out his years like sausage meat. All of a sudden his muscles stiffen. Uncle Jeff and his office can go plumb to hell. The words are so loud inside him he glances to one side and the other to see if anyone heard him say them. They can all go plumb to hell.

A woman like you,a beautiful woman like you, Madame Rigaud, is never without friends.

Ah ca..I have lived too much in my time..I have no more confidence..Men are a set of brutes, and women, Oh I don’t get on with women a bit!

History and literature teach us that there are friendships, that there sometimes comes love that is worthy of confidence..

I tell you Phil, it’s the first five years that’s the hardest.
You needn’t worry George, you’re the hustlin kind...I’m the ole stick in the mud.
I don’t see why, you can always get a job as a draftsman.
That’s a fine future I muss sat, to spend ma life with the corner of a draftintable stuck in ma belly...Christamighty man!

And there are lots of people coming over from abroad on that boat arent there daddy?
Look you can see... the decks are black with people.

But daddy, mummy said never to let people speak to you in the street & to call a policeman if they did & to run away as fast as you could on account of those horrible kidnappers.
No danger of their kidnapping me Ellie. That’s just for little girls.
When I grow up will I be able to talk to people on the street like that?
No deary you certainly will not.
If I’d been a boy could I?
I guess you could.

I tell yer mommer I aint agoin back to him.
But Rosie, married life aint all beer and skittles. A wife must submit and work for her husband.
I won’t. I can’t help it. I won’t go back to the dirty brute.
‘But I aint a Jew no more’, suddenly screeched the young girl. ‘This aint Russia; it’s little old New York. A girl’s got some rights here.’ Then a door slammed and everything was quiet.

Say how much does a woman cost in New York?
I dunno, expensive I guess...I’m not going ashore to raise hell; I’m going to get a good job and work. Can’t you think of nothing but women?
What’s the use? Why not?
I want to get somewhere in the world, that’s what I mean. Europe’s rotten and stinking. In America a fellow can get ahead. Birth don’t matter, education don’t matter. It’s all getting ahead.

There were Babylon & Nineveh;they were built of brick.Athens was gold marble colums.Rome was held up on broad arches of rubble.In Constantinople the minarets flame like great candles round the Golden Horn...Steel, glass, tile, concrete will be the materials of the skyscrapers.Crammed on the narrow island the millionwindowed buildings will jut glittering,pyramid on pyramid like the white cloudhead above a thunderstorm

Gates fold upwards, feet step out across the crack, men and women press through the manuresmelling wooden tunnel of the ferry-house, crushed and jostling like apples fed down a chute into a press.

...fiecare din noi vede lumea cu ochii pe care-i are, iar ochii vad ceea ce vor, ochii creeaza diversitatea lumii si fauresc minunile, chiar daca sunt de piatra, si prorele inalte, chiar daca sunt din iluzii.

Pe vremea aia nimic n-avea inca un nume.
Cum poti privi un lucru fara sa-i pui un nume.
Trebuie sa astepti sa se nasca numele.

Au ramas toti trei privind, fara alte cuvinte.
In sfarsit, sa mergem, era timpul sa lase trecutul in pacea sa nelinistita.