The End of the Road Quotes

“Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story. Hamlet could be told from Polonius's point of view and called The Tragedy of Polonius, Lord Chamberlain of Denmark. He didn't think he was a minor character in anything, I daresay.”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“There's a great difficulty in making
choices if you have any imagination at all. Faced with such a multitude of desireable choices, no one choice
seems satisfactory for very long by comparison with the aggregate desirability of all the rest, though compared to any *one* of the others it would not be found inferior. All equally attractive but none finally inviting.”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“path's should be laid where people walk, instead of walking where paths are laid-”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“Articulation! There, by Joe, was MY absolute, if I could be said to have one. At any rate, it is the only thing I can think of about which I ever had, with any frequency at all, the feelings one usually has for one's absolutes. To turn experience into speech - that is, to classify, to categorize, to conceptualize, to grammarize, to syntactify it - is always a betrayal of experience, a falsification of it; but only so betrayed can it be dealt with at all, and only in so dealing with it did I ever feel a man, alive and kicking.”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“Now many crises in people’s lives occur because the hero role that they’ve assumed for one situation or set of situations no longer applies to some new situation that comes up, or–the same thing in effect–because they haven’t the imagination to distort the new situation to fit their old role. This happens to parents, for instance, when their children grow older, and to lovers when one of them begins to dislike the other. If the new situation is too overpowering to ignore, and they can’t find a mask to meet it with, they may become schizophrenic–a last-resort mask–or simply shattered. All questions of integrity involve this consideration, because a man’s integrity consists in being faithful to the script he’s written for himself.
“I’ve said you’re too unstable to play any one part all the time–you’re also too unimaginative–so for you these crises had better be met by changing scripts as often as necessary. This should come naturally to you; the important thing for you is to realize what you’re doing so you won’t get caught without a script, or with the wrong script in a given situation. You did quite well, for example, for a beginner, to walk in here so confidently and almost arrogantly a while ago, and assign me the role of a quack. But you must be able to change masks at once if by some means or other I’m able to make the one you walked in with untenable. Perhaps–I’m just suggesting an offhand possibility–you could change to thinking of me as The Sagacious Old Mentor, a kind of Machiavellian Nestor, say, and yourself as The Ingenuous But Promising Young Protégé, a young Alexander, who someday will put all these teachings into practice and far outshine the master. Do you get the idea? Or–this is repugnant, but it could be used as a last resort–The Silently Indignant Young Man, who tolerates the ravings of a Senile Crank but who will leave this house unsullied by them. I call this repugnant because if you ever used it you’d cut yourself off from much that you haven’t learned yet.
“It’s extremely important that you learn to assume these masks wholeheartedly. Don’t think there’s anything behind them: ego means I, and I means ego, and the ego by definition is a mask. Where there’s no ego–this is you on the bench–there’s no I. If you sometimes have the feeling that your mask is insincere–impossible word!–it’s only because one of your masks is incompatible with another. You mustn’t put on two at a time. There’s a source of conflict, and conflict between masks, like absence of masks, is a source of immobility. The more sharply you can dramatize your situation, and define your own role and everybody else’s role, the safer you’ll be. It doesn’t matter in Mythotherapy for paralytics whether your role is major or minor, as long as it’s clearly conceived, but in the nature of things it’ll normally be major. Now say something.”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“My classes commenced on the seventh of September, a tall blue day as crisp as the white starched blouses of the coeds who filed into my classroom and nervously took their seats. Standing behind the lectern at eight o'clock sharp, suit fresh-pressed and chin scraped clean, I felt my nostrils flare like a stud's at the nubby tight sex of them, flustered and pink-scrubbed, giggling and moist; my tighs flexed, and I yawned ferociously.”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“Non c'era ragione di far niente. I miei occhi, come Winckelmann diceva impropriamente delle statue greche, erano senza sguardo, fissi all'eternità, puntati al fine ultimo, e quando così stanno le cose non c'è ragione di far nulla, nemmeno di aggiustare il fuoco dei propri occhi. Il che forse è la ragione per cui le statue stanno ferme. Mi aveva colpito la malattia "cosmopsis", la vista cosmica. Quando uno ha questa malattia si irrigidisce come la rana quando la luce del cacciatore la colpisce in pieno negli occhi; solo che con la cosmopsis non c'è né cacciatore né una mano svelta che ponga fine al momento - c'è solo la luce.”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“Ora, noi siamo soltanto i protagonisti della storia della nostra vita - siamo anche quelli che creano la storia, e danno agli altri la qualifica di personaggi minori. Ma poiché, di solito, la storia della vita di un uomo non ha mai una trama coerente, noi ricreiamo continuamente il tipo di protagonista che siamo e, di conseguenza, il tipo di ruoli minori che dovrebbero recitare gli altri. Così stanno le cose, generalmente. Se uno mostra un carattere costante ogni giorno e per tutto il giorno, ciò avviene o perchè non ha immaginazione, come se fosse un attore che sa recitare in un solo ruolo, o perchè ha un'immaginazione così grande che gli permette di vedere ogni particolare situazione della sua vita come un episodio inserito in un grandioso intreccio generale e riesce a deformare le situazioni in maniera tale che lo stesso tipo di eroe possa fronteggiarle tutte. Ma questo capita di rado”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“[...] chiunque cominci a parlare in termini di chiavi del carattere delle persone crea dei miti, perché il mistero di una persona non si spiega con una chiave.”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“Scegliere è esistere: nella misura in cui non scegliete, non esistete.”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“[...] credo che quello che mi attraeva in Rennie era che, sola fra tutte le donne che avevo conosciuto, se non fra tutte le persone, aveva scrutato profondamente in se stessa e non ci aveva trovato niente.”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“Capisco perché Dio è scapolo.”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“Il mondo è pieno di tonnellate e tonnellate di fregnacce, e senza nessuno scopo".”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“[...] "Questa è una delle ragioni per cui non mi scuso mai per qualcosa", disse Joe infine, "È perché non ho il diritto di aspettarmi che voi o chiunque altro accettiate qualunque cosa io faccia o dica - ma posso sempre spiegare ciò che faccio o dico. Non c'è senso nello scusarsi, perché niente è difendibile fino all'ultimo.”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“[...] ma c'era in me un'istintiva ripugnanza per un'analisi così sistematica delle cose, anche se Dio in persona mi avesse assicurato che le cose stavano proprio così.”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“[...] hai rovinato la mia prima vera crisi di follia in tutte le domeniche del mese!”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“Vi fa una gran paura, Rennie. È per quella volta che vi ha picchiato?"
Ogni volta che parlavo di questo Rennie piangeva. Quel colpo era stato più duro di quanto si potesse immaginare.
"Non sono così forte, Jake!", disse piangendo. "È colpa mia, ma non sono abbastanza forte per lui".
Dissi: "Capisco perché Dio è scapolo".”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“<>
Ogni volta che parlavo di questo Rennie piangeva. Quel colpo era stato più duro di quanto si potesse immaginare.
<>, disse piangendo. <<È colpa mia, ma non sono abbastanza forte per lui>>.
Dissi: <>”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“On our planet, sir, males and females copulate. Moreover, they enjoy copulating. But for various reasons they cannot do this whenever, wherever, and with whomever they choose. Hence all this running around that you observe. Hence the world.”
― John Barth, The End of the Road

“Now many crises in people’s lives occur because the hero role that they’ve assumed for one situation or set of situations no longer applies to some new situation that comes up, or–the same thing in effect–because they haven’t the imagination to distort the new situation to fit their old role. This happens to parents, for instance, when their children grow older, and to lovers when one of them begins to dislike the other. If the new situation is too overpowering to ignore, and they can’t find a mask to meet it with, they may become schizophrenic–a last-resort mask–or simply shattered. All questions of integrity involve this consideration, because a man’s integrity consists in being faithful to the script he’s written for himself.
“I’ve said you’re too unstable to play any one part all the time–you’re also too unimaginative–so for you these crises had better be met by changing scripts as often as necessary. This should come naturally to you; the important thing for you is to realize what you’re doing so you won’t get caught without a script, or with the wrong script in a given situation. You did quite well, for example, for a beginner, to walk in here so confidently and almost arrogantly a while ago, and assign me the role of a quack. But you must be able to change masks at once if by some means or other I’m able to make the one”
― John Barth, The End of the Road