Citations Quotes

“Of course, I'm not quite ready to forsake all the products of society, just yet. I have my clothes, my books, etc... But more and more I can see myself leaving much of the rest behind - leaving their makers, and the crucible from which they proceed. If at times, after all, I might benefit by the rays of the sun, must I seek also to reside in its nuclear core?”
― Mark X., Citations: A Brief Anthology

“That black, maddening firmament; that vast cosmic ocean, endlessly deep in every direction, both Heaven and Pandemonium at once; mystical Zodiac, speckled flesh of Tiamat; all that is chaos, infinite and eternal. And yet, it's somehow the bringing to order of this chaos which perhaps has always disturbed me most. The constellations, in their way, almost bring into sharper focus the immensity and insanity of it all - monsters and giants brought to life in all their gigantic monstrosity; Orion and Hercules striding across the sky, limbs reaching for lightyears, only to be dwarfed by the likes of Draco, Pegasus, or Ursa Major. Then bigger still - Cetus, Eridanus, Ophiuchus, and Hydra, spanning nearly the whole of a hemisphere, sunk below the equator in that weird underworld of obscure southern formations. You try to take them in - the neck cranes, the eyes roll, and the mind boggles until this debilitating sense of inverted vertigo overcomes you...”
― Mark X., Citations: A Brief Anthology

“Explanations are for cowards.”
― J. Ross Clara, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“My head is a prison I’ve been locked in from the start,
So if I'm treated like a criminal I might as well play the part.

(attrib: E. Tancarville)”
― Dan Garfat-Pratt, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“We know there are colours in the spectrum untranslatable to our eyes; sounds beyond the range of our hearing; sensations beyond the tolerance of taste or touch. What else is there that we might be missing? Could it be that we, ourselves, only ever really experience the mere gist of our own lives?

(attrib: F.L. Vanderson)”
― Mort W. Lumsden, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“The code of the con is to know just enough about everything so you can lie about anything.

(attrib: E. Tancarville)”
― Dan Garfat-Pratt, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“Only in sleep, where there's nothing but mind, can the mind clearly process all of the day's experiences/memories - without distraction. And, perhaps, only in sleep, where there's nothing but mind, can the mind truly understand the meaning of these memories, as well, and assimilate them with all the other memories you've accumulated over time, forming greater meanings - unintelligible in the light of day - building, perhaps, to some ultimate meaning at the culmination of life - unintelligible in the light of living.”
― Mark X., Citations: A Brief Anthology

“Don't you find it odd that two of the foremost symptoms of insanity are the hearing voices and talking to oneself? Is it any wonder that language is an area of such interest in psychology?

(attrib: F.L. Vanderson)”
― Mort W. Lumsden, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“Perhaps the most powerful and appealing aspect of another's words, however, is simply their convenience. Whether distilled in the briefest apophthegm, or spread out across some voluminous tome, the thought is ready-made, the heavy lifting done. It's there to be used like a weapon or tool, and as time wanders on, seemingly leaving us fewer and fewer new things to say, it becomes ever more useful. As technology moves forward, as well, it also becomes much easier. Indeed, in this "information age" where so much is available to so many so quickly that enlightenment nearly verges on light pollution, it can sometimes appear that expression has been reduced to nothing more than a mad race to unearth and claim references. As such, the citation is also there to be donned, like some article of fashion from which we may reap the praise of discriminating taste without ever exerting ourself in the actual toil of manufacture.”
― Jasper Siegel Seneschal, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“Ah Buddha, you boastful charlatan. You may have learned nothing after 6 years of suffering, but then what of 7 years? What of 17? What might you have learned from a lifetime of pain? [...] From what I can tell, the wisest man in all these scriptures was the first person Buddha ever tried to teach - an Ajivika named Upaka. Buddha bragged to him of how he achieved nirvana, to which Upaka simply replied: "That may be so," and walked away.”
― Mark X., Citations: A Brief Anthology

“Don't most astrophysicists now predict some "end of the line" - an end to it all? Not just the death of things, but the annihilation of everything. Some great contraction, or collapse. Or, perhaps, some vast dissipation into eternal emptiness. Maybe it's all swallowed up by an immense black hole, which then swallows itself. But, whatever the case, their extinction is inevitable and absolute. So complete as to erase any and all evidence that this reality - this existence - ever took place. So complete that, perhaps, for all intents and purposes, it never really did.

(attrib: F.L. Vanderson)”
― Mort W. Lumsden, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“There's actually a sort of comfort in the belief that things can only get worse. It gives one an appreciation for the here-and-now, knowing that each and every moment may be as good as its ever going to get. Anyways, I can't imagine living too happy a life - so much to lose. It only figures that the more miserable your life is, the easier it is to lose it. And, when you can lose it at any moment, any time un-enjoyed must be time well spent.

(attrib: F.L. Vanderson)”
― Mort W. Lumsden, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“As for karma itself, it is apparently only that which binds "jiva" (sentience, life, spirit, etc.) with "ajiva" (the lifeless, material aspect of this world) - perhaps not unlike that which science seeks to bind energy with mass (if I understand either concept correctly). But it is only through asceticism that one might shed his predestined karmic allotment.

I suppose this is what I still don't quite understand in any of these shramanic philosophies, though - their end-game. Their "moksha", or "mukti", or "samsara". This oneness/emptiness, liberation/ transcendence of karma/ajiva, of rebirth and ego - of "the self", of life, of everything. How exactly would this state differ from any standard, scientific definition of death? Plain old death. Or, at most, if any experience remains, from what might be more commonly imagined/feared to be death - some dark perpetual existence of paralyzed, semi-conscious nothingness. An incessant dreamless sleep from which one never wakes? They all assure you, of course, that this will be no condition of endless torment, but rather one of "eternal bliss". Inexplicable, incommunicable "bliss", mind you, but "bliss" nonetheless.

So many in the realm of science, too, seem to propagate a notion of "bliss" - only here, in this world, with the universe being some great amusement park of non-stop "wonder" and "discovery". Any truly scientific, unbiased examination of their "discoveries", though, only ever seems to reveal a world that simply just "is" - where "wonder" is merely a euphemism for ignorance, and learning is its own reward because, frankly, nothing else ever could be.

Still, the scientist seeks to conquer this ignorance, even though his very happiness depends on it - offering only some pale vision of eternal dumbfoundedness, and endless hollow surprises. The shramana, on the other hand, offers total knowledge of this hollowness, all at once - renouncing any form of happiness or pleasure, here, to seek some other ultimate, unknowable "bliss", off in the beyond...”
― Mark X., Citations: A Brief Anthology

“To return to nature is to embrace extinction.”
― Mark X., Citations: A Brief Anthology

“I guess sometimes the truth just isn't worth believing... Personally, I've always felt that life's too short for truth. I'm just here to be entertained.”
― J. Ross Clara, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“COMEDIAN: [...] What is it you do for a living?

HECKLER: I mind my own business.

COMEDIAN: Self-employed, eh? No really, what do you do?

HECKLER: I try not to "do.”
― J. Ross Clara, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“So it is that, just as nature abhors a vacuum, philosophy abhors an answer, for once the truth is truly attained, the game is truly up.”
― Dan Garfat-Pratt, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“The prisoner of doubt ends his stint [through suicide], released to the custody of that final question mark which punctuates every life sentence.”
― Dan Garfat-Pratt, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“Fiction in general holds little interest for me. Novels, in particular, arouse more suspicion than intrigue. It truly baffles me that any practitioner of make-believe should (especially in this day and age) feel the need to produce anything so gratuitous. The fact that certain examples of this fare can approach the length of your average dictionary seems inherently absurd.”
― Dan Garfat-Pratt, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“The problem with living forever, of course, is you have to live forever before you know you're immortal...or invincible. Even the gods, in this way, must always remain uncertain. Time trumps immortality just as uncertainty trumps omniscience, for a knower can only ever know what it knows, never what it doesn't.

(attrib: F.L. Vanderson)”
― Mort W. Lumsden, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“FV: Hasn't all art, in a way, submitted to words - reduced itself to the literary...admitted its failure through all the catalogues and criticism, monographs and manifestos —

ML: Explanations?

FV: Exactly. All the artistry, now, seems expended in the rhetoric and sophistry used to differentiate, to justify its own existence now that so little is left to do. And who's to say how much of it ever needed doing in the first place? [...] Nothing's been done here but the re-writing of rules, in denial that the game was already won, long ago, by the likes of Duchamp, Arp, or Malevich. I mean, what's more, or, what's less to be said than a single black square?

ML: Well, a triangle has fewer sides, I suppose.

FV: Then a circle, a line, a dot. The rest is academic; obvious variations on an unnecessary theme, until you're left with just an empty canvas - which I'm sure has been done, too.

ML: Franz Kline, wasn't it? Or, Yves Klein - didn't he once exhibit a completely empty gallery? No canvases at all.

FV: I guess, from there, to not exhibit anything - to do absolutely nothing at all - would be the next "conceptual" act; the ultimate multimedia performance, where all artforms converge in negation and silence. And someone's probably already put their signature to that, as well. But even this should be too much, to involve an artist, a name. Surely nothing, done by no-one, is the greatest possible artistic achievement. Yet, that too has been done. Long, long ago. Before the very first artists ever walked the earth.”
― Mort W. Lumsden, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“Anything you try to quantify can be divided into any number of "anythings," or become the thing - the unit - itself. And what is any number, itself, but just another unit of measurement? What is a 'six' but two 'threes', or three 'twos'...half a 'twelve', or just six 'ones' - which are what?

(attrib: F.L. Vanderson)”
― Mort W. Lumsden, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“Isn't one of the first lessons of good elocution that there's nothing one can say in any rambling, sprawling rant that can't, through some effort, be said shorter and better with a little careful editing? Or that, in writing, there's nothing you can describe in any page-filling paragraph that can't be captured better in just a sentence or two? Perhaps even nothing in any sentence which cannot better be refined in a single, spot-on word? Does it not follow, then, that there's likely nothing one can say in any word - in saying anything at all - that, ultimately, isn't better left unsaid?

(attrib: F.L. Vanderson)”
― Mort W. Lumsden, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“Those who can't, and can't teach, translate.

(attrib: F.L. Vanderson)”
― Mort W. Lumsden, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“HECKLER: Say something funny!

COMEDIAN: I don't do requests.”
― J. Ross Clara, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“Then there is the cosmologist, who views himself as nothing but a manipulation of atoms; his mind configured out of randomness into the tool a vast, blind universe might use to perceive itself. If this is so then truly "all is vanity". What could be more pleasing to the cosmic narcissist than to gaze eternally with a billion eyes into the mirror that is himself? What fault, however, if certain eyes ultimately don’t like what they see?”
― Dan Garfat-Pratt, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“We are killing, every one of us, every moment of the day - just by living. And if one realizes this, is this very realization itself not a conscious consent to murder? If a truly circumspect Jain was truly serious about not killing anything, wouldn't his only recourse be to kill himself?”
― Mark X., Citations: A Brief Anthology

“The trouble with believing conspiracies is you start seeing them everywhere, right? And everything becomes a part of them. But, of course, the trouble with not believing them is becoming a dupe.”
― J. Ross Clara, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“I believe it was Gorgias who was first to posit the impossibility of ever prooving anything - in which case, it might as well have been me to first propose this idea, just now.”
― Dan Garfat-Pratt, Citations: A Brief Anthology

“One makes his own meanings as the counterfeiter prints his own money: both know full well that the value of either rests solely in the gullibility of its recipient...”
― Dan Garfat-Pratt, Citations: A Brief Anthology