L’appel du vide

The past is a curious thing. It’s with you all the time, I suppose an hour never passes without you thinking of things that happened ten or twenty years ago, and yet most of the time it’s got no reality, it’s just a set of facts that you’ve learned, like a lot of stuff in a history book. Then some chance sight or sound or smell, especially smell, sets you going, and the past doesn’t merely come back to you, you’re actually in the past.

Coming Up for Air, George Orwell

1 month ago -

11

I lived with rats and mice and wine and my blood crawled the walls in a world I couldn’t understand and still can’t. Rather than live their life, I starved; I ran inside my own mind and hid. I pulled down all the shades and stared at the ceiling. When I went out it was to a bar where I begged drinks, ran errands, was beaten in alleys by well-fed and secure men, by dull and comfortable men. Well, I won a few fights but only because I was crazy. I went for years without a women, I lived on peanut butter and stale bread and boiled potatoes. I was the food, the idiot. I wanted to write but the typer was always in hock. I gave it up and drank….

South of No North, Charles Bukowski

1 month ago -

2

‘Are you as good as they say you are?’ Harry laughed. ‘I give them soul. That can’t be measured in inches.’

South of No North, Charles Bukowski

1 month ago -

3

‘You’re a good writer, Max, but you’re no ladies’ man.’ ‘You think a good ladies’ man could have worked it?’ ‘Sure, you see each of her gambits must be parried with the correct response. Each correct response turns the conversation in a new direction until the ladies’ man has the woman backed into a corner or, more properly, flat upon her back.’ ‘How can I learn?’ ‘There’s no learning. It’s an instinct. You have to know what a woman is really saying when she is saying something else. It can’t be taught.

Hot Water Music, Charles Bukowski

1 month ago -

3

Well, we all have our ways. What the hell. A pussy and a bunghole are only that. You can’t make any more than that out of them.

Hot Water Music, Charles Bukowski

1 month ago -

1

‘Writers are whores,’ said Stobbs, ‘writers are the whores of the universe.’ ‘The whores of the universe do much better, my friend.’

Hot Water Music, Charles Bukowski

1 month ago

‘Yeah, I’m the hero. The myth. I’m the unspoiled one, the one who hasn’t sold out. My letters are auctioning for $250 back east. I can’t buy a bag of farts.’ ‘All you writers are always hollering ‘wolf’ ’ ‘Maybe the wold has finally arrived. You can’t live off your soul. You can’t pay rent with your soul. Try it sometime.

Hot Water Music, Charles Bukowski

1 month ago

Any civilization able to intercept Voyager in the depths of interstellar space…would know far more science than we do. Instead, we wanted to tell those other beings something about what seems unique about ourselves…Although the recipients may not know any languages of the Earth, we included greetings in sixty human tongues, as well as the hellos of the humpback whales. We sent photographs of humans from all over the world caring for one another, learning, fabricating tools and art and responding to challenges. There is an hour and a half of exquisite music from many cultures, some of it expressing our sense of cosmic loneliness, our wish to end our isolation, our longing to make contact with other beings in the Cosmos. And we have sent recordings of the sounds that would have been heard on our planet from the earliest days before the origin of life to the evolution of the human species and our most recent burgeoning technology. It is, as much as the sounds of any baleen whale, a love song cast upon the vastness of the deep. Many, perhaps most, of our messages will be indecipherable. But we have sent them because it is important to try.

Cosmos, Carl Sagan

1 month ago -

27

Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.

Cosmos, Carl Sagan

1 month ago -

3

Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic

Cosmos, Carl Sagan

1 month ago -

11

But who wins an argument with a hard-on? Ven der putz shteht, ligt der sechel in drerd. Know that famous proverb? When the prick stands up, the brains get buried in the ground! When the prick stands up, the brains are as good as dead!

Portnoy’s Complaint, Phillip Roth

1 month ago

To Tengo, sexual desire was fundamentally an extension of a means of communication.

1Q84, Haruki Murakami

1 month ago -

1

This was the expression he always used when he was dissatisfied with something. ‘If you can’t understand it without an explanation, you can’t understand it with an explanation.’

1Q84, Haruki Murakami

1 month ago -

4

‘According to Chekhov,’ Tamaru said, rising from his chair, ‘once a gun appears in a story, it has to be fired.’ ‘Meaning what?’ Tamaru stood facing Aomame directly. He was only an inch or two taller than she was. ‘Meaning, don’t bring unnecessary props into a story. If a pistol appears, it has to be fired at some point. Chekhov liked to write stories that did away with all useless ornamentation.’ Aomame straightened the sleeves of her dress and slung her bag over her shoulder. ‘And that worries you-if a pistol comes on the scene, it’s sure to be fired at some point.’ ‘In Chekhov’s view, yes.’ ‘So you’re thinking you’d rather not hand me a pistol.’ ‘There’re dangerous. And illegal. And Chekhov is a writer you can trust.’

1Q84, Haruki Murakami

1 month ago -

2

Then, as if it has just occurred to him, he asked if they had Cutty Sark. The bartender said they did. Not bad, thought Aomame. She liked the fact that he had not chosen Chivas Regal or some sophisticated single malt. It her was personal view that people who are overly choose about the drinks they order in a bar tend to be sexually bland. She had no idea why this should be so.

1Q84, Haruki Murakami

1 month ago