Quotes

[genevieveryoko]

"In the maxim of the past you can't go anywhere" - Gorky

[laika]

A related point about the little patch of yellow wall... It seems to me the weight of this passage is lost if you don't already know the story of Marcel's relationship with Elstir. Proust imagined his work in one paragraph on one endless strip of paper. An endless circular strip I think, where the yellow patch of wall recurs and amplifies to the point where weighing your life against it really means something. This is Proust's special kind of mimesis.

I suppose what I'm saying is just that a compendium of quotations should be kept private. Once we share it with others it becomes a scoresheet.

I take your point--I even thought as i was posting, how difficult it is to isolate a quotable passage from Proust-- but, a lot of people around here are big readers of MP, in case you haven't noticed.
I also think the bit about "precious in itself," is relatable even out of context....

[philip nod]

"Luzhin, preparing an attack for which it was first necessary to explore a maze of variations, where his every step aroused a perilous echo, began a long meditation: he needed, it seemed, to make one last prodigious effort and would find the secret move leading to victory. Suddenly, something occurred outside his being, a scorching pain - and he let out a loud cry, shaking his hand stung by the flame of a match, which he had lit and forgotten to apply to his cigarette. The pain immediately passed, but in the fiery gap he had seen something unbearably awesome, the full horror of the abysmal depths of chess. He glanced at the chessboard and his brain wilted from hitherto unprecedented weariness. But the chessmen were pitiless, they held and absorbed him. There was horror in this, but in this also was the sole harmony, for what else exists in the world besides chess? Fog, the unknown, non-being."

-- Vladimir NABOKOV, The Defence.

[Faust]

Oh, Russians and chess, you know how that goes...

[zamb]

Men often perceive what they expect, and often overlook what they do not wish to see - Colin A Russel

[Fade to Black]

Men often perceive what they expect, and often overlook what they do not wish to see - Colin A Russel

i like this one, zamb.

[klangspiel]

got a stash load of quotes compiled in a large txt file.
here's a few:

"Not to be confined by the greatest, yet to be contained by the smallest, is divine"
- Hölderlin

"Silence is perhaps a word, a paradoxical word, the silence of the word silence, yet surely we feel that it is linked to the cry, the voiceless cry, which breaks all utterances, which is addressed to no one and which no one receives, the cry that lapses and decries."
- Maurice Blanchot

"In sunlight our shadow is like a thing apart. At night our shadow is like a piece of us following step by step behind. This is because the soul's machinery speeds up from twilight on, projecting a larger and larger part of our selves into everything that emanates from us. At night we even feel as if our own shadow is aware of us. In the dead of night, no matter how bright the light around us, a presence seems to be hovering nearby. During the day our shadow is a companion. When night falls it peoples the whole room."
- Malcolm de Chazal

"If you wish to drown, do not torture yourself with shallow water."
- Old Bulgarian Proverb

[Faust]

I felt settled and easy, my chest free and my fingers comfortable and open. And now here's the thing. It takes a time like this for you to find out how sore you heart has been, and, moreover all the while you thought you were going around idle terribly hard work was taking place. Hard, hard work, excavation and digging, mining, moling, through tunnels, heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working, working, working, panting, hauling, hoisting. And none of this work is seen from the outside. It's internally done. It happens because you are powerless and unable to get anywhere, to obtain justice or have requital, and therefore in yourself you labor, you wage and combat, settle scores, remember insults, fight, reply, deny, blab, denounce, triumph, outwit, overcome, vindicate, cry, persist, absolve, die and rise again. All by yourself! Where is everybody? Inside your breast and skin, the entire cast.

Saul Bellow, The Adventures of Augie March

[Fade to Black]

the quotes from Bellow I've seen on here are some fine examples of internal monologue...pretty much the pinnacle of what it is to write it seems. still have yet to pick up that Herzog...

[Faust]

It's a difficult book, but mind-blowing for sure.

[zamb]

"I never want to be independent any more. Ever. Ever . . . If you want to work alone, become an artist. Fashion is about working in a team."- Raf Simons

[Faust]

sellout.

[Fade to Black]

The devil is hard to resist.

[Raw Edge]

"The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them."

"Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."

-both G.B. Shaw

[reborn]

"Being right can stop all the momentum of a very interesting idea.”
Robert Rauschenberg