Category Archives: quotes

books, israel, quotes

the exact opposite

“One reason for my decision was that all too many people advised me not to do it. Perhaps, like many other novelists, I tend to do the exact opposite of what I am told. If people are telling me — and especially if they are warning me — “Don’t go there,” “Don’t do that,” I tend to want to “go there” and “do that.” It’s in my nature, you might say, as a novelist. Novelists are a special breed. They cannot genuinely trust anything they have not seen with their own eyes or touched with their own hands.

And that is why I am here. I chose to come here rather than stay away. I chose to see for myself rather than not to see. I chose to speak to you rather than to say nothing.”

– Haruki Murakami’s speech on accepting the Jerusalem Prize. Salon, via AJ.

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books, quotes

into the pit

“…there are so few things, which, contemplated, do not like flimsy trapdoors open under the weight of our attention into the bottomless pit below.”

– John Updike, ROGER’S VERSION

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books, quotes

a mere expression of something

“You and I,” said Ames – “what are we? We don’t know where we came from nor where we are going to. Tomorrow you might die and dissolve and I could search high and low in all the winds and waters and not find you. Here you are a mere expression of something – you know not what. It so happens that you have the power to act. That is no credit to you. You might not have had it. It isn’t an excuse for either pride or self-glorification. You paid nothing to get it. But now that you have it, you must do something with it.”

He paused again.

“What must I do?” said Carrie.”

“Every person according to his light,” said Ames. “You must help the world express itself. Use will make your powers endure.”

– Theodore Dreiser, SISTER CARRIE

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art, quotes

unwarranted

“Shepard Fairey was completely unaware that there were any warrants for his arrest. Had he known, he would have resolved all such issues before the opening of his art exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston,” [Fairey’s attorney Jeffrey] Wiesner said.
– LAT, via AJ.

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quotes

next question!

“PLAYBOY: Would you classify sex among your wants, wherever you go?

DYLAN: Sex is a temporary thing; sex isn’t love. You can get sex anywhere. If you’re looking for someone to love you, now that’s different. I guess you have to stay in college for that.

PLAYBOY: Since you didn’t stay in college, does that mean you haven’t found someone to love you?

DYLAN: Let’s go on to the next question.”

– the famous Dylan Playboy interview, which I reread every now and then, for the wisdom. Upon looking at it again – it’s been a few years – what I really like are the character names, PLAYBOY and DYLAN. It seems like they should have their own play, just the two of them, and that it should be far more detailed than this interview. It should be like Zoo Story, a new Zoo Story. Or like someone should name two parakeets PLAYBOY and DYLAN, in all caps, and record them squeaking, and call it The Playboy-Dylan Interview: II. Yes, yes, I can be clever. You can be clever. But there’s no getting away from the two of them.

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quotes

here, in the world

“And so it happened again, the daily miracle whereby interiority opens out and brings to bloom the million-petalled flower of being here, in the world, with other people. Neither as hard as she had thought it might be nor as easy as it appeared.”

– Zadie Smith, ON BEAUTY

She has said a lot of things, but this is my favorite.

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