December 2010
28 posts
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Notes from Michael Cunningham's The Hours
She loves the world for being rude and indestructible, and she knows that other people must love it too, poor as well as rich, though no one speaks specifically of the reasons. Why else do we struggle to go on living, no matter how compromised, no matter how harmed? Even when we’re further gone than Richard; even if we’re fleshless, blazing with lesions, shitting in the sheets; still, we want...
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“Vladimir: All I know is that the hours are long, under these conditions, and...”
– From Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot
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“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your...”
– —Franz Kafka [via nyxa] (via skibinskipedia)
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“I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The...”
– —T.S. Eliot, from “Preludes” [via liquidnight] (via skibinskipedia)
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“Thinking involves not only the flow of thoughts but their arrest as well. Where...”
– Benjamin’s “Theses on the Philosophy of History”
(via skibinskipedia)
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“But in the end, he manages to resolve the question for himself - more or less....”
– From Paul Auster’s The Locked Room (via @WBrasington)
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“Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the...”
– Alfred North Whitehead, “Religion and Science” (The Atlantic, August 1925)
Read the full article here.
(via theatlantic)
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“How would you define intelligence?
Intelligence is the ability to take in...”
– NYT interview with Brian Greene
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So, is it love after all, or just lust?
Is there a difference?
Oh yes. To love someone is to give and then want to give more.
And lust? What is lust?
To take and to take more. To devour, to consume! No logic, no reason. So? Give? Take? Which is it?
Both. I want to give her everything. And I want to take everything away from her.
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“‘She’s just jealous,’ people say, as if jealousy is something...”
– From Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride
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“So she says, “I’ll keep you here with me,” even though she...”
– From Margaret Atwood’s The Robbert Bride
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“…in everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a...”
– Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore [via ieseiesei] (via skibinskipedia)
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“Good egg, he says. Small things like good eggs delight him, small things like...”
– From Margaret Atwood’s The Robber Bride
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The Other Side of an Affair
Mary Haines: Mom, Steven is having an affair. I can't believe those words just came out of my mouth, it makes me sick to my stomach.
Catherine Frazier: Who is it, one of your friends?
Mary Haines: No, she sells perfume at Saks.
Catherine Frazier: She's a spritzer girl?
Mary Haines: How could I not have known? Three or so months ago he bought cowboy boots. I just can't believe this is happening to me. I thought we were ... happy.
Catherine Frazier: What are you going to to do?
Mary Haines: What do you mean 'what am I going to do'? I'm going to tell him to move out.
Catherine Frazier: Well, that's not very smart. Someone once said that when you don't know what to do, do nothing.
Mary Haines: Mom. My husband of thirteen years is having an affair. I mean, do they talk about me when they're in bed? Do they laugh at me? Please don't tell me to pretend that nothing happened, you have no idea how this feels.
Catherine Frazier: Let me try. It feels like someone kicked you in the stomach, feels like your heart stopped beating, feels like that dream -- you know the one when you are falling and you want so desperately to wake up before you hit the ground -- but its all out of your control, you cant trust anything anymore, no one is who they say they are, your life is changed forever, and the only thing to come out of the whole ugly experience is no one will be able to break your heart like that again.
Mary Haines: I can't believe you never told me that.
Catherine Frazier: I wanted you to love your father.
Mary Haines: Jeez. Who was she?
Catherine Frazier: Some little skank who sold fabric. I met her once. She wore too much makeup and her bra straps were always showing.
Mary Haines: What did you do when you found out?
Catherine Frazier: Nothing.
Mary Haines: Nothing!
Catherine Frazier: I had a smart mother, too. Mary, that girl doesn't mean anything more to Steven than the fabric whore meant to your father. If he loved her, believe me, you would have felt it.
Mary Haines: I can't fake it, mom. I can't be anywhere near him right now.
Catherine Frazier: Then this is what I think we should do: it's spring break. We'll go away for a couple of weeks. There is nothing like a heavy dose of a man's mistress to make him miss his wife.
Mary Haines: What do you think this is, some kind of 1930s movie? That's ridiculous!
Catherine Frazier: Can I remind you of something? You have a daughter. Just like I did. This is not just about you. Call Steven. Tell him I invited you and Molly up to the cottage in Maine. We;ll leave tomorrow. And I wouldn't discuss this with any of your friends. They'll all want to help and before you know it, you'll be taking care of them instead of yourself.
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“It is language… that structures our reality, since from the depths of...”
– Foucault
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“Writing is precisely the very possibility of change, the space that can serve as...”
– Helene Cixous
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“A writer should have the precision of a poet and the imagination of a scientist.”
– Vladimir Nabokov
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“No wonder they cannot appreciate the really central Kafka joke — that the...”
– DFW on Kafka [via mdub] (via skibinskipedia)
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“The distance between romantic / erotic and divine love is artificial and...”
– Robert Fischer (via gutsymmetries)
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I don’t love like a hearth, I love like a wildfire. I don’t know how to measure the absoluteness of devotion. The beloved becomes a part of me and my selfishness becomes its servant at the expense of self. Thus, love poses a great risk to everything I am.
You said we were destructive to one another. I think we’re destructive to ourselves. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter – we both break. I know ...
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“Isn’t it funny. I’m enjoying my hatred so much more than I ever...”
– From Janet Fitch’s White Oleander