It is time to take off the amber Time to change the words, Time to put out the lamp Above the door . . . – Marina Tsvetaeva
Archive for May, 2009
Stretch me no longer on this rough world
Posted in Quotes, tagged Quotes on May 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Bloomsday Countdown
Posted in Quotes, tagged Bloomsday, James Joyce, Quotes, Ulysses on May 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Where was the chap I saw in that picture somewhere? Ah yes, in the dead sea floating on his back, reading a book with a parasol open. Couldn’t sink if you tried: so thick with salt. Because the weight of the water, no, the weight of the body in the water is equal to the [...]
Definitions and Magnitudes
Posted in Quotes on May 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
What a job is this, to measure lightning with a footrule, the heart’s turbulence with a pair of callipers. – Norman MacCaig
the whole art of living is to make use of the individuals through whom we suffer
Posted in Quotes, tagged Quotes on May 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
(every individual who makes us suffer can be attached by us to a divinity of which he or she is a mere fragmentary reflexion, the lowest step in the ascent that leads to it, a divinity or an Idea which, if we turn to contemplate it, immediately gives us joy instead of the pain which [...]
Bloomsday Countdown
Posted in Quotes, tagged Bloomsday, James Joyce, Quotes, Ulysses on May 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus if you don’t please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha’s perfume. [5.264-266]
nothing so cruel as to snatch a desperate woman away from death
Posted in Quotes, tagged Quotes on May 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
One day when she had been left alone for a moment I found her out of bed, standing in her nightdress trying to open the window. – Proust, The Guermantes Way
Quote on my Starbucks cup. . . .
Posted in Quotes on May 29, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The irony of commitment is that it’s deeply liberating — in work, in play, in love. The act frees you from the tyranny of your internal critic, from the fear that likes to dress itself up and parade around as rational hesitation. To commit is to remove your head as the barrier to your life. [...]
almost terrible energy
Posted in Quotes, tagged Quotes on May 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
I walk from room to room trying to think of something to do — for a while I will do something, make cookies or clean the bathroom — make beds — answer the telephone — but all along I have this almost terrible energy in me and nothing seems to help. . . . I [...]
Bloomsday Countdown
Posted in Quotes, tagged Bloomsday, James Joyce, Quotes, Ulysses on May 28, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were Bloom’s thoughts about Stephen’s thoughts about Bloom and about Stephen’s thoughts about Bloom’s thoughts about Stephen? He thought that he thought that he was a jew whereas he knew that he knew that he knew that he was not. [17.527-531]
A lonely impulse of delight
Posted in Poetry, Quotes, tagged Poetry, Quotes on May 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A lonely impulse of delight Drove to this tumult in the clouds; I balanced all, brought all to mind, The years to come seemed waste of breath, A waste of breath the years behind In balance with this life, this death. – William Butler Yeats (From “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”)
Bloomsday Countdown
Posted in Quotes, tagged Bloomsday, James Joyce, Quotes, Ulysses on May 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. Aristotle’s phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sins of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a [...]
Suicide Note :: Langston Hughes
Posted in Poetry, Quotes, tagged Poetry, Quotes on May 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The calm, Cool face of the river Asked me for a kiss. ["Suicide Note," a poem by Langston Hughes]
Rapture of the Nerds
Posted in Quotes, Short Prose, tagged Article, Artificial Intelligence, New York Times on May 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The Coming Superbrain By JOHN MARKOFF Published: May 23, 2009 The New York Times Mountain View, Calif. — It’s summertime and the Terminator is back. A sci-fi movie thrill ride, “Terminator Salvation” comes complete with a malevolent artificial intelligence dubbed Skynet, a military R.&D. project that gained self-awareness and concluded that humans were an irritant [...]
death lies near at hand
Posted in Quotes, tagged Quotes on May 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
A tiny blade will sever the sutures of the neck, and when that joint, which binds together head and neck, is cut, the body’s mighty mass crumples in a heap. No deep retreat conceals the soul, you need no knife at all to root it out, no deeply driven wound to find the vital parts; [...]
judgment of generations
Posted in Quotes, tagged In Search of Lost Time, Marcel Proust, Quotes on May 22, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
The people who are least capable of judging the worth of individuals are also the most inclined to adopt fashion as a principal by which to classify them; they have not exhausted, or even grazed the surface of, the talented men of one generation, when suddenly they are obliged to condemn them all en bloc, [...]
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