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This does not really belong in any category, but could not come up with anything else.Here is just a list of quotes and lyrics i have collected over the years.
Citation preview
The following is a list of quotations that I have collected over the
years. This also includes some poetry, lyrics of songs, as well as
some of my own statements.
As soon as I get a build up of new quotes, I will update this document,
so keep checking back for new quotes.
The quotes are in no particular order – only chronological in terms of
when I came across them. New quotes will always be at the very
bottom of the document.
I hope you enjoy reading them; they are all quite close to me. If you
want to know more about me, you are welcome to visit my blog:
http://flippy-doodle.blogspot.com
We have to build the Republic of Heaven where we are, because for us there is no elsewhere.
His Dark Materials fan website
[Priests] lay claim to heaven after they are dead, and yet they require their heaven in this world
too, and grumble mightily against the people that will not give them a large temporal
maintenance. And yet they tell the poor people that they must be content with their poverty, and
they shall have their heaven hereafter. But why may we not have our heaven here (that is, a
comfortable livelihood in the earth) and heaven hereafter too, as well as you? ... While men are
gazing up to heaven, imagining after happiness or fearing a hell after they are dead, their eyes
are put out, that they not see what their birthrights are, and what is to be done by them here on
earth while they are living. ---------
Winstanley quoted in Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down
The best laid schemes o‘ mice and men, leave us nought but grief and pain.
Poem by a Scottish poet around which Steinbeck‟s book Of Mice And Men is based on
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign‘d...
In the poem Eloisa To Abelard by Alexander Pope
"The Nature, which delights in periodic repetition in the heavens,
is the same nature which rules the affairs here on Earth.
Let us not forget that lesson."
Mark Twain
―An accident has taken place at the Chernobyl power station, and one of the reactors was
damaged. Measures are being taken to eliminate the consequences of the accident. Those
affected by the accident are being given assistance. A government commission is being set up‖.
(TIME,Winter,1996) Soviet Union, (5/12/1986) At 9 p.m. Monday, a newscaster on Moscow
television read a four-sentence statement from the Council of Ministers. The terse, almost
grudging announcement.
No more painters, no more writers, no more musicians, no more sculptors, no more religions, no
more royalists, no more republicans, no more imperialists, no more anarchists, no more
socialists, no more Bolsheviks, no more politicians, no more proletarians, no more democrats, no
more armies, no more police, no more nations, no more of these idiocies, no more, NOTHING,
NOTHING, NOTHING.
Louis Aragon, in thirteenth issue of Littérature
Surrealism, n., Pure psychic automatism, by which one proposes to express – verbally, by means
of the written word, or in any other manner – the actual functioning of thought, in the absence of
any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concerns.
Breton identified automatism as the principal Surrealist artistic practice, the primary route
into the marvellous (in La Révolution surréaliste)
In my mouth, mine of words and kisses, thought and desires become confused, reduced to the
unique expression of the utterance.
Leiris in Le Point cardinal (Cardinal Point)
Do you think I desire to have my soul nailed on to a wheel-clamp for your desires to twist it round
to be fulfilled?
My own statement
It is the marvellous faculty of attaining two widely separate realities without departing from the
realm of our experience; of bringing them together and drawing a spark from their contact.
Breton, in the preface for Max Ernst‟s 1921 Paris exhibition
The problem with the youth of today' is that one is no longer part of it.
Salvador Dali
Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.
Salvador Dali
When the creations of a genius collide with the mind of a layman, and produce an empty sound,
there is little doubt as to which is at fault.
Salvador Dali
When the creations of a genius collide with the mind of a layman, and produce an empty sound,
there is little doubt as to which is at fault.
Salvador Dali
You have to systematically create confusion, it sets creativity free. Everything that is contradictory
creates life.
Salvador Dali
People love mystery, and that is why they love my paintings.
Salvador Dali
When I paint, the sea roars. The others splash about in the bath.
Salvador Dali
One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even
greater illusion than the world of dreams.
Salvador Dali
The desire to survive and the fear of death are artistic sentiments.
Salvador Dali
At the age of six I wanted to be a cook. At seven I wanted to be Napoleon. And my ambition has
been growing steadily ever since.
Salvador Dali
Have no fear of perfection, you'll never reach it.
Salvador Dali
You know the worst thing is freedom. Freedom of any kind is the worst for creativity.
Salvador Dali
Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.
Salvador Dali
―In art, immorality cannot exist.
Art is always sacred"
August Rodin
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, & the soul of
soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
Karl Marx
"Philosophy is questions that may never be answered. Religion is answers that may never be
questioned."
Unknown
‗instantaneous and hand done colour photography of the super-fine, extravagant, extra-plastic,
extra-pictorial, unexplored, super-pictorial, super-plastic, deceptive, hyper normal and sickly
images of concrete irrationality‘
Salvador Dali commenting on his art work
People sometimes pay with their lives for saying aloud what they think
Anna Politkovskaya (Russian journalist)
Beware of artists – they mix with all classes of society and are therefore most dangerous
Queen Victoria
Art is what you can get away with
Marshall McLuhan
There is nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight.
Lon Chaney, Sir
‗How delightfully
the fishes
are enjoying themselves‘,
exclaimed Soshi.
‗You are not a fish‘,
commented his friend,
‗how do you know
that the fishes
are enjoying themselves?‘
‗You are not myself‘,
answered Soshi;
‗how do you know,
that I do not know,
that the fishes
are enjoying themselves?‘
Taoist dialogue
Strap a piece of toast – buttered side up – to the back of a cat. Throw the cat out of the window.
Will the cat land on its feet or will Murphy‘s Law apply?
The Art of Looking Sideways
…the implacable hostility of the universe
The Art of Looking Sideways (on the Murphy‟s Law)
Do not adjust your mind, there is a fault in reality
The Art of Looking Sideways
The white triangle is a phantom only existing in our minds
The Art of Looking Sideways (commenting on the Kanizsa Triangle)
The statement below is true.
The statement above is false.
The Art of Looking Sideways
Moorfields Eye Hospital
The line of women in dressing gowns and black glasses hiding
bandaged eyes sit in their armchairs staring at the colour television.
On screen two American cops in black glasses stare back at them.
Ian Breakwell‟s diary
Due to the inability of humans to think of inconspicuous subjects and imaginative scenarios,
purple cows walk all over the place without ever being seen by anyone.
My own statement, inspired by Alan Fletcher‟s book The Art of Looking Sideways
A gimlet-looking man with strangely dirty hair walks alongside with his wife who looks equally
ugly. Passers-by look back at them in repugnance – but to each other they are the most beautiful
people in the world. It‘s all about perspective.
My own statement, inspired by Alan Fletcher‟s book The Art of Looking Sideways
The goldfish goes devil-worshipping.
My own statement
A lady visited Matisse in his studio. Inspecting one of his latest works she unwisely said: ‗But,
surely the arm of this woman is much too long.‘ ‗Madame,‘ the artist politely replied, ‗you are
mistaken. This is not a woman; this is a picture [of a woman].‘
The Art of Looking Sideways
The I-don‘t-care scale:
2 jots = 1 tittle
3 tittles = 1 continental
2 continentals = 1 tinker‘s dam
4 tinker‘s dams = 1 damn
Measure for Measure, Joe Ecclesine
Political opponent‘s measure:
2 nincompoops = 1 fathead
2 fatheads = 1 incompetent
3 incompetents = 1 opportunist
2 opportunists = 1 machiavelli
Measure for Measure, Joe Ecclesine
Alcohol beverage measure:
2 fingers = 1 tot
2 tots = 1 shot
2 shots = 1 slug
4 slugs = 1 snootful
2 snootfuls = 1 night in jail
Measure for Measure, Joe Ecclesine
Altercation scale:
2 tussles = 1 fray
3 frays = 1 fracas
2 fracases = 1 skirmish
2 skirmishes = 1 fight
Measure for Measure, Joe Ecclesine
Historical invective scale:
2 scamps = 1 rascal
3 rascals = 1 knave
2 knaves = 1 varlet
4 varlets = 1 scoundrel
2 scoundrels = 1 charlatan
Joe Ecclesine, Measure for Measure
When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the
little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I
am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather
than there, for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then…
Blaise Pascal
I don‘t paint with my hands, but my tail.
Auguste Renoir
To imagine is like flying a kite. The mind, loosely tethered, is free to be blown about. Usually the
direction it takes just happens but sometimes by tweaking the string it can arrive at an unlikely
destination. Take Einstein who, struck with the thought of riding on a shaft of light in outer space
while looking at himself in the mirror, interpreted the imagery to come up with the principles of his
Theory of Relativity.
… Although fantasy and make-believe flourish in childhood they rapidly atrophy as one is
moulded to fit the adult‘s grey consensus of reality. A child, out on a walk with its mother,
suddenly points and cries out, ‗Look, a purple cow.‘ The mother, perhaps rather tired and
domestically harassed, snaps, ‗Don‘t be silly.‘ And then delivers the crunch line: ‗There‘s no such
thing as purple cows.‘
So the child, a vagabond in the backwoods of rationality, is brought up to see the world in the
prosaic terms of grown-ups and eventually forgets it ever saw a purple cow. Now purple cows
walk around unseen by anyone.
Alan Fletcher, The Art of Looking Sideways
Ah, yes!
I wrote the Purple Cow
I‘m sorry, now, I wrote it!
But I can tell you anyhow,
I‘ll kill you if you quote it!
Frank Gelett Burgess, The Burgess Nonsense Book
I never saw a purple cow,
I never hope to see one;
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I‘d rather see than be one!
Frank Gelett Burgess, The Burgess Nonsense Book
A friend of mine was reading the draft copy of this book. ‗Can people really see purple cows?‘ she
mischievously asked me. I‘d just been on holiday and in reflective moments had watched a tree
outside the place I was staying in. In the early morning its trunk was pale grey, the leaves
silhouetted dark indigo against the bright pale sky. Late afternoon, in catching the edge of the sun
the trunk turned vermilion, the leaves a dark Winsor green. At sunset the trunk was sepia while
the upper branches became pink and the leaves become a tinge of deep brown. In winter the
leaves will have gone – but the trunk will probably be dark greeny grey flecked with silver bark.
My answer was ‗yes‘.
Alan Fletcher, The Art of Looking Sideways
News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress. Everything else is advertising.
Lord Northcliffe
Everybody in advertising is blonde, beautiful, families are happy, cars are never in traffic,
everything is shiny, food looks like its incredibly tasteful. I ask myself, ―How stupid are we? How
come the world is going one direction and advertising is going in a completely different direction?‖
Oliviero Toscani
Santé is a Greek cigarette pack reassuringly called HEALTH (oxymoron), in French (chic). The
two medallions are endorsements (approval). The graphic image implies the smokers are young
(desirable) and beautiful (blonde) and with the tilt of the head (alluring), very – la Jeunesse doreé
(trendy).
Alan Fletcher, The Art of Looking Sideways
I can‘t understand these chaps who go round American universities explaining how they write
poems: it‘s like going round explaining how you sleep with your wife.
Philip Larkin, poet
These are reproductions [thrusting a fistful of pound notes into the air] these by contrast [takes
out his own drawings] are originals!
J.S.G. Boggs, when on trial by the Bank of England accused of “reproducing” pound
notes
Drop your pants here for best results – Bangkok dry cleaner
It is forbidded to enter a woman even a foreigner if dressed as a man – Bangkok temple
Our wines leave you nothing to hope for – Swiss restaurant
The manager has personally passed all the water served here – Acapulco hotel
Special cocktails for ladies with nuts – Tokyo bar
Ladies are requested not to have children in the bar – Oslo bar
Please leave your values at the desk – Paris hotel
Please do not perambulate the corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension –
Austrian hotel
The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret you will be unbearable. –
Bucharest hotel
You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid. - Japanese hotel
Prostituition, whoredom, gambling, drug taking, drug dealing and anything obcene are fobiden
(sic). – Peking hotel
There will be a Moscow exhibition of arts by 15,000 Soviet Republic painters and sculptors.
These were executed over the last two years. – Soviet Weekly
Teeth extracted by the latest Methodists. – Hong Kong dentist
We take your bags and send them in all directions. – Copenhagen airline office
Iraqi head seeks arms. – British newspaper
Alan Fletcher, The Art of Looking Sideways, on colloquial mistakes
Excuse me
standing on one leg
I‘m half-caste.
Explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when Picasso
mix red an green
is a half-caste canvas?
explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean when light an shadow
mix in de sky
is a half-caste weather?
well in dat case
england weather
nearly always half-caste
in fact some o dem cloud
half-caste till dem overcast
so spiteful dem don‘t want de sun pass
ah rass?
explain yuself
wha yu mean
when yu say half-caste
yu mean tchaikovsky
sit down at dah piano
an mix a black key
wid a white key
is a half-caste symphony?
Explain yuself
wha yu mean
Ah listening to yu wid de keen
half of mih ear
Ah looking at yu wid de keen
half of mih eye
an when I‘m introduced to yu
I‘m sure you‘ll understand
why I offer yu half-a-hand
an when I sleep at night
I close half-a-eye
consequently when I dream
I dream half-a-dream
an when moon begin to glow
I half-caste human being
cast half-a-shadow
but yu must come back tomorrow
wid de whole of yu eye
an de whole of yu ear
an de whole of yu mind.
an I will tell yu
de other half
of my story.
John Agard, Half Caste, poem
[graffiti creates a] general atmosphere of neglect and social decay which in turn encourages
crime…We have no intention of changing this policy as it makes the transport system safer and
more pleasant for passengers
Spokesman, Transport for London
Our graffiti removal teams are staffed by professional cleaners not professional art critics
Spokesman, Transport for London
Painting a picture in a public space to make people think or smile is criminal damage. Flogging
your product via TV, radio, billboards, spam email, adverts in urinals, 'free' gifts for kids, peer
pressure et all is known as marketing. Banksy understands this.
Graffiti is not a crime, its art without the cheese and wine brigade. It's about just letting people
know you are here. The public (or the local council) will be your fiercest critics.
Writer on the website “www.artofthestate.co.uk”
My vocal style I haven't tried to copy from anyone. It just developed until it became the girlish
whine it is today.
Robert Plant
My vocation is more in composition really than anything else - building up harmonies using the
guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army.
Jimmy Page
I always thought the good thing about the guitar was that they didn't teach it in school.
Jimmy Page
Old men do it better. We're not so sensitive in certain areas.
Robert Plant
I can't moan about any of it. I had a great time in the goldfish bowl.
Robert Plant
I like the idea of being alone. I like the idea of often being alone in all aspects of my life. I like to
feel lonely. I like to need things.
Robert Plant
I'm not a flowerchild or anything like that... whatever it was.
Robert Plant
If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
I‘m ten years away from the corner you laugh on
Carol Ann Duffy, Before You Were Mine
Better off dead than giving in, not taking what you want
Carol Ann Duffy, Stealing
Boredom. Mostly I‘m so bored I could eat myself.
Carol Ann Duffy, Stealing
I'm bored
I'm the chairman of the bored,
I'm a lengthy monologue
I'm livin' like a dog
I'm bored
I bore myself to sleep at night
I bore myself in broad daylight coz
I'm bored
Just another slimy bore
I'm free to bore my well-bought friends
And spend my cash until the end coz
I'm bored
I'm bored
I'm the chairman of the bored
I'm sick
I'm sick of all my kicks
I'm sick of all the stiffs
I'm sick of all the dips
I'm bored
I bore myself to sleep at night
I bore myself in broad daylight coz
I'm bored
I'm bored
Just another dirty bore
All right doll-face
Come on and bore me
I'm sick
I'm sick of all my kicks
I'm sick of all the stiffs
I'm sick of all the dips
I'm sick
I'm sick when I go to sleep at night
I'm still sick in the broad daylight coz
I'm bored
I'm bored
I'm the chairman of the. . .
BORED!
I‟m Bored, by Iggy Pop & The Stooges
Think, two things on their own and both at once.
The first, that exercise in trust, where those in front
stand with their arms spread wide and free-fall
backwards, blind, and those behind take all the weight.
The second, one canary-yellow cotton jacket
on a cloakroom floor, uncoupled from its hook,
becoming scuffed and blackened underfoot. Back home
the very model of a model of a mother, yours, puts
two and two together, makes a proper fist of it
and points the finger. Temper, temper. Questions
in the house. You seeing red. Blue murder. Bed.
Then midnight when you slip the latch and sneak
no further than the call-box at the corner of the street;
I‘m waiting by the phone, although it doesn‘t ring
because its sixteen years or so before we‘ll meet.
Retrace that walk towards the garden gate; in silhouette
a father figure waits there, wants to set things straight.
These ribs are pleats or seams. These arms are sleeves.
These fingertips are buttons, or these hands can fold
into a clasp, or else these fingers make a zip
or buckle, you say which. Step backwards into it
and try the same canary-yellow cotton jacket, there,
like this, for size again. It still fits.
Simon Armitage, Homecoming
I like to live in my superior complex. In my own empire.
My own statement, when I want to blatantly ignore people and all the atrocities of classed
society
I love god. I love whatever made this rain possible.
My own statement, after being stuck in traffic in a rickshaw for an hour [India] and praying
for some rain relieve
I discovered that I scream the same way whether I'm about to be devoured by a Great White or if
a piece of seaweed touches my foot.
Axl Rose
I'm late to everything. I've always wanted to have it written in my will that when I die, the coffin
shows up a half hour late and says on the side, like in gold, 'Sorry I'm Late'.
Axl Rose
And God said: 'Let there be Satan, so people don't blame everything
on me.
And let there be lawyers, so people don't blame everything on Satan."
George Burns
I don‘t want what you want,
I don‘t feel what you feel,
See I‘m stuck in a city,
But I belong in a field
Heart in a Cage by The Strokes
Now…I think back to when I was still a monkey, I‘d rather be related to a couple of chimps
running through a forest than two people who were thrown out of heaven for eating an apple.
My own quote from my surrealist short story “What I saw was a piece of soul deprived
from another world”
I don't fucking believe this! Can everyone stop gettin' shot?
Character of Dog in the film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
I think the highest and lowest points are the important ones. Anything else is just... in between. I
want the freedom to try everything.
Jim Morrison
The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a
role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a
mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an
individual level. It's got to happen inside first.
Jim Morrison
Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me–
George Orwell‟s Nineteen Eighty-Four
It‘s your mind that should always be free…of all the kinds of freedom; it‘s the freedom of the mind
that‘s important. Physical suppression brings in this freedom of mind, for only with physical
calamities from the outside, can our within be able to roam about freely, to be able to wander in
and out…to be able to look at the world in a cynical fashion, without the interference of the
prosaic view of others. As though the self-mind is above all. Almost – in a spasmatic mood of
manic over-confidence – like God.
My own statement
Don‘t allow yourself to turn bitter from the inside.
Dad to elder brother
[Very disorientating camerawork. The "audience" can be heard yelling out where they think the
fish is]
Strange Man: I wonder where that fish has gone?
Transvestite: You did love it so, you treated it like a son.
Strange Man: And it went... wherever I... did go.
[Bends perplexingly long arms]
Transvestite: Is it in the cupboard? Wouldn't you like to know! It is a most elusive fish.
[Strange Man twiddles some brass taps sown to the breasts of the Transvestite's corset]
Strange Man: That went where-ever I did go.
Transvestite: Oh, fishy, fishy, fishy fish!
Strange Man: A fish, a fish, a fishy OOOOH!
Transvestite: Oh, fishy, fishy, fishy fish!
Strange Man: That went wherever I... did go!
[a strange, half-elephant/half-man waiter wanders up out of nowhere holding a drinks tray]
Monty Python, The Meaning of Life
I don't think I'm easy to talk about. I've got a very irregular head. And I'm not anything that you
think I am anyway.
Syd Barrett
After a time they saw some land at a distance; and when they came to it, they found it was an
island made of water quite surrounded by earth. Besides that, it was bordered by evanescent
isthmuses with a great Gulf-stream running about all over it, so that it was perfectly beautiful, and
contained only a single tree, 503 feet high.
Edward Lear, in The Story of the Four Little Children Who Went Round the World
Whenever
U see a
COCKROACH
Think of us…
Advert in Times Classifieds for Ultra Pest Control
The hippies
philosophy of a subculture
Time magazine, July 1967
There are those, I know, who will reply that the liberation of humanity, the freedom of man and
mind, is nothing but a dream. They are right, It is. It is the American dream.
Archibald MacLeish, American poet, in 1960 debating “national
purpose”
Feeling like a Joplin
My poem, untitled
And to see them is to see,
Your headworks among a clockwork,
Your mates among an infinite melancholy,
Your knowing in reversal order of it,
And your machinery in dillusionment
My poem, Untitled
They do nothing but sing their hearts out for us,
which is why it‘s a sin to kill a mocking bird.
To Kill a Mocking Bird
God is in the heavens. All these atrocities of the world can be forgotten as long as God is in the
heavens. May my body burn in sin and greed, may I be the filthiest creature to exist, nothing
matters as long as he‘s in the heavens.
My thoughts, on the bus to the city. I stared skywards for no apparent reason, only to be
entranced into God‟s beautiful architecture. Dense yet clear clouds all perfectly formed
into a dome of aesthetic beauty. Something was incredibly pleasing to the eye about that
one sky. And the sun…it glowed through clusters of clouds, forming perfect allied rays of
light, and God was speaking to the land.
All birds; moles; rabbits; shrubs, cease to exist when such a simple declaration of
heavenly powers fall on the land. Such perfect beauty is impossible to perceive into
utterance of words. It was as if God was present in all situations, in all positions, in all the
atoms of red sand, all was enlightened.
And I remember thinking, it doesn‟t really matter if I sin all my life, or we plague each other
with our minds, God is in the heavens, and as long as that is possible and imaginable to
this mind, all is at peace with the universe.
What we were after, was lashings of ultra violence.
A Clockwork Orange [book]
And obviously what people don‘t understand is the notion of perpetual sadness, sending up
enthusiasms of mindful spirituality in continuous paradigms of complex fluids of eyes….I think that
it would be safe for me to say that you are all indeed ill.
Myself, left-handed writing session
There‘s something very beautiful about words – minuscule cramped letters – on a lined page.
Surrounding an idea which is endless. And you cannot end and idea even with acid on ink.
Myself, random, during study period
You know, what they say is true. God is in small details.
Nasseruddeen Shah‟s character in Being Cyrus
James Lipton: And now for the favourite bit. What is your favourite curse word?
Ralph Fiennes: On a good day fuck, on a bad day cunt.
Inside The Actor‟s Studio, with Ralph Fiennes
Even the most simplest of things can look extraordinarily beautiful, under certain circumstances,
and a certain state of mind.
Myself, thinking on plastic [green], under wonderful white light
I think that everyone is within their own gulf of their mind, wondering how persons within inches of
themselves are so eternally happy, whilst they are left to wallow and pity their lives. In a way, God
has designed things so that everyone is eternally happy. Not in their own mind, but in the
thoughtful minds of others, who perceive them as happy, when within the universe of each mind,
it‘s all just isolation.
Myself, diary entry 27th
January 2008, school
Hazaaron khwaishen aisi, ke jeete jeete dam nikal jaaein
Urdu philosopher [Mirza Ghalib]
speech is silver, silence is gold
BBC documentary on an Egyptian independent movie about the tendency of Arabs to stay
silent
Minister: As I was saying, Alex, you can be instrumental in changing the public verdict. Do you
understand, Alex? Have I made myself clear?
Alex: As an unmuddied lake, Fred. As clear as an azure sky of deepest summer. You can rely on
me, Fred.
Alex: What we were after now was the old surprise visit. That was a real kick and good for laughs
and lashings of the old ultraviolence.
Alex: We were all feeling a bit shagged and fagged and fashed, it being a night of no small
expenditure.
[Listening to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony]
Alex: Oh bliss! Bliss and heaven! Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeousity made flesh. It was
like a bird of rarest-spun heaven metal or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all
nonsense now. As I slooshied, I knew such lovely pictures!
Minister: Padre, there are subtleties! We are not concerned with motives, with the higher ethics.
We are concerned only with cutting down crime and with relieving the ghastly congestion in our
prisons. He will be your true Christian, ready to turn the other cheek, ready to be crucified rather
than crucify, sick to the heart at the thought of killing a fly. Reclamation! Joy before the angels of
God! The point is that it works.
Alex: Suddenly, I viddied what I had to do, and what I had wanted to do, and that was to do
myself in; to snuff it, to blast off for ever out of this wicked, cruel world. One moment of pain
perhaps and, then, sleep for ever, and ever and ever.
Quotes from Stanley Kubrick‟s movie “A Clockwork Orange”
This is found in the province of Cyrenaica and is not more than 12 fingers long. It has on its head
a white spot after the fashion of a diadem. It scares all serpents with its whistling. It resembles a
snake, but does not move by wriggling but from the centre forwards to the right. It is said that one
of these, being killed with a spear by one who was on horse-back, and its venom flowing on the
spear, not only the man but the horse also died. It spoils the wheat and not only that which it
touches, but where it breathes the grass dries and the stones are split.
Leonardo da Vinci describes the Basilisk in his notebooks
The like propertie hath the serpent called a Basiliske: bred it is in the province Cyrenaica, and is
not above twelve fingers-breadth long: a white spot like a starre it carrieth on the head, and
setteth it out like a coronet or diademe: if he but hisse once, no other serpents dare come neere:
he creepeth not winding and crawling by as other serpents doe, with one part of the bodie driving
the other forward, but goeth upright and aloft from the ground with the one halfe part of his bodie:
he killeth all trees and shrubs not only that he toucheth, but that he doth breath upon also: as for
grasse and hearbs, those hee sindgeth and burneth up, yea and breaketh stones in sunder: so
venimous and deadly is he. It is received for a truth, that one of them upon a time was killed with
a launce by an horseman from his horseback, but the poison was so strong that went from his
bodie along the staffe, as it killed both horse and man: and yet a sillie weazle hath a deadly
power to kill this monstrous serpent, as pernicious as it is [for may kings have been desirous to
see the experience thereof, and the manner how he is killed.] See how Nature hath delighted to
match everything in the world with a concurrent. The manner is, to cast these weazles into their
holes and cranies where they lye, (and easie they be to knowe, by the stinking sent of the place
all about them:) they are not so soone within, but they overcome them with their strong smell, but
they die themselves withall; and so Nature for her pleasure hath the combat dispatched.
One of the earliest accounts of the basilisk comes from Pliny the Elder's Natural History,
written in roughly 79 AD. He describes the catoblepas, a monstrous cow-like creature to
whom "there is not one that looketh upon his eyes, but hee dyeth presently.” [Wikipedia]
My eyes are,
A baptism,
Oh I am filth,
And sing her,
To my face,
Oh phantom elusive thing….
...
One that can never be known,
Either all drunk with the world at her feet,
Or sober with no place to go…
Jeff Buckley, All Flowers in Time Bend Towards the Sun
Oh let the sun beat down upon my face, stars to fill my dream
I am a traveller of both time and space, to be where I have been
To sit with elders of the gentle race, this world has seldom seen
They talk of days for which they sit and wait and all will be revealed
Talk and song from tongues of lilting grace, whose sounds caress my ear
But not a word I heard could I relate, the story was quite clear
All I see turns to brown, as the sun burns the ground
And my eyes fill with sand, as I scan this wasted land
Trying to find, trying to find where Ive been.
Oh, pilot of the storm who leaves no trace, like thoughts inside a dream
Heed the path that led me to that place, yellow desert stream
My shangri-la beneath the summer moon, I will return again
Sure as the dust that floats high and true, when movin through kashmir.
Oh, father of the four winds, fill my sails, across the sea of years
With no provision but an open face, along the straits of fear
Led Zeppelin [Plant/Page], excerpts from “Kashmir”
immaculate adj. 1 perfectly clean and tidy. 2 perfect (immaculate timing). 3 innocent, faultless. •
immaculately adv. immaculateness n. [Latin: related to *in-1, macula spot]
Definition from Oxford Dictionary
Immaculate Conception n. RC Ch. doctrine that the Virgin Mary was without original sin from
conception.
Definition from Oxford Dictionary
Sure, we disagree. But we‘re doing it in meeting rooms in Switzerland, not across some corpse-
littered field
Time [magazine], August 11th
2008 issue, “The Moment, 7/29/08: WTO Breakdown” article
by Simon Robinson
Oh my god, I was afraid of this when I had to retire... It‘s so easy to drift into uselessness.
I'm going to Yonder Bridge; there I shall station myself in such a position that I can observe the
life in the water below. I shall blend into the background so as I become one with the stone work.
And there I shall record in my notebook the detailed observation of the fish life of the stream.
Character of Foggy, Last of the Summer Wine [British television series]
Woke up cold one Tuesday,
I'm looking tired and feeling quite sick,
I felt like there was something missing in my day to day life,
So I quickly opened the wardrobe,
Pulled out some jeans and a T-Shirt that seemed clean,
Topped it off with a pair of old shoes,
That were ripped around the seams,
And I thought these shoes just don't suit me.
[CHORUS:]
Hey, I put some new shoes on,
And suddenly everything is right,
I said, hey, I put some new shoes on and everybody's smiling,
It's so inviting,
Oh, short on money,
But long on time,
Slowly strolling in the sweet sunshine,
And I'm running late,
And I don't need an excuse,
'cause I'm wearing my brand new shoes.
Paolo Nutini‟s “New Shoes”, song from his debut album “These Streets”
I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who
considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights.
South African black leader Desmond Tutu in a TV interview in 1985
Some colloquial mistakes I have found:
Han Han Commodity Factory
Name of a Chinese company, from which I bought an ironing board cover
Can I - Eliminate the need to use my hands?
Hand Safety Poster
Nadal High On Grass
Headlines Today (Indian English news channel) on Rafael Nadal winning his
career‟s first grass tournament
Frost over the world
Title of the talk show hosted on Al Jazeera International by David Frost
―The plans will be fleshed out in the mayor‘s youth strategy to help tackle social
breakdown, due in November.‖
Article in a newspaper
Providing low-income families in emerging economies with catastrophic healthcare
From an email I received
Intellectuals and academics don‘t want to live in a mall. Science is more than labs. It‘s the people,
it‘s the environment.‖
Osama El-Ghazali Harb, former Egyptian head of the Arab Association of Political
Scientists, quote in August 18-25 issue of Newsweek [magazine], in the article “Ballad of
the Old Cafes” by Zvika Krieger
The masses are foolish. If we tell them the facts, morale will collapse.
Prime Minister Tojo of Japan [during WWII]
Dear Reader:
Why did I write this book? (Readers will want to know, my publisher said.) A fair question.
In one of my earliest memories, I am sitting on the floor staring at a picture in a book. The picture
shows a heap of bodies. I turn the page this way and that, seeking a proper orientation. I am
bewildered. In my short life there if no reference point for what I see.
The events that became known as the Holocaust have touched me ever since. And yet for a long
time I hesitated to write of it. Did the world really need another Holocaust book? And even if it did,
who was I write it? What credentials did I have? I was neither Jew nor survivor nor survivor‘s
relative. All I had was a ticket stub from Schindler’s List.
Then I came to see that I had every right to presume. Because I cared. And had I not been telling
young writers for years: ―Write what you care about‖?
And because I am people, and in the end, in the book, that‘s what they are too – Misha and Uri
and Janina and Uncle Shepsel and Tata. They are more than Jews and Holocausters and
orphans. They are people. Like those in the picture.
How could I not write this book?
Jerry Spinelli, introduction to Milkweed
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so
long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
John Stuart Mill
They could not remember. There was nothing with which they could compare their present lives:
they had nothing to go upon except Squealer‘s lists of figures, which invariably demonstrated that
everything was getting better and better. The animals found the problem insoluble; in any case,
they had little time for speculating on such things now. Only old Benjamin professed to remember
every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better
or much worse – hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of
life.
Animal Farm by George Orwell, Chapter 10
ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL
BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
Animal Farm by George Orwell, Chapter 10
Yesterday there was a tsar and there were slaves: today there is no tsar, but the slaves remain;
tomorrow there will only be tsars…
Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, in a 1919 work “Tomorrow”
―Never in our full life could we hope to do such work for tolerance, for justice, for man‘s
understanding of men as now we do by accident…The last moment belongs to us – that agony is
our triumph.‖
Bartolomeo Vanzetti [a fish peddler], statement written before his death, on how him and
Nicola Sacco [a shoemaker] – two poor Italian anarchist immigrants to America – had
caused such and upheaval in public conscience by accident
What in today‘s world of take and snatch, it‘s easy to lose a sense of identity.
My dream, Monday 13th
October 2008
What Brent's book provides is some sense of that strange moment of transition, the few years
between the crumbling Soviet Union of Gorbachev and glasnost and the resurgent Russian
nationalism of the present. He evokes the odd smell of Moscow streets, some combination of
poor plumbing, boiled cabbage, and exhaust fumes; the conversations with Russians who
constantly wanted to know what things cost in America and were taken aback to realize that we
were far richer than they were; the furtive assignations with ex-KGB officers, always eager, even
excited, to speak; the cheap plumbing fixtures; the tasteless cookies and too-strong black tea; the
odd vacuum where everything—ideology, politics, nation—used to be. That anarchic, open,
exciting, and frightening atmosphere is gone now: Moscow is a more rigid, more subdued, and
more hierarchical place. The past is on its way to being reburied, or at least reassessed.
“Russia‟s Usable Past”, article in Slate by Anne Applebaum, 8th
December 2008
If I loved you... Then I would love you in any way I could, and if we could not touch, then I would
draw strength from your beauty... And if I went blind, I would fill my soul with the sound of your
voice and the contents of your thoughts until the last spark of my love for you lit the shabby
darkness of my dying mind...
Character of Alfredo, Pushing Daisies, season 1, episode 8 (“Bitter Sweets”)
...because the news had given up reporting them as political struggles, it meant that there was
now no way to understand why these terrible events were happening. And instead political
conflicts from around the world, from Darfur to Gaza, are now portrayed to us as simple
illustrations of the mindless cruelty of the human race. About which nothing can be done. And to
which the only response is ―Oh dear‖. It‘s like living in the mind of a depressed hippie.
Adam Curtis‟ short “Oh Dearism”, from Charlie Brooker‟s Newswipe
When I rise, the World will Tremble
Carved in Arabic onto the slab of jade protecting Timurlane‟s grave
Take me into the night and I‘m an easy lover
Take me into the fight and I‘m an easy brother
And I‘m on fire
Kasabian, Fire, from their album West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum
…tragedy is what we make of it, that destiny need not be relentless, and that we can and indeed
must recover from betrayals.
From the review of “Madras on Rainy Days” (Samina Ali) by Mandira Sen, recovered from:
http://www.wellesley.edu/womensreview/archive/2004/12/highlt.html
I'm your only friend
I'm not your only friend
But I'm a little glowing friend
But really I'm not actually your friend
But I am
Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
I have a secret to tell
From my electrical well
It's a simple message and I'm leaving out the whistles and bells
So the room must listen to me
Filibuster vigilantly
My name is blue canary one note* spelled l-i-t-e
My story's infinite
Like the Longines Symphonette it doesn't rest
Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
I'm your only friend
I'm not your only friend
But I'm a little glowing friend
But really I'm not actually your friend
But I am
There's a picture opposite me
Of my primitive ancestry
Which stood on rocky shores and kept the beaches shipwreck free
Though I respect that a lot
I'd be fired if that were my job
After killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts
Bluebird of friendliness
Like guardian angels its always near
Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch
Who watches over you
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
(and while you're at it
Keep the nightlight on inside the
Birdhouse in your soul)
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch (and while you're at it)
Who watches over you (keep the nightlight on inside the)
Make a little birdhouse in your soul (birdhouse in your soul)
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch (and while you're at it)
Who watches over you (keep the nightlight on inside the)
Make a little birdhouse in your soul (birdhouse in your soul)
Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul
Song “Birdhouse In Your Soul” by They Might Be Giants, from their album Flood
I was utterly convinced there was a great spiritual power that we call God, Allah or Brahma,
although I knew, equally certainly, that my finite mind could never comprehend its form or nature.
Jane Goodall, in her book Reason for Hope
Every time man makes a new experiment he always learns more.
He cannot learn less.
Buckminster Fuller (American architect, 1895-1983)
A member of such vast importance as the human hand necessarily claims a high place in regard
to surgery. The hand is typical of the mind. It is the material symbol of the immaterial spirit, It is
the prime agent of the will; and it is that instrument by which the human intellect manifests its
presence in creation. The human hand has a language of its own. While the tongue demonstrates
the thought through the word, the hand realizes and renders visible the thought through the work.
This organ, therefore, by whose fitness of form the mind declares its own entity in nature, by the
invention and creation of the thing, which is, as it were, the mind's autograph, claims a high
interest in surgical anatomy; and accordingly the surgeon lays it down as a rule, strictly to be
observed, that when this beautiful and valuable member happens to be seriously mutilated, in any
of those various accidents to which it is exposed, the prime consideration should be, not as to the
fact of how much of its quantity or parts it can be deprived in operation, but rather as to how little
of its quantity should it be deprived, since no mechanical ingenuity can fashion an apparatus,
capable of supplying the loss of a finger, or even of one of its joints.
Joseph Maclise, in his book Surgical Anatomy,
chapter: The Surgical Dissection of the Wrist and Hand
When their voices returned all they could sputter in broken phrases was if I knew what I was
doing and that would I not even remotely reconsider. But you know me – man of my word.
Resolute as a rock, I told them that, alas, ‗twas writ in stone. And that it was perhaps best for both
of us. And, you know, stuff like that which only men with iron in their souls will say. Or some such
nonsense anyway.
In other words, I‘ll see you around elsewhere.
Excerpt from an article in Times of India (sometime around July 2007)
All of our cleaners are from Philippines. All our Maids are insured and bonded, therefore you don‘t
need to worry about them.
Advertisement for a maid service
[Removed] Maid Service will help you solve your house problems in terms of cleaning.
Advertisement for a maid service
... a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition, characterized by an extremely stimulated
imagination...
In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed...I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures
extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors.
Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann, in his 1979 autobiography LSD, My Problem Child.
Hofmann inadvertently inhaled a compound derived from a crop fungus that went by the
name of lysergic acid diethylamide or LSD-25. Hence, Hofmann became the first man to go
on an acid trip.
He subsequently went on to take LSD hundreds of more time, in order to continue his
research on the chemical.
English speaking computers
A poster stuck on a voltage box advertising for computer lessons (India, Bombay, 2007)
They had suffered from the most terrible of all delusions. They believed themselves to be
virtuous, and in the end were destroyed by the evil beings they had drawn into existence.
Civilisation, BBC television series, by Kenneth Clark; on the various revolutions that had
taken place in European nations for the fight for freedom.
Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow
vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing
as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.
Bill Hicks (American comedian)
Medicine is my lawful wife, but literature is my mistress. When I'm bored with one, I spend the
night with the other.
Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), Russian writer, dramatist, and doctor
I told him to write poetry – not for telling – not even for seeing – poetry to throw away. For poetry
is the mathematics of writing and closely kin to music. And it is also the best therapy because
sometimes the rubies come tumbling out.
John Steinbeck in a letter to Robert Wallsten (February 19, 1960)
There are days when solitude, for someone my age, is a heady wine that intoxicates you with
freedom, others when it is a bitter tonic, and still others when it is a poison that makes you beat
your head against the wall.
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette
It is old age, rather than death, that is to be contrasted with life. Old age is life's parody, whereas
death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension.
Death does away with time.
Simone de Beauvoir
When your skin is the only thing you feel truly proud of, it's become a prison in itself. A cell of
cells. Whatever the colour.
Charlie Brooker, in the article “Charlie Brooker’s Screenburn: Inside the Aryan
Brotherhood”, The Guardian, 26 June 2010, link
Rarely did they smile as the camera clicked. But within the classic white frame of the Polaroids,
everything about their new life in Los Angeles seemed idyllic: the scores of pigeons, the dancing
fountain, the buildings reaching for the sky.
It showed those back home how far they had come; it proved that they had made it.
Photo Tradition is Coming to a Stop, article in Los Angeles Times by Esmeralda Bermudez
I don't know who you are. Please believe. There is no way I can convince you that this is not one
of their tricks. But I don't care. I am me, and I don't know who you are, but I love you.
I have a pencil. A little one they did not find. I am a women. I hid it inside me. Perhaps I won't be
able to write again, so this is a long letter about my life. It is the only autobiography I have ever
written and oh God I'm writing it on toilet paper.
I was born in Nottingham in 1957, and it rained a lot. I passed my eleven plus and went to girl's
Grammar. I wanted to be an actress.
I met my first girlfriend at school. Her name was Sara. She was fourteen and I was fifteen but we
were both in Miss. Watson's class. Her wrists. Her wrists were beautiful. I sat in biology class,
staring at the picket rabbit foetus in its jar, listening while Mr. Hird said it was an adolescent
phase that people outgrew. Sara did. I didn't.
In 1976 I stopped pretending and took a girl called Christine home to meet my parents. A week
later I enrolled at drama college. My mother said I broke her heart.
But it was my integrity that was important. Is that so selfish? It sells for so little, but it's all we have
left in this place. It is the very last inch of us. But within that inch we are free.
London. I was happy in London. In 1981 I played Dandini in Cinderella. My first rep work. The
world was strange and rustling and busy, with invisible crowds behind the hot lights and all that
breathless glamour. It was exciting and it was lonely. At nights I'd go to the Crew-Ins or one of the
other clubs. But I was stand-offish and didn't mix easily. I saw a lot of the scene, but I never felt
comfortable there. So many of them just wanted to be gay. It was their life, their ambition. And I
wanted more than that.
Work improved. I got small film roles, then bigger ones. In 1986 I starred in "The Salt Flats." It
pulled in the awards but not the crowds. I met Ruth while working on that. We loved each other.
We lived together and on Valentine's Day she sent me roses and oh God, we had so much.
Those were the best three years of my life.
In 1988 there was the war, and after that there were no more roses. Not for anybody.
In 1992 they started rounding up the gays. They took Ruth while she was out looking for food.
Why are they so frightened of us? They burned her with cigarette ends and made her give them
my name. She signed a statement saying I'd seduced her. I didn't blame her. God, I loved her. I
didn't blame her.
But she did. She killed herself in her cell. She couldn't live with betraying me, with giving up that
last inch. Oh Ruth. . . .
They came for me. They told me that all of my films would be burned. They shaved off my hair
and held my head down a toilet bowl and told jokes about lesbians. They brought me here and
gave me drugs. I can't feel my tongue anymore. I can't speak.
The other gay woman here, Rita, died two weeks ago. I imagine I'll die quite soon. It's strange
that my life should end in such a terrible place, but for three years I had roses and I apologized to
nobody.
I shall die here. Every last inch of me shall perish. Except one.
An inch. It's small and it's fragile and it's the only thing in the world worth having. We must never
lose it, or sell it, or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.
I don't know who you are. Or whether you're a man or a woman. I may never see you or cry with
you or get drunk with you. But I love you. I hope that you escape this place. I hope that the world
turns and that things get better, and that one day people have roses again. I wish I could kiss
you.
Valerie
From V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore
I know there‘s no way I can convince you this is not one of their tricks. But I don‘t care. I am me.
My name is Valerie. I don‘t think I‘ll live much longer, and I wanted to tell someone about my life.
This is the only autobiography that i‘ll ever write, and – God – I‘m writing it on toilet paper.
I was born in Nottingham in 1985. I don‘t remember much of those early years. But I do
remember the rain. My grandmother owned a farm in Tottlebrook, and she used to tell me that
God was in the rain.
I passed my eleven plus, and went to a girl‘s grammar. It was at school that I met my first
girlfriend. Her name was Sarah. It was her wrists – they were beautiful. I thought we would love
each other forever. I remember our teacher telling us that it was an adolescent phase that people
outgrew.
Sarah did.
I didn‘t.
In 2002 I fell in love with a girl named Christina. That year I came out to my parents. I couldn‘t
have done it without Chris holding my hand.
My father wouldn‘t look at me. He told me to go and never come back. My mother said nothing.
I‘d only told them the truth. Was that so selfish? Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we really
have.
It is the very last inch of us.
And within that inch, we are free.
I‘d always known what I‘d wanted to do with my life, and in 2015 I started my first film: The Salt
Flats.
It was the most important role of my life. Not because of my career, but because that was how I
met Ruth. The first time we kissed, I knew I never wanted to kiss any other lips but hers again.
We moved to a small flat in London together. She grew scarlet Carsons for me in our window
box. And our place always smelt of roses.
Those were the best years of my life.
But America‘s war grew worse and worse and eventually came to London.
After that there were no roses anymore. Not for anyone.
I remember how the meaning of words began to change. How unfamiliar words like ―collateral‖
and ―rendition‖ became frightening. When things like Norsefire and the articles of allegiance
became powerful. I remember how different became dangerous.
I still don‘t understand it: why they hate us so much.
They took Ruth while she was out buying food. I‘ve never cried so hard in my life. It wasn‘t long
until they came for me.
It seems strange that my life should end in such a terrible place.
But for three years I had roses – and apologised to no-one.
I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch.
But one.
An inch.
It is small and it is fragile, and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it
or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.
I hope that - whoever you are - you escape this place. I hope that the world turns, and that things
get better.
But what I hope most of all is that you understand what I mean when I tell you that even though I
do not know you, and even though I may not meet you, laugh with you, cry with you, or kiss you: I
love you.
With all my heart.
I love you.
Valerie.
From the film V for Vendetta, by the Wachowski brothers
Occasionally there will be a news report that 30 insurgents were killed in this place, 20 Taliban
defeated in that place, but this is a surreal conflict, a narrative without clear beginnings and
endings, without substantiation. High explosive is zooming back and forwards, so the enemy is
certainly there, but go to the position from where they have been firing and there is usually
nothing to be seen. Once, we arrived at a compound from where there had been firing and found
four glasses and a teapot set out on a tray; the tea in the pot was still hot enough to drink. But
you don't see anything, not a thing. I never even saw a blood trail. It's like a ghost war.
Sean Smith in The Guardian, "Three months on the frontline with troops in Afghanistan",
Monday 17 August 2009
It is the feel of a class no longer comfortable with its own values and its power, confused and
adrift in a wider world. Enormous changes were happening all around them which they can only
dimly glimpse through the bubble of their own experience.
Adam Curtis (in his blog), in the post Kabul: City Number One Part 5, 13 November 2009.
About the interview of a British hippie girl on a trail from Afghanistan to India (interview
takes place on a rooftop in Delhi)
That's how it is on this bitch of an earth.
Samuel Beckett, Irish writer
You don't have sunlight in your guts.
Dr. Ben Goldacre, in Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe (on Gillian McKeith‟s ridiculous
„scientific‟ methods of analysing peoples‟ diets)
Ignorance is like cholera. It cannot be controlled by the individual alone: it requires the organised
efforts of society.
Dr. Ben Goldacre quotes Sir Muir Gray, director of the NHS National Electronic Library For
Health, in his article "What's wrong with Dr. Gillian McKeith PhD?" Muir Gray is addressing
in the Royal College of Physicians, at a conference discussing how to free up access to
medical academic knowledge for the public
What with phone calls, texts, emails and Coulson tweets, that two-to-five-second period spent
typing search terms into a soothing white screen was one of the only relaxing lulls in my day. I
didn't realise it at the time but, compared to Google Instant, it feels like a slow walk through a
calm meadow.
My attention span was never great, but modern technology has halved it, and halved it again, and
again and again, down to an atomic level, and now there's nothing discernible left. Back in that
room, bombarded by alerts and emails, repeatedly tapping search terms into Google Instant for
no good reason, playing mindless pinball with words and images, tumbling down countless little
attention-vortexes, plunging into one split-second coma after another, I began to feel I was
neither in control nor 100% physically present. I wasn't using the computer. The computer was
using me – to keep its keys warm.
Charlie Brooker, in his article “Google Instant is Trying to Kill Me”, September 13 2010,
The Guardian
The loveliest trick of the Devil is to persuade you he does not exist.
Charles Baudelaire
Everything I touch turns into robots.
Jason Christie, in his poem King Midas
In the great temple at Benares... beneath the dome which marks the center of the world, rests a
brass plate in which are fixed three diamond needles, each a cubit high and as thick as the body
of a bee. On one of these needles, at the creation, God placed 64 disks of pure gold, the largest
disk resting on the brass plate, and the others getting smaller and smaller up to the top one. This
is the tower of Bramah. Day and night unceasingly the priests transfer the disks from one
diamond needle to the other... When the 64 disks shall have been this transferred from the
needle on which at the creation God placed them to one of the other needles, the tower, temple,
and Brahmins alike will crumble into dust, and with a thunderclap the world will vanish.
The New Turing Omnibus, A.K. Dewdney, pg. 364
A sheet of paper is an obviously limited space on which to create; one might say, in current
computer argot, that paper has limited memory.
Icons of Graphic Design, pg. 52, Steven Heller & Mirko Ilic, 2nd
Edition, 2008
The world‘s great religions have nurtured their respective icons because they serve as
touchstones and embody the faith. Transforming the iconic concept into applied art, certain key,
memorably charged images – sometimes abstract, but not logos or trademarks per se – serve to
aid recognition.
Icons of Graphic Design, pg. 54, Steven Heller & Mirko Ilic, 2nd
Edition, 2008
I felt only night within me and it was then that I conceived the new art, which I called
Suprematism.
Kazimir Malevich, Russian artist, in his book The Non-Objective World, 1927. Malevich
described the inspiration which brought about the powerful image of the black square on a
white background
The Machine Age of the 1930s inspired artists and designers to project into the world of
tomorrow. Although the graphic possibilities were limitless, the common trope was the robotic
figure, quite often set against a prescient skyscraper landscape. These artists saw the future and
it was their own time.
Icons of Graphic Design, pg. 60, Steven Heller & Mirko Ilic, 2nd
Edition, 2008
He watched her for a long time and she knew that he was watching her and he knew that she
knew he was watching her, and he knew that that she knew that he knew; in a kind of regression
of image that you get when two mirrors face each other and the images go on and on and on in
some kind of infinity.
Robert Pirsig, Lila
To see a World in a Grain of Sand,
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
William Blake
Once upon a midnight dreary, long we pondered weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of translation lore.
When our system does translation, lifeless prose is its creation;
Making verse with inspiration no machine has done before.
So we want to boldly go where no machine has gone before.
Quoth now Google, "Nevermore!"
Official Google Research Blog, post titled “Poetic Machine Translation”, by Dmitriy
Genzel, 05 October 2010, link: http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/10/poetic-
machine-translation.html
Despite all the trappings of luxury and fame, he was a kind and quiet man, living only for science.
Essential Calculus: Early Transcendentals, James Stewart, Chapter 4, pg. 208, on Joseph-
Louis Lagrange
Without type there is no graphic design. Type is a vessel for most ideas. But without variety in
typographic style there are simply words. Type is as symbolic as it is functional. Even the most
neutral of all typefaces, Helvetica, represents the clarity, economy and universality of an
independent age.
Icons of Graphic Design, pg. 130, Steven Heller & Mirko Ilic, 2nd
Edition, 2008
I‘d done it before
(and doubtless I‘ll do it again,
sooner or later)
woke up with a head on the pillow beside me – whose? –
what did it matter?
Good-looking, of course, dark hair, rather matted;
the reddish beard several shades lighter;
with very deep lines around the eyes,
from pain, I‘d guess, maybe laughter;
and a beautiful crimson mouth that obviously knew
how to flatter…
which I kissed…
Colder than pewter.
Strange. What was his name? Peter?
Simon? Andrew? John? I knew I‘d feel better
for tea, dry toast, no butter,
so rang for the maid.
And, indeed, her innocent clatter
of cups and plates,
her clearing of clutter,
her regional patter,
were just what I needed –
hungover and wrecked as I was from a night on the batter.
Never again!
I needed to clean up my act,
get fitter,
cut out the booze and the fags and the sex.
Yes. And as for the latter,
it was time to turf out the blighter,
the beater or biter,
who‘d come like a lamb to the slaughter
to Salome‘s bed.
In the mirror, I saw my eyes glitter.
I flung back the sticky red sheets,
and there, like I said – and ain‘t life a bitch –
was his head on a platter.
Salome, by Carol Ann Duffy
You want to see the most beautiful thing I've ever filmed?
It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing. And there's this electricity in the
air, you can almost hear it, right? And this bag was just... dancing with me. Like a little kid
begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. That's the day I realized that there was this entire
life behind things, and this incredibly benevolent force that wanted me to know there was no
reason to be afraid. Ever.
Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... I need to remember...
Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it... and my heart is going to
cave in.
Character of Ricky Fitts to Jane Burnham in American Beauty (1999); written by Alan Ball.
I had always heard your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die.
First of all, that one second isn't a second at all; it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time...
For me, it was lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars...
And yellow leaves, from the maple trees that lined my street...
Or my grandmother's hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper...
And the first time I saw my cousin Tony's brand new Firebird...
And Janie...
And Janie...
And... Carolyn.
I guess I could be pretty pissed off about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when
there's so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too
much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst...
...and then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like
rain and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life...
You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure. But don't worry...
You will someday.
Character of Lester Burnham, speaking his monologue after his death; in American Beauty
(1999); written by Alan Ball.
There's a divide in the world's population. For every decent human being, there are three
soulless, terrible human beings. That is a fact.
Daniel O‟Brien, Bridalplasty: The New Reality Show That Proves We’re Doomed Cracked,
link
You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with
the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon,
international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag
him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‗Look at that, you son of a bitch.‘
Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell
People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about
how great love is, but that‘s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that
pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they‘re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to
wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they‘re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a
radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It‘s all in how you carry it. That‘s what
matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of
them, and hide them, you‘re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right
to feel your pain.
Jim Morrison
Janie's a pretty typical teenager. Angry, insecure, confused. I wish I could tell her that's all going
to pass, but I don't want to lie to her.
Character of Lester Burnham, in American Beauty (1999); written by Alan Ball.
'I betrayed you,' she said baldly.
'I betrayed you,' he said.
She gave him another quick look of dislike.
'Sometimes,' she said, 'they threaten you with something -- something you can't stand up to, can't
even think about. And then you say, "Don't do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to So-and-
so." And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to
make them stop and didn't really mean it. But that isn't true. At the time when it happens you do
mean it. You think there's no other way of saving yourself, and you're quite ready to save yourself
that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don't give a damn what they suffer. All
you care about is yourself.'
'All you care about is yourself,' he echoed.
'And after that, you don't feel the same towards the other person any longer.'
'No,' he said, 'you don't feel the same.'
George Orwell‟s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part III, Chapter 6
It seems to me that these beautifully tended war cemeteries tell something of a lie. With their
immaculately straight rakes and their uniform headstones they seem to suggest that all soldiers
are the same, and they are not [...] some probably were fearless, and many were utterly terrified.
And what Owen does, is to enable us to understand that war is about more than the strategies of
generals, or the manufactured animosities of politicians; his lasting memorial is to enable us to
understand the human experience of war, in short, the pity of war.
Jeremy Paxman, in BBC‟s Wilfred Owen: A Remembrance Tale
I find purer philosophy in a Poem than in a Conclusion of Geometry, a chemical analysis, or a
physical law.
Wilfred Owen
My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.
Wilfred Owen
Happy are men who yet before they are killed
Can let their veins run cold.
Wilfred Owen, Insensibility
I, too, saw God through mud—
...
I have perceived much beauty
In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
Heard music in the silentness of duty;
Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.
...
You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears: You are not worth their merriment.
Wilfred Owen, excerpts from Apologia Pro Poemate Meo
Not doing, just being. Aware and watchful every second. And at the same time the abyss
between what you are for others and what you are for yourself. The feeling of dizziness and the
continual burning need to be unmasked. At last to be seen through, reduced, perhaps
extinguished. Every tone of voice a lie, an act of treason. Every gesture false. Every smile a
grimace. The role of wife, the role of friend, the roles of mother and mistress, which is worst?
Which has tortured you most? Playing the actress with the interesting face? Keeping all the
pieces together with an iron hand and getting them to fit? Where did it break? Where did you fail?
You were left with your demand for truth and your disgust. Kill yourself? No—too nasty, not to be
done. But you could be immobile. You can keep quiet. Then at least you‘re not lying.
Persona, Ingmar Bergman (1966)
Don‘t you think I understand? The hopeless dream of being.
Persona, Ingmar Bergman (1966)
One thing that even the dim bulbs in the media should understand by now is that there is in fact a
class war going on, and it is the rich and powerful who are waging it. Anyone who does anything
that empowers the little people or that threatens the wealth and power of the plutocracy must be
destroyed. There is a reason for these clowns going after Think Progress and unions, just like
there is a reason they are targeting Wikileaks and Glenn Greenwald, Planned Parenthood, and
Acorn. . . .
You have to understand the mindset- they are playing for keeps. The vast majority of the wealth
isn't enough. They want it all. Anything that gets in their way must be destroyed. . . . And they are
well financed, have a strong infrastructure, a sympathetic media, and entire organizations
dedicated to running cover for them . . . .
I don't even know why we bother to hold elections any more, to be honest, the game is so rigged.
We‘re a banana republic, and it is just a matter of time before we descend into necklacing and
other tribal bullshit.
John Cole, More Fallout from Anonymous, Balloon Juice, http://www.balloon-
juice.com/2011/02/10/more-fallout-from-anonymous/
The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you'll never have.
Søren Kierkegaard
One can consider these images to be photographs of a strange, powerful, and fantastic
mathematical world—one that exists, regardless of how we perceive it, according to its own
special laws
Anatoly Fomenko (Russian mathematician)
Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a
lifetime, or at least a main era... The kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the
middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something,
maybe not, in the long run. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch
that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time in the world. Whatever it
meant. There was madness in any direction, at any hour. You could strike sparks anywhere.
There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were
winning. And that, I think, was the handle - that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old
and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn‘t need that. Our energy would simply prevail.
There was no point in fighting - on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding
the crest of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a
steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the
high-water mark - that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (film)
Driving past two charred corpses on the street, outside luxury car dealer with gleaming Peugot
sign.
The Guardian, via Twitter, on the conflict in Ivory Coast, 10th
April 2011,
https://twitter.com/#!/guardian_world
The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.
Character of Mark Antony in Act 3, scene ii of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare
No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from
pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say
which was which.
Animal Farm by George Orwell, Chapter 10
If it is aesthetically pleasing to your eye, then it is art.
My own statement, in response to the constant art criticisms
Alexander the Great, when conquering parts of India in 325 BC, frequently held conversations
with local sages and philosophers. In one of those, he asked them why they didn‘t show
enthusiasm for what he accomplished. The answer:
King Alexander, every man can possess only so much of the earth’s surface as this we are
standing on. You are but human like the rest of us, save that you are always busy and up to no
good, travelling so many miles from your home, a nuisance to yourself and to others. Ah well!
You will soon be dead, and then you will own just as much of this earth as will suffice to bury you.
via the Philip Spagnoli‟s blog, Human Rights, Etc. Link
The current state of human affairs makes me feel depressed beyond belief.
In fact, things have never been any different. All of history, all of life, is nothing but an excruciating
cycle of victims and victimisers.
My own statement on my blog, I Am A Flippy Doodle
There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.
Marie Antoinette
I cannot take news, politics and discussions of human rights anymore. It is so depressing. Human
beings are selfish, greedy bastards, and given the right environment and state of mind, would not
think twice before hurting their fellow human being.
And this is not going to change no matter how many times we discuss it. I'd rather just blissfully
ignore everything and think about robots.
My own statement
The painter pondered the mournful puzzle of life demanding to be born and, once born,
demanding to be fruitful ... to multiply and to live as long as possible—to do all that on a very
small planet that would have to last forever.
Kurt Vonnegut in 2BR02B
If you are not paying for it, you're not the customer; you're the product being sold.
Posted on Metafilter forum, 1:41 PM on August 26, 2010. Link.
It‘s not God, it‘s Italian marble.
Mum
Even if it means oblivion, friends, I'll welcome it, because it won't be nothing, we'll be
alive again in a thousand blades of grass, and a million leaves... out there in the physical
world which is our true home and always was.
The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman