The Pale King
—David Foster Wallace, The Pale King
The Nac Mac Feegle believe that the world is such a wonderful place that in order to have got into it they must have been very good in another existence and had arrived in, as it were, heaven. Of course, they appeared to die sometimes, even here, but they like to think of it as going off to be born again. Numerous theologians had speculated that this was a stupid idea, but it was certainly more enjoyable than many other beliefs.
- Terry Pratchett, I shall Wear Midnight
Winter Night
All things vanished within
The snowy murk-white,hoary.
A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.
A corner draft fluttered the flame
And the white fever of temptation
Upswept its angel wings that cast
A cruciform shadow
It snowed hard throughout the month
Of February, and almost constantly
A candle burned on the table;
A candle burned.
- Boris Pasternak
The whole family explodes
My brother's death, when he was eight years old, blew the family apart. He had an accident and it was miserable. It coloured everything. I was 16 and that was the end of family life from that point, as often happens in families where's there's a death of a child. The whole family explodes.
- Paul Bettany
Thought for the Day
I'm [...] interested in having a god who is demonstrably a ventriloquist's dummy. After all, isn't this the way we use most of our deities? We can look through our various sacred books and by choosing one ambiguous passage or one interpretation over another we can pretty much get our gods to justify our own current agendas. We can make them say what we want them to say.
The big advantage of worshipping an actual glove puppet of course is that if things start to get unruly or out of hand you can always put them gak in the gox. And you know, it doesn't matter if they don't want to go gak in the gox, they have to go gak in the gox.
- Alan Moore, Alternative Thought For The day Radio 4
The nurse opened her mouth to speak
The nurse opened her mouth to speak, but Tiffany didn't allow the words any space. 'The cook has told me that you are a very religious woman, always on your knees, and that is fine by me, absolutely fine, but didn't it ever occur to you to take a mop and bucket down there with you? People don't need prayers, Miss Spruce; they need you to do the job in front of you, Miss Spruce. And I have had enough of you, Miss Spruce, and especially of your lovely white coat. I think Roland was very impressed by your wonderful white coat, but I am not, Miss Spruce, because you never do anything that will get it dirty.'
- Terry Pratchett, I Shall Wear Midnight
Immeasurable emptiness
- Haruki Murakami
The time that is given us
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
— J.R.R. Tolkien
First Fig
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
Afterlife
Only a real risk tests the reality of a belief. Apparently the faith — I thought it faith — which enables me to pray for the other dead has seemed strong only because I have never really cared, not desperately, whether they existed or not.
- CS Lewis
The Fellowship of the Ring
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo.
"So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us."
— J.R.R. Tolkien
1722
Her face was in a bed of hair,
Like flowers in a plot—
Her hand was whiter than the sperm
That feeds the sacred light.
Her tongue more tender than the tune
That totters in the leaves—
Who hears may be incredulous
Who witnesses, believes.
- Emily Dickinson
Our revels now are ended
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
- William Shakespeare
Atrocities
- Voltaire
Between Going and Coming
the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.
All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can't be touched.
Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.
Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.
The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.
I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.
The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause.
- Octavio Paz
Remembering
that will change your life,
make it more than it is—
something wonderful, exceptional,
stones awakening, depths opening to you.
In the dusky bookstalls
old books glimmer gold and brown.
You think of lands you journeyed through,
of paintings and a dress once worn
by a woman you never found again.
And suddenly you know: that was enough.
You rise and there appears before you
in all its longings and hesitations
the shape of what you lived.
- Rilke
"Life, and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The..."
Life, and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are stuck with admiration at some of its transient modifications; but it is itself the great miracle.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
Death Leaves Us Homesick
Death leaves Us homesick, who behind,
Except that it is gone
Are ignorant of its Concern
As if it were not born.
Through all their former Places, we
Like Individuals go
Who something lost, the seeking for
Is all that's left them, now.
- Emily Dickinson
Except that it is gone
Are ignorant of its Concern
As if it were not born.
Through all their former Places, we
Like Individuals go
Who something lost, the seeking for
Is all that's left them, now.
- Emily Dickinson
When the War is Over
When the war is over
We will be proud of course the air will be
Good for breathing at last
The water will have been improved the salmon
And the silence of heaven will migrate more perfectly
The dead will think the living are worth it we will know
Who we are
And we will all enlist again
- W. S. Merwin
Charm
The owl is abroad, the bat, and the toad,
And so is the cat-a-mountain,
The ant and the mole sit both in a hole,
And the frog peeps out o' the fountain;
The dogs they do bay, and the timbrels play,
The spindle is now a turning;
The moon it is red, and the stars are fled,
But all the sky is a-burning:
The ditch is made, and our nails the spade,
With pictures full, of wax and of wool;
Their livers I stick, with needles quick;
There lacks but the blood, to make up the flood.
Quickly, Dame, then bring your part in,
Spur, spur upon little Martin,
Merrily, merrily, make him fail,
A worm in his mouth, and a thorn in his tail,
Fire above, and fire below,
With a whip in your hand, to make him go.
- Ben Johnson
Memories
Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don't ever see them fading.
- Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
Secret Beatnik
I am kind of a secret beatnik hiding in the suburbs in my square house on a dull street.
- Anne Sexton
In medias res
We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories.
- Mona Simpson, in the eulogy for her brother Steve Jobs
Small Blue Dot
- Carl Sagan, commenting on a photograph of Earth taken by Voyager I from the edge of the solar system, 4 billion miles away.
Pagani's, November 8
Suddenly discovering in the eyes of the very beautiful
Normande cocotte
The eyes of the very learned British Museum assistant.
- Ezra Pound
Li Po
I lay in a drowse, knowing it not.
The blown flowers fell and filled my lap.
When I arose, still drunken,
The birds had all gone to their nests,
And there remained but few of my comrades.
I went along the river—alone in the moonlight.
Blue Nights
Blue nights are the opposite of the dying of the brightness, but they are also its warning.
- Joan Didion
Life
- Arthur Conan Doyle
Between Walls
the back wings
of the
hospital where
nothing
will grow lie
cinders
in which shine
the broken
pieces of a green
bottle
- William Carlos Williams
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