Category: Lit & Crit
“What’s new? the biography of the opera star says she used to ask in every phone call, and What else? I’m not sure the biographer understood another thing about the opera star, but I do believe that What’s new. What else. They may be the first questions of the story, of the morning, of consciousness. What’s new. What else. What next. What’s happened here, says the inspector, or the family man looking at the rubble of his house. What’s it to you, says the street tough or the bystander. What’s it worth to you, says the paid informer or the extortionist. What is it now, says the executive or the husband, disturbed by the fifteenth knock at the door, or phone call, or sigh in the small hours of the night. What does it mean, says the cryptographer. What does it all mean, says the student or the philosopher on his barstool. What do I care. What’s the use. What’s the matter. Where’s the action. What kind of fun is that. Let me say that everyone’s story in the end is the old whore’s, or the Ancient Mariner’s: I was not always as you see me now. And the sentient man, the sentient person says in his heart, from time to time, What have I done.” – Renata Adler, Pitch Dark (emphasis in original)
“When I learned about the shrew, the poor unevolved, benighted shrew, which will keep jumping high in the air at a place in its accustomed path where an obstacle, a rock perhaps, once was but no longer is, well, I wondered about all those places where, though the obstacles have long been removed, one persists either in the jump or in taking the long way round. It seemed such an unnecessary jolt or expenditure of time and energy. And yet if you have acquired a profound aversion to just such a place simply because of an obstacle that once was there, or an incapacity to discern that the obstacle no longer exists, or an indifference as to whether it exists or not, or if the habit of pointless jumping, or detour, or even turning back dejected has become for you the path itself, or if you have a superstitious need to treat the spot as though the obstacle remained, or even a belief that the discovery that the obstacle is gone is in itself a punishable offense, if any of these things is true for you, then you are lost. Or probably lost, unless the habitual path, the compulsion, the leap, the turning back, the long detour have for you another value. Individuality, for instance, love, obsession. Or for that matter, art.” – Renata Adler, Pitch Dark
“That which is a disgrace to human nature, throws something of a shade over all the human character, and each individual feels his share of the wound that is given to the whole.” – Thomas Paine, “The American Crisis”
“None see God and live.” – Emily Dickinson
“In the law, as in everything, excellence is rare and often anonymous. And, in the law, as in almost everything, everything is stories. Under the American Constitution, in fact, everything is required to be, at heart, a story. That is the meaning of the phrase ‘cases and controversies,’ which is what, alone, the Constitution empowers the courts to consider. The courts may not, that is, consider abstractions, generalizations, even hypothetical cases; they may not render what are called ‘advisory opinions’ as to the legality of any possible situation or contemplated act. The courts may only consider concrete, instant cases that actually, concretely come before them—and even those cases can be brought only by those who have ‘standing’ to bring them, in other words, by the actual participants, with the most vital and demonstrable interest in the case. I may not bring suit, in short, because I think someone has done some injury to my neighbor. Only my neighbor himself can bring that suit. So what comes before the court is of necessity, and constitutionally obliged to be, a story; and the only ones permitted to bring the story to the courts’ attention, the only storytellers, are the ones to whom the story happened, whom the facts befell.” – Renata Adler, Pitch Dark
“I believe most men have more courage than they know of, and that a little at first is enough to begin with.” – Thomas Paine, “The American Crisis”
“Universal empire is the prerogative of a writer. His concerns are with all mankind, and though he cannot command their obedience, he can assign them their duty.” – Thomas Paine, “The American Crisis”
“He who dares not offend cannot be honest.” – Thomas Paine, “The Forester’s Letters”
“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” – George Orwell, 1984
“Do you think that your fathers are watching? That they weigh you in their ledgerbook? Against what? There is no book and your fathers are dead in the ground.” – Cormac McCarthy, The Road
“People were always getting ready for tomorrow. . . . Tomorrow wasn’t getting ready for them.” – Cormac McCarthy, The Road
“Maybe you should always be on the lookout. If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it.” – Cormac McCarthy, The Road
“A person who had no one would be well advised to cobble together some passable ghost. Breathe it into being and coax it along with words of love. Offer it each phantom crumb and shield it from harm.” – Cormac McCarthy, The Road
“There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one’s heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” – Cormac McCarthy, The Road
“In the history of the world it might even be that there was more punishment than crime.” – Cormac McCarthy, The Road
“The last instance of a thing takes the class with it. Turns out the light and is gone. Look around you. Ever is a long time.” – Cormac McCarthy, The Road
“Shattering those who answer innocently, is the tyrant’s way of easing his embarrassment.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)
“You would get along, dear couple?
Learn from us the art;
If you want to keep love supple,
You only have to part.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)
“I am sure, deep in his bag the poorest wanderer
Keeps some remembrance that gives pleasure,
And sooner starves than yields this treasure.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)
“What good is beauty, even youth?
All that may be quite good and fair,
But does it get you anywhere?
Their praise is half pity, you can be sure.
For gold contend,
On gold depend
All things. Woe to us poor!”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)
“I now curse all that would enamor
The human soul with lures and lies,
Enticing it with flattering glamour
To live on in this cave of sighs.
Cursed above all our high esteem,
The spirit’s smug self-confidence,
Cursed be illusion, fraud, and dream
That flatter our guileless sense!
Cursed be the pleasing make-believe
Of fame and long posthumous life!
Cursed be possessions that deceive,
As slave and plough, and child and wife!
Cursed, too, be Mammon when with treasures
He spurs us on to daring feats,
Or lures us into slothful pleasures
With sumptuous cushions and smooth sheets!
A curse on wine that mocks our thirst!
A curse on love’s last consummations!
A curse on hope! Faith, too, be cursed!
And cursed above all else be patience!”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)
“I am too old to be content to play,
Too young to be without desire.
What wonders would the world reveal?
You must renounce! You ought to yield!
That is the never-ending drone
Which we must, our life long, hear.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)
“Who holds the Devil, hold him tight!
He can’t expect to catch him twice.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)
“Deep in the heart there dwells relentless care
And secretly infects us with despair;
Restless, she sways and poisons peace and joy
She always finds new masks she can employ:
She may appear as house and home, as child and wife,
As fire, water, poison, knife—
What does not strike, still makes you quail,
And what you never lose, for that you always wail.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)
“Hope never seems to leave those who affirm,
The shallow minds that stick to must and mold—
They dig with greedy hands for gold
And yet are happy if they find a worm.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)
“I have, alas, studied philosophy,
Jurisprudence and medicine, too,
And, worst of all, theology,
With keen endeavor, through and through—
And here I am, for all my lore,
The wretched fool I was before.”
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Part I (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)
“The Germans are really a strange people. With their profound thoughts and ideas, which they seek everywhere and project into everything, they make life harder for themselves than they should.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, May 8, 1827 (from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)
“The more incommensurable and incomprehensible for the understanding a poetic creation may be, the better.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, May 8, 1827 ( from Goethe’s Faust, trans. Walter Kaufman)
“A life chequered with uncommon varieties is seldom a long one. Action and care will in time wear down the strongest frame, but guilt and melancholy are poisons of quick despatch.” – Thomas Paine, “Reflections on the Life and Death of Lord Clive”
“Most of the Galician Jews, like Polish Jews residing in the General Government, died in the course of 1942 after spending months isolated from the rest of the population in ghettos created on Nazi orders. Acting on instructions of German police commanders, the Jewish and Ukrainian police rounded them up and shipped them to extermination camps. Motivated more often by greed than anti-Semitism, locals often tried to take advantage of the misfortunes of their Jewish neighbors, either denouncing them to the authorities or seizing their property. But the majority simply looked the other way.” – Serhii Plokhy, The Gates of Europe