The time you will invent in order to survive, to create the illusion of a greater permanence on earth: the time your brain will create by perceiving that alternation of light and darkness on the clock face of dreams; by retaining those images of placidity threatened by the amassing of concentrated black clouds announcing a thunderclap, the posterity of lightning, the whirlwind discharge of rain, the certain appearance of a rainbow; by listening to the cyclical calls of animals in the forest; by screaming out the signs of time: the howl of wartime, the howl of mourning time, the howl of party time; finally, by saying time, speaking time, thinking the nonexistent time of a universe that knows no time because it never began and will never end: it had no beginning, will have no end, and does not know that you will invent a measure of infinity, a reserve of reason.
Carlos Fuentes, The Death of Artemio Cruz
I gradually understood that, beyond a certain point, pain blots out the one thing that is essential to its being experienced—consciousness—and so perhaps extinguishes itself; we know very little about this. What is certain, though, is that mental suffering is effectively without end.
W.G. Sebald, The Emigrants
Elaine, as she was called, wore her hair shorn high up the nape, as the inmates of asylums do. Her facial expressions and movements gave a distraught impression, her lips were always wet, and she was invariably wearing her long grey apron that reached down to her ankles.
W. G. Sebald, The Emigrants
Brian and I had coded our romance in camp images; we craved these images, grateful that they gave superficial expression to our deepest needs, because the story of our community is the story of doubt. We ironically befriended a past that had been generally despised.
Robert Glück, Jack the Modernist
I relinquished the firm barrier that separated us—no, that separated me from nothing.
Robert Glück, Jack the Modernist
My heart shan’t burst nor my body burn to nothing nor the world crack because of this… We shall all go on but only tonight I am a white agony burning for your sake.
Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler, The Young and Evil
Only the artist who is close to his own life gives us an art that is like death.
Morton Feldman, on Frank O’Hara
As for measure and other technical apparatus, that’s just common sense: if you’re going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There is nothing metaphysical about it.
Frank O’Hara, Personism: A Manifesto
I have died so often life seems stiff and awkward she said.
Charles Henri Ford and Parker Tyler, The Young and Evil
Everybody shall be more or less spoony - but nobody shall be really in love.
Charles Warren Stoddard, For the Pleasure of His Company: A Tale of the Misty City, Thrice Told
