What I am in search of is not so much the gratification of a curiosity or a passion for worldly life, but something far less conditional. I do not wish to go out into the world with an insurance policy in my pocket guaranteeing my return in the event...
-the apartment had been directly in the sight line of a Serb sniper across the river. Teta-Jozefina was a devout Catholic, but she somehow managed to believe in essential human goodness, despite all the abundant evidence to the contrary surrounding h...
The problem, however, is that I have yet to meet anyone, materialist or otherwise, who was able to dispense with value judgements. On the contrary, the literature of materialism is peculiarly marked by its wholesale profusion of denunciations of all ...
Should he make a note? He felt for the smooth shape of his pen in his pocket. 'Theme for a novel: The contrary pull ... " No. If this notion were real, he needn't make a note. A notion on which a note had to be made would be stillborn anyway, his not...
Contrary to what is generally believed, meaning and sense were never the same thing, meaning shows itself at once, direct, literal, explicit, enclosed in itself, univocal, if you like, while sense cannot stay still, it seethes with second, third and ...
Talk of world peace is heard today only among the white peoples, and not among the much more numerous coloured races. This is a perilous state of affairs. When individual thinkers and idealists talk of peace, as they have done since time immemorial, ...
One of the most irrational of all the conventions of modern society is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected. …[This] convention protects them, and so they proceed with their blather unwhipped and almost unmolested, to t...
I saw that animals were important. I saw that plants were even more important. I was also to learn that compared to many of the other species, we weren't important at all except for the damage we do. We do not rule the natural world, despite our cons...
And he'd railed at her, his voice booming so loud the bed had seem to shake. She knew he was constantly there, was aware of his movement and comprehended his words, but she couldn't seem to open her heavy eyelids or speak. At night, he would wrap his...
Did she make you laugh? Did she love you as much as you loved her? Did she protect you and warm you and keep you from suffering? Valentine turned her eyes away from him, unable to face the empty answer in his face but not wanting to stop saying what ...
February 13, 1936 I ask of people more than they can give me. It is useless to maintain the contrary. But what a mistake and what despair. And myself perhaps... Seek contacts. All contacts. If I want to write about men, should I stop talking about th...
In all the interviews I have done, I cannot remember one offender who did not admit privately to more victims than those for whom he had been caught. On the contrary, most offenders had been charged with and/or convicted of from one to three victims....
The critics greeted this book with a churlish and horrified outcry. Certain virtuous people, in newspapers no less virtuous, made a grimace of disgust as they picked it up with the tongs to throw it into the fire. Even the minor literary reviews, the...
To look at life without words is not to lose the ability to form words- to think, remember, and plan. To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talk...
Contrary to popular opinion, manners are not a luxury good that's interesting only to those who can afford to think about them. The essence of good manners is not exclusivity, nor exclusion of any kind, but sensitivity. To practice good manners is to...
Don't lies eventually lead to the truth? And don't all my stories, true or false, tend toward the same conclusion? Don't they all have the same meaning? So what does it matter whether they are true or false if, in both cases, they are significant of ...
A theory of personal resurrection or reincarnation of the individual is untenable when we but pause to consider the magnitude of the idea. On the contrary, I must believe that rather than the survival of all, we must look for survival only in the spi...
As I’ve said before, “the Mod generation”, contrary to popular belief, was not born in even 1958, but in the 1920s after a steady gestation from about 1917 or so. Now, Mod certainly came of age, fully sure of itself by 1958, completely misunder...
Despite the variety and the differences, and however much we proclaim the contrary, what the media produce is neither spontaneous nor completely “free:” “news” does not just happen, pictures and ideas do not merely spring from reality into ou...
When hit by boredom, let yourself be crushed by it; submerge, hit bottom. In general, with things unpleasant, the rule is: The sooner you hit bottom, the faster you surface. The idea here is to exact a full look at the worst. The reason boredom deser...
It’s not a religion, it’s a relationship!' Without the religion, without the archaic and flawed holy texts, there wouldn’t be anything for you to manufacture a 'relationship' with. Without the wars and forced conversions key to the religion’s...
