“People don’t love each other at our age, Marthe—they please each other, that’s all. Later on, when you’re old and impotent, you can love someone. At our age, you just think you do. That’s all it is.”

1 week ago · 9 notes

“To begin with, poor people’s memory is less nourished than that of the rich; it has fewer landmarks in space because they seldom leave the place where they live, and fewer reference points in time throughout lives that are gray and featureless. Of course there is the memory of the heart that they say is the surest kind, but the heart wears out with sorrow and labour, it forgets sooner under the weight of fatigue. Remembrance of things past is just for the rich. For the poor it only marks the faint traces on the path to death. And besides, in order to bear up well, one must not remember too much, but rather, stick close to the passing day, hour by hour.”

3 months ago · 3 notes

“I am nothing, I know it, but my nothing comprises a little bit of everything.”

4 months ago · 14 notes

“It was the worst of all in class, though. That was the worst. What happened was, I got the idea in my head - and I could not get it out - that college was just one more dopey, inane place in the world dedicated to piling up treasure on earth and everything. I mean treasure is treasure, for heavens sake. What’s the difference whether the treasure is money, or property, or even just plain knowledge? It all seemed like exactly the same thing to me, if you take off the wrapping - and it still does! Sometimes I think that knowledge - when it’s knowledge for knowledge’s sake, anyway - is the worst of all. The least inexcusable, certainly. I don’t think it would have all got me quite so down if just once in a while - there was at least some polite little perfunctory implication that knowledge should lead to wisdom, and that if it doesn’t, it’s just a disgusting waste of time!”

4 months ago · 4 notes

“All I know is I’m losing my mind. I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting - it is, it is. I don’t care what anybody says…
I’m not afraid to compete. It’s just the opposite. Don’t you see that? I’m afraid I will compete - that’s what scares me…
I’m ashamed of it. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everybody else who wants to make some kind of a splash.”

4 months ago · 14 notes

“The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.”

4 months ago · 2 notes

“The worst that being an artist could do to you would be that it would make you slightly unhappy constantly.”

4 months ago · 3 notes

“We know the sound of two hands clapping. But what is the sound of one hand clapping?”

5 months ago · 3 notes

“Life is life, and kind is kind.”

5 months ago · 5 notes

“Mother often use to say that you’re never altogether unhappy.”

8 months ago · 6 notes

“Silence” never ceases to imply its opposite and to depend on its presence: just as there can’t be “up” without “down” or “left” without “right,” so one must acknowledge a surrounding environment of sound or language in order to recognize silence. Not only does silence exist in a world full of speech and other sounds, but any given silence has its identity as a stretch of time being perforated by sound.
A genuine emptiness, a pure silence is not feasible-either conceptually or in fact. Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech (in many instances, of complaint or indictment) and an element in a dialogue.”

8 months ago · 2 notes