QUAESTIO MIHI FACTUS SUM -- I have been made a question unto myself.


-- St. Augustine.




Religion is for lovers, for men and women of passion, for real people with a passion for something other than talking profits, people who believe in something, who hope like mad in something, who love something with a love that surpasses understanding.


There is no merit in loving moderately, up to a certain point, just so far.


Religion, I say at the risk of being misquoted, is for the unhinged. (That is, for lovers.)


Religion on my telling is a pact or covenant with the impossible. To have a religious sense of life is to long with a restless heart for a reality beyond reality, to tremble with the possibility of the impossible.


It is love that drives our search to know.


-- John D. Caputo, On Religion

There's a sort of miracle happening here, boss. (Zorba the Greek)

We were sitting yesterday in front of the hut. When he had drunk a glass of wine, he turned to me in alarm: "Now whatever is this red water, boss, just tell me! An old stock grows branches, and at first there's nothing but a sour bunch of beads hanging down. Time passes, the sun ripens them, they become as sweet as honey, and then they're called grapes. We trample on them; we extract the juice and put it into casks; it ferments on its own, we open it on the feast day of St. John the Drinker, it's become wine! It's a miracle! You drink the red juice and, lo and behold, your soul grows big, too big for the old carcass, it challenges God to a fight."

--

I was happy and said to myself: "This is true happiness: to have no ambition and to work like a horse as if you had every ambition. To live far from men, not to need them and yet to love them. To take part in the Christmas festivities and, after eating and drinking well, to escape on your own far from all the snares, to have the stars above, the land to your left and the sea to your right: and to realize of a sudden that, in your heart, life has accomplished its final miracle: it has become a fairy tale."

--

For me Paradise is this: a little perfumed room with gay-colored dresses on the wall, scented soaps, a big bed with good springs, and at my side the female of the species.

--

"And what might you be after in the ruins?"
"I'm studying antiquity."
"What good do you get out of that?"
"None."
"None. Nor do I. This is all dead, and we're alive. You'd do better to go, quick. God be with you!"

--

"I long for heaven! I tell jokes and cut capers about the place and make the monks laugh. They all say I'm possessed by the devil and insult me. But I say to myself: 'It can't be true; God must like fun and laughter. "Come inside, my little buffoon, come inside," he'll say to me one day, I know. "Come and make me laugh!"' That's the way I'll get into Paradise, as a buffoon!

--

"This is my second theory: every idea that has a real influence has also a real existence. It is really there, it does not float invisibly in the atmosphere--it has a real body--eyes, a mouth, feet, a stomach. It is male or female and therefore runs after men or women, as the case may be. That is why the Gospel says: 'The Word became flesh . . .'"
He looked at me anxiously again.
"My third theory," he went on hurriedly, as he could not bear my silence, "is this: there is some Eternity even in our ephemeral lives, only it is very difficult for us to discover it alone. Our daily cares lead us astray. A few people only, the flower of humanity, manage to live in eternity even in their transitory lives on this earth. Since all the others would therefore be lost, God had mercy on them and sent them religion--thus the crowd is able to live in eternity, too."
He had finished and was visibly relieved for having spoken. He raised his small eyes, which had no lashes, and smiled at me. It was as though he were saying: "There, I am giving you all I have, take it!" I was very moved by the sight of this little old man thus offering me outright, when he hardly knew me, the fruits of a lifetime's work.
He had tears in his eyes.
"What do you think of my theories?" he asked, taking my hand between his own and looking into my eyes. I felt that he depended on my reply to tell him whether his life had been of any use or not.
I knew that, over and above the truth, there exists another duty which is much more important and much more human.
"These theories may save many souls," I answered.
The bishop's face lit up. That was the justification of his entire life.
"Thank you, my son," he whispered, squeezing my hand affectionately.
Zorba leapt from his corner.
"I've got a fourth theory!" he cried.
I looked anxiously at him. The bishop turned to him.
"Speak, my son, and may your theory be blessed! What is it?"
"That two and two make four!" said Zorba gravely.
The bishop looked aat him, flabbergasted.
"And a fifth theory, old man," Zorba went on. "What two and two don't make four. Go on, my friend, take a chance! Make your choice!"
"I don't understand," stammered the old man, casting a questioning glance at me.
"Neither do I!" said Zorba, bursting into laughter.

--

God changes his appearance every second. Blessed is the man who can recognize him in all his disguises. At one moment he is a glass of fresh water, the next your son bouncing on your knees or an enchanting woman, or perhaps merely a morning walk.

--

"You're cruel!" the old cabaret singer said all of a sudden in a hoarse voice.
Zorba raised his head and looked at her. His eyes softened. He could never hear a woman say anything to him a harrowing tone without being completely overwhelmed. One tear from a woman could drown him.




(Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek)

It is not a very fragrant world, but it is the world you live in, and certain writers with tough minds and a cool spirit of detachment can make very interesting and even amusing patterns out of it. It is not funny that a man should be killed, but it is sometimes funny that he should be killed for so little, and that his death should be the coin of what we call civilization. All this still is not quite enough.
In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption. It may be pure tragedy, if it is high tragedy, and it may be pity and irony, and it may be the raucous laughter of the strong man. But down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective in this kind of story must be such a man. He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world. I do not care much about his private life; he is neither a eunuch nor a satyr; I think he might seduce a duchess and I am quite sure he would not spoil a virgin; if he is a man of honor in one thing, he is that in all things. He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without a due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks, that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness. The story is his adventure in search of a hidden truth, and it would be no adventure if it did not happen to a man fit for adventure. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in.
If there were enough like him, I think the world would be a very safe place to live in, and yet not too dull to be worth living in.

-Raymond Chandler, The Simple Art of Murder

Job had been paying no attention to me, but he looked up when I rose. "Do you still want to go there?" he asked, gesturing toward the charred signboard. "It won't do any good. You can't escape."
"I know." I spoke as quietly as he. "I'm just going toward something before it comes and gets me."

-John Myers Myers, Silverlock

this was the first tmg song i ever heard.
what a spaz he is!! i love it.

moment, 3:31

Sarah Vowell's 'Take the Cannoli'

There are lots of ways that lives are pummeled by history.

-"What I See When I Look at the Face on the $20 Bill"


When I think about my relationship with America, I feel like a battered wife: Yeah, he knocks me around a lot, but boy, he sure can dance.

-"What I See When I Look at the Face on the $20 Bill"


Heaven, such as it is, is right here on earth. Behold: my revelation: I stand at the door in the morning, and lo, there is a newspaper, in sight like unto an emerald. And holy, holy, holy is the coffee, which was, and is, and is to come. And hark, I hear the voice of an angel round about the radio, saying, "Since my baby left me I found a new place to dwell." And lo, after this I behold a great multitude, which no man could number, of shoes. And after these things I will hasten unto a taxicab and to a theater, where a ticket will be given unto me, and lo, it will be a matinee, a film that doeth great wonders. And when it is finished, the heavens will open, and out will cometh a rain fragrant as myrrh, and yea, I have an umbrella.

-"The End is Near, Nearer, Nearest"

We will grow older, both of us, you can see it in our faces already, in the bathroom mirror, for instance, mornings when we use the bathroom at the same time. And certain things around us will change, become easier or harder, one thing or the other, but nothing will ever really be any different. I believe that. We have made our decisions, our lives have been set in motion, and they will go on and on until they stop. But if that is true, then what? I mean, what if you believe that, but you keep it covered up, until one day something happens that should change something, but then you see nothing is going to change after all. What then? Meanwhile, the people around you continue to talk and act as if you were the same person as yesterday, or last night, or five minutes before, but you are really undergoing a crisis, your heart feels damaged. . . .

-Raymond Carver, "So Much Water So Close To Home"

The band was playing one of those songs of Hank Williams, the one about the wild side of life, and the music floated over the car tops and touched me. I felt lost from everybody, and from myself included, laying on a wagon sheet in a pasture-land of cars. Only the tune of the song reached me, but the tune was enough. It fit the night and the country and the way I was feeling, and fit them better than anything I knew. What few stories the dancing people had to tell were already told in the worn-out words of songs like that one, and their kind of living, the few things they knew and lived to a fare-thee-well were in the sad high tune. City people probably wouldn't believe there were folks simple enough to live their lives out on sentiments like those--but they didn't know. Laying there, thinking of all the things the song brought up in me, I got more peaceful. The words I knew of it, about the wild side of life, reminded me of Hud and Lily, but more than that, the whole song reminded me of Hermy and Buddy and the other boys I knew. All of them wanted more and seemed to end up with less; they wanted excitement and ended up stomped by a bull or smashed against a highway; or they wanted a girl to court; and anyway, whatever it was they wanted, that was what they ended up doing without. That song ended, and another one began, and it ended and then I got up and went back into the dark arena.

-Larry McMurtry, Horseman, Pass By


The way things happened, one thing after another, it seemed like time went by so fast you couldn't tell if you were young or old.

-Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood


It is hardly surprising if we are driven by blasts of storms when our chief aim on this sea of life is to displease wicked men.

-Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy


If the enjoyment of any earthly blessing brings with it any measure of happiness, the memory of that splendid day can never be destroyed by the burden however great of growing evil.

-Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy


It is the nature of human affairs to be fraught with anxiety; they never prosper perfectly and they never remain constant.

-Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy


In all adversity of fortune, the most wretched kind is once to have been happy.

-Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy

In the big empty office the man and the woman at looking at each other and they were a good deal alike. Their bodies were different, as were also the color of their eyes, the length of their noses, and the circumstances of their existence, but something inside them meant the same thing, wanted the same release, would have left the same impression on the memory of an onlooker. Later, and when he grew older and married a young wife, the doctor often talked to her of the hours spent with the sick woman and expressed a good many things he had been unable to express to Elizabeth. He was almost a poet in his old age and his notion of what happened took a poetic turn. "I had come to the time in my life when prayer became necessary and so I invented gods and prayed to them," he said. "I did not say my prayers in words nor did I kneel down but sat perfectly still in my chair. In the late afternoon when it was hot and quiet on Main Street or in the winter when the days were gloomy, the gods came into the office and I thought no one knew about them. Then I found that this woman Elizabeth knew, that she worshipped also the same gods. I have a notion that she came to the office because she thought the gods would be there but she was happy to find herself not alone just the same. It was an experience that cannot be explained, although I suppose it is always happening to men and women in all sorts of places."

-Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio