GENERAL. The ideal, my friend, is the life-buoy. You're in the ocean, splashing about, doing your damndest not to drown, in spite of whirlpools and cross currents. The main thing is to do the regulation breast-stroke and if you're not a clod, never let the lifebuoy out of your sight. No one expects any more than that of you. . . .
SECRETARY. But does one ever reach the lifebuoy, General?
GENERAL. Never. But if your heart's in the right place, you never lose sight of it either. Fanatics who try a faster stroke to reach it at all costs, deluge everybody else and always finish up by drowning. . . . Do you see what I mean? . . .
SECRETARY. I am twenty years old, General. I would rather try to go fast and drown.
-Jean Anouilh, The Waltz of the Toreadors
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Nathalie Sarraute
"Remain silent, look at them; and right in the middle of the grandmother's illness, rise and, making an enormous hole, escape, knocking against the lacerated walls, and run shouting amidst the crouched houses standing watch all along the gray streets, flee, stepping over the feet of the concierges seated in front of their doors taking the air, run with her mouth contorted shouting incoherencies, while the concierges looked up from their knitting and their husbands lowered their newspapers to their knees, to press their gaze along the length of her back, until she had turned the corner.
Sometimes, when they were not looking at him, to try and find something that was warm and living around him, he would run his hand very gently along one of the columns of the sideboard . . . they would not see him, or perhaps they would think that he was merely "touching wood" for luck, a very widespread custom and, after all, a harmless one. When he sensed that they were watching him from behind, like the villain in the movies who, feeling the eyes of the policeman on his back, concludes his gesture nonchalantly, gives it the appearance of being offhanded and naive, to calm their apprehension he would drum with three fingers of his right hand, three times three, which is the really effectual lucky gesture."
-Nathalie Sarraute, Tropisms
Sometimes, when they were not looking at him, to try and find something that was warm and living around him, he would run his hand very gently along one of the columns of the sideboard . . . they would not see him, or perhaps they would think that he was merely "touching wood" for luck, a very widespread custom and, after all, a harmless one. When he sensed that they were watching him from behind, like the villain in the movies who, feeling the eyes of the policeman on his back, concludes his gesture nonchalantly, gives it the appearance of being offhanded and naive, to calm their apprehension he would drum with three fingers of his right hand, three times three, which is the really effectual lucky gesture."
-Nathalie Sarraute, Tropisms
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
To Begin With
This space is devoted to the collection of phrases that strike me for their truth, their beauty, their clarity, and occasionally their wit. Here are some:
"on one knee in a fortress by the green sea"
-the last line of a poem that was submitted to the literary magazine at my school. the rest of the poem was terribly, terribly mediocre, but this line stood alone.
"secure and beautiful and adequate"
-Darius I
"visitings of awful promise, when the light of sense goes out in flashes that have shewn to us the invisible world"
-Wordsworth, The Prelude
"I am stretched on the rack of doubt."
-Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
"The deeds of Wilibert of Waverley in the Holy Land, his long absence and perilous adventures, his supposed death, and his return in the evening when the betrothed of his heart had wedded the hero who had protected her from insult and oppression during his absence; the generosity with which the Crusader relinquished his claims, and sought in a neighboring cloister that peace which passeth not away; -- to these and similar tales he would hearken till his heart glowed and his eye glistened."
-Sir Walter Scott, Waverley
"humble, squalid, time-marking human thought"
-Nathalie Sarraute, Tropisms
"History provides a lot of exits from our particular prisons."
-Henry Shapiro, one of my professors
"She's irreplaceable. She's not perfect, but she's irreplaceable."
-Hatley High, a wonderful farce of high-school movies that everyone who grew up in the '90s with a light heart should possibly watch
"It's the living that are interesting not the way of killing them."
-Gertrude Stein's response to the development of the A-bomb
"Every friendship has its private library and private footnotes."
-Rose Rejouis, one of my professors
"The saddest words of pen or tongue: I meant to go when I was young."
-Garrison Keillor, Liberty
"an accumulation of unknowns"
-Ariana Petryna, Life Exposed: Biological Citizens After Chernobyl
"In every parting there is an image of death."
-George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life
"on one knee in a fortress by the green sea"
-the last line of a poem that was submitted to the literary magazine at my school. the rest of the poem was terribly, terribly mediocre, but this line stood alone.
"secure and beautiful and adequate"
-Darius I
"visitings of awful promise, when the light of sense goes out in flashes that have shewn to us the invisible world"
-Wordsworth, The Prelude
"I am stretched on the rack of doubt."
-Sophocles, Oedipus Rex
"The deeds of Wilibert of Waverley in the Holy Land, his long absence and perilous adventures, his supposed death, and his return in the evening when the betrothed of his heart had wedded the hero who had protected her from insult and oppression during his absence; the generosity with which the Crusader relinquished his claims, and sought in a neighboring cloister that peace which passeth not away; -- to these and similar tales he would hearken till his heart glowed and his eye glistened."
-Sir Walter Scott, Waverley
"humble, squalid, time-marking human thought"
-Nathalie Sarraute, Tropisms
"History provides a lot of exits from our particular prisons."
-Henry Shapiro, one of my professors
"She's irreplaceable. She's not perfect, but she's irreplaceable."
-Hatley High, a wonderful farce of high-school movies that everyone who grew up in the '90s with a light heart should possibly watch
"It's the living that are interesting not the way of killing them."
-Gertrude Stein's response to the development of the A-bomb
"Every friendship has its private library and private footnotes."
-Rose Rejouis, one of my professors
"The saddest words of pen or tongue: I meant to go when I was young."
-Garrison Keillor, Liberty
"an accumulation of unknowns"
-Ariana Petryna, Life Exposed: Biological Citizens After Chernobyl
"In every parting there is an image of death."
-George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life
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