Blog

Tag: literature

  • October 21st, 2012 10:43pm

    Time is not a river, as Einstein theorized – it’s a big fucking buffalo herd that runs us down and eventually mashes us into the ground, dead and bleeding, with a hearing-aid plugged into one ear and a colostomy bag instead of a .44 clapped on one leg.

    — Stephen King. “Danse Macabre”. (via fuckyeah-unclesteve)

  • October 21st, 2012 10:15pm

    In many cases when a reader puts a story aside because it ‘got boring’, the boredom arose because the writer grew enchanted with his powers of description and lost sight of his priority, which is to keep the ball rolling.

    — Stephen King. “On Writing”. (via fuckyeah-unclesteve)

  • October 12th, 2012 11:10am

    In the matter of glass, generally, we proceed upon false principles. Its leading feature is glitter – and in that one word how much of all that is detestable do we express! Flickering, unquiet lights are sometimes pleasing – to children and idiots always so – but in the embellishment of a room they should be scrupulously avoided.

    — Edgar Allan Poe (from The Philosophy of Furniture)

  • October 5th, 2012 2:25pm

    No, what my heart will be is a tower,
    and I will be right out on its rim:
    nothing else will be there, only pain
    and what can’t be said, only the world.

    Only one thing left in the enormous space
    that will go dark and then light again,
    only one final face full of longing,
    exiled into what is always full of thirst,

    only one farthest-out face made of stone,
    at peace with its own inner weight,
    which the distances, who go on ruining it,
    force on to deeper holiness.

    — The Solitary Man by Rainer Maria Rilke

  • October 5th, 2012 2:21pm

    joonchi:

    30th Annual Banned Books Week | September 30th – October 6th, 2012
          “Books and ideas are the most effective weapons against intolerance and ignorance.”
                                                             – Lyndon B. Johnson

    A good few of my favorites are shown here. 

  • October 2nd, 2012 3:28pm

    Despite the inferiority of her instrument the performer tried with some success to suggest the appropriate orchestral effects. She rendered with brilliant precision the violin scales in the great crescendo. She played with fastidious reverence, lingering faithfully over every significant detail of the structure, humbly and ceremoniously exhibiting it, like a priest elevating the sacred host. What story did the music tell? It told of two forces, two enraptured lovers reaching out toward each other in suffering and ecstasy and embracing in a convulsive mad desire for eternity, for the absolute…The prelude blazed to its consummation and died down. She stopped at the point where the curtain parts and continued to gaze silently at the music.

    — Thomas Mann – “Tristan”

  • October 2nd, 2012 1:13am

    A writer who had for a few weeks been passing his time in Einfried – an odd fish with a name reminiscent of some kind of precious stone – positively changed color when she passed him in the corridor; he stopped short and was still standing as if rooted to the spot long after she had disappeared.

    — Thomas Mann – “Tristan”