Thread: Memorable Passages

“You overrate my capacity of love. I don't possess half the warmth of nature you believe me to have. An unprotected childhood in a cold world has beaten gentleness out of me.”

― Thomas Hardy, Far from the Madding Crowd

“That's most interesting. But I was no more a mind-reader then than today. I
was weeping for an altogether different reason. When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More
scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a
harsh, cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not
remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go. That is what I saw. It wasn't really you, what you were doing, I know that. But I saw you and it broke my heart. And I've never forgotten.”

― Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Spark

I always resented all the years, the hours, the
minutes I gave them as a working stiff, it
actually hurt my head, my insides, it made me
dizzy and a bit crazy — I couldn’t understand the
murdering of my years
yet my fellow workers gave no signs of
agony, many of them even seemed satisfied, and
seeing them that way drove me almost as crazy as
the dull and senseless work.

the workers submitted.
the work pounded them to nothingness, they were
scooped-out and thrown away.

I resented each minute, every minute as it was
mutilated
and nothing relieved the monotonous ever-
structure.

I considered suicide.
I drank away my few leisure hours.

I worked for decades.

I lived with the worst of women, they killed what
the job failed to kill.

I knew that I was dying.
something in me said, go ahead, die, sleep, become
them, accept.

then something else in me said, no, save the tiniest
bit.
it needn’t be much, just a spark.
a spark can set a whole forest on
fire.
just a spark.
save it.

I think I did.
I’m glad I did.
what a lucky god damned
thing.

― Charles Bukowski

“I was a janitor for a while but I can never imagine a man calling himself a Floor Engineer when he has to walk into the woman’s crapper and clean up what they leave behind. I couldn’t get a hard-on for a year after working in that place. what they leave behind. and on the floor. and in that little compartment behind the seat. or alongside of it. or wherever it was.”

― Charles Bukowski, Screams from the Balcony

“All right, I'll take a chance. I will fall in love with you. If I'm a fool you can have the night, you can have the morning too. Can you cook and sew. make flowers grow. Do you understand my pain? Are you willing to risk it all or is your love in vain?”

― Bob Dylan

“Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside; candles at four o'clock, warm hearthrugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.”

― Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater

“Although it was only six o'clock, the night was already dark. The fog, made thicker by its proximity to the Seine, blurred every detail with its ragged veils, punctured at various distances by the reddish glow of lanterns and bars of light escaping from illuminated windows. The road was soaked with rain and glittered under the street-lamps, like a lake reflecting strings of lights. A bitter wind, heavy with icy particles, whipped at my face, its howling forming the high notes of a symphony whose bass was played by swollen waves crashing into the piers of the bridges below. The evening lacked none of winter's rough poetry.”

― Théophile Gautier, Hashish, Wine, Opium

“I guess I'm too used to sitting in a small room and making
words do a few things. I see enough of humanity at the
racetracks, the supermarkets, gas stations, freeways, cafes,
etc. This can't be helped. But I feel like kicking myself in
the ass when I go to gatherings, even if the drinks are free.
It never works for me. I've got enough clay to play with.
People empty me. I have to get away to refill. I'm what's best
for me, sitting here slouched, smoking a beedie and watching
this screen flash the words. Seldom do you meet a rare or
interesting person. It's more than galling, it's a fucking
constant shock. It's making a god-damned grouch out of me.
Anybody can be a god-damned grouch and most are. Help!”

― Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship

“Baby," I said, "I'm a genius but nobody knows it but me."
She looked down at me. "Get up off the floor you damn fool and get me a drink.”

― Charles Bukowski, Factotum

“Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.”

― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“There was nothing of high mark in this. They were not a handsome family; they were not well dressed; their shoes were far from being waterproof; their clothes were scanty; and Peter might have known, and very likely did, the inside of a pawnbroker's. But, they were happy, grateful, pleased with one another, and contented with the time.”

― Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

“There is a place in the heart that will never be filled; a space. And even during the best moments, and the greatest times, we will know it.”

― Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.

― Charles Bukowski

“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”

― Gabriel García Márquez

“I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.”

― Jorge Luis Borges

“You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.”

― Jorge Luis Borges

“If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, then they can sure make something out of you.”

― Muhammad Ali

“But insensate Time is nothing if not cruel and heartless. It corrodes then destroys, so that the man you literally and figuratively looked up to with your chubby face, who scooped you up to cross the street and patted you on the head to laughter, will later look through you from a crooked hospital bed then blindly up at you while wearing makeup in a bargain casket. The people who now surround you generating warmth will disappear leaving only an empty chill; the body you own and the brain it houses will malfunction. And sometimes, especially in Boxing, a twenty four year old can become a man overnight.”

― Sergio de la Pava, A Naked Singularity

For last year's words belong to last year's language
And next year's words await another voice.

― T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering 'it will be happier'...

― Alfred Tennyson

I drank so much Vodka last night that this morning I woke up with a Russian accent.

Anonymous

Some days I wish I had the wisdom of a 90 year old, the body of a 20 year old, and the energy of a 3 year old.

Anonymous

Square box, round pizza, triangle slices, now that's confusing.

Anonymous

Number 6921 was definitely written by yer good self, Fawn...

May Light always surround you;
Hope kindle and rebound you.
May your Hurts turn to Healing;
Your Heart embrace Feeling.
May Wounds become Wisdom;
Every Kindness a Prism.
May Laughter infect you;
Your Passion resurrect you.
May Goodness inspire
your Deepest Desires.
Through all that you Reach For,
May your arms Never Tire.

― D. Simone