Loneliness was an unsatisfied thirst for illusion.
"Do you shovel to survive, or survive to shovel?"
One could not do without repetition in life, like the beating of the heart, but it was also true that the beating of the heart was not all there was to life.
There wasn't a single item of importance [in the newspaper]. A tower of illusion, all of it, made of illusory bricks and full of holes. If life were made up only of imporant things, it really would be a dangerous house of glass, scarcely to be handled carelessly. But everyday life was exactly like the headlines. And so everybody, knowing the meaninglessness of existence, sets the centre of his compass at his own home.
If there were no risk of a punishment, a getaway would lose the pleasure.
Animal smell is beyond philosophy.
The fish you don't catch is always the biggest.
One day Bird had approached his father with this question; he was six years old: Father, where was I a hundred years before I was born? Where will I be a hundred years after I die? Father, what will happen to me when I die? Without a word, his young father had punched him in the mouth, broke two of his teeth and bloodied his face, and Bird forgot the fear of death.
Right now you're about the least attractive Bird I've ever seen...But I'll sleep with you just the same. I haven't been fastidious about morality since my husband committed suicide; besides, even if you intend to have the most disgusting kind of sex with me, I'm sure I'll discover something genuine in no matter what we do.
You’re right about this being limited to me, it’s entirely a personal matter. But with some personal experiences that lead you way into a cave all by yourself, you must eventually come to a side tunnel or something opens on a truth that concerns not just yourself but everyone. And with that kind of experience at least the individual is rewarded for his suffering. Like Tom Sawyer! He had to suffer in a pitch-black cave, but at the same time he found his way out into the light he also found a bag of gold! But what I’m experiencing personally now is like digging a vertical mine shaft in isolation; it goes straight down to a hopeless depth and never opens on anybody else’s world. So I can sweat and suffer in that same dark cave and my personal experience won’t result in so much as a fragment of significance for anybody else. Hole-digging is all I’m doing, futile, shameful hole-digging; my Tom Sawyer is at the bottom of a desperately deep mine shaft and I wouldn’t be surprised if he went mad!
Ohh. Yes. That Department of Agriculture book was an awful mighty good thing, laying there at her elbow on that hay. But it made their misery even bigger, and their biggest dream even plainer, and their biggest craving ten times more to be craved. A fireproof, windproof, dirtproof, bugproof, thiefproof house of earth. His penis had become limber, and her moving had forced it out of her hole. He felt the liquids from her womb smeared through the hairs on his stomach …
I'll give you the smoothest an' th' nicest rubbin' job that any shemale ever got since Jesus quit paintin' little red wagons!
It can often seem that those in power don't want us to enjoy making things for ourselves - they'd prefer to establish a cultural hierarchy that devalues our amateur efforts and encourages consumption rather than creation.
As music becomes less of a thing--a cylinder, a cassette, a disc--and more ephemeral, perhaps we will begin to assign an increasing value to live performances again.
The act of making music, clothes, art, or even food has a very different, and possibly more beneficial effect on us than simply consuming those things. And yet for a very long time, the attitude of the state toward teaching and funding the arts has been in direct opposition to fostering creativity among the general population. It can often seem that those in power don’t want us to enjoy making things for ourselves—they’d prefer to establish a cultural hierarchy that devalues our amateur efforts and encourages consumption rather than creation. This might sound like I believe there is some vast conspiracy at work, which I don’t, but the situation we find ourselves in is effectively the same as if there were one. The way we are taught about music, and the way it’s socially and economically positioned, affect whether it’s integrated (or not) into our lives, and even what kind of music might come into existence in the future. Capitalism tends toward the creation of passive consumers, and in many ways this tendency is counterproductive.
Something about music urges us to engage with its larger context, beyond the piece of plastic it came on-it seems to be part of our genetic makeup that we can be so deeply moved by this art form. Music resonates in so many parts of the brain that we can't conceive of it being an isolated thing.
