deliberation, not rage
The physical findings announced by authorities indicate deliberation, not rage. The wife’s feet and hands were bound and she was asphyxiated, not beaten to death. By the account of the authorities, there were substantial periods of time between the death of the wife and the death of the son, again suggesting deliberate thought, not rage. The presence of a Bible by each is also not an act of rage.
the devil by leo tolstoy
pg. 64 – It is normally thought that conservatives are most commonly the old, while the innovators are the young. This is not entirely true. Conservatives are most commonly the young. The young, who want to live, but who do not think about, and do not have the time to think about how they should live, and who therefore select as a model for themselves the life that used to be.
pg. 65 – … he has had relations with women of various sorts… But he had committed himself to this only in so far as it was essential for physical health and mental freedom…
Günter Grass
Everybody knows how fallible memory can sometimes be… You remember certain fragments precisely, but as soon as you try to join the fragments together, for a story, there is a certain – not falsification, but a shifting.
the death of ivan llyich by leo tolstoy
pg. 32 – And he had to live like this, on the verge of destruction, alone, without a single person to understand and pity him.
pg. 52 – Perhaps I didn’t live as I should have?
pg. 53 – And when the idea occurred to him, as it often did, that all this was happening because he has not lived right, he immediately remembered all the correctness of his life and drove this strange idea away.
pg. 53 – ‘Why this torment?’ And the voice replied: ‘Just because, for no reason.’
pg. 54 – During the recent period of this terrible loneliness Ivan Ilyich lived only through his imagination in the past.
pg. 54 – Life, a series of increasing bouts of suffering, flies quicker and quicker to its end, to the most terrible suffering.
pg. 56 – …it suddenly occurred to him: what if my whole life, my conscious life, really was ‘not right’.
George Orwell
Our civilization is decadent and our language — so the argument runs — must inevitably share in the general collapse.
mentally ill
someone wrote in to the Straits Times saying “Govt support needed to care for the mentally ill”. didn’t they just give them a pay rise?
Black Snake Moan (2006)
I think folks carry on about heaven too much, like it’s some kind of all you can eat buffet up in the clouds and folks just do as they told so they can eat what they want behind some pearly gates. There’s sinning in my heart, there’s evil in the world but when I got no one, I talk to God. I ask for strength, I ask for forgiveness, not peace at the end of my days when I got no more life to live or no more good to do but today, right now… What’s your heaven?
the shadow of the wind by carlos ruiz zafón part 2
pg. 222 – Three saints has my Spain. Saint Holier-than-thou, Saint Holyshit, and Saint Holycow. Between us all, we’ve turned this country into a joke.
pg. 226 – I started off for home, where I planned to recruit a good book and hide away from the world.
pg. 233 – In his book “different” was the highest praise.
pg. 315 – Contrary to what you firmly believe, the earth does not revolve around the desires of your crotch.
pg. 361 – There are no second chances in life, except to feel remorse.
pg. 363 – While you’re working, you don’t have to look life in the eye.
pg. 370 – It was my twenty-fourth birthday, and I knew that the best part of my life was already behind me.
pg. 427 – … what is really killing him is loneliness. Memories are worse than bullets.
pg. 428 – Nothing feeds forgetfulness better than war…
pg. 480 – This city is a sorceress… It gets under your skin and steals your soul without you knowing it.
pg. 484 – … a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.
the mystery of sushi
The mystery of sushi, as every Tokyoite knows, is that it can only be eaten at the counter, never at a table. I ask the sushi master why… “Ah, that’s because of the time and the distance,” he finally ventures. “Sushi loses its taste between here and the table.”
mood lighting
my mom thinks that mood lighting is ridiculous.
a light should be bright enough for reading, she says.
but what if one don’t want to read and just want to relax a bit, i protested.
then one should go straight to bed.
my mother, the fundamentalist.
after dark by haruki murakami
pg. 5 – She drinks because she has a cup of coffee in front of her: that is her role as a customer.
pg. 14 – I’m kind of a low-key guy. The spotlight doesn’t suit me. I’m more of a side dish – coleslaw or French fries or a Wham! back-up singer.
pg. 14 – Is there something about your personality that makes you prefer the past tense?
pg. 64 -
“Don’t you ever play anything but LPs?
“I don’t like CDs,” he replies.
“Why not?”
“They’re too shiny.”
pg. 71 – The ordinary-looking ones are the most dangerous… They carry around a shitload of stress.
pg. 78 -
“Do you guys still cut ears off?”
The man’s lips twitch slightly. “A man has only one life. Ears, he has two.”
pg. 129 – I’m just stumbling around all the time in my own narrow little world.
pg. 141 – It’s my motto for life. ‘Walk slowly; drink lots of water.’
pg. 158 – The ground we stand on looks solid enough, but if something happens it can drop right out from under you. And once that happens, you’ve had it: things’ll never be the same. All you can do is go on living alone down there in the darkness.
pg. 168 – ‘You know what I think?’ she says. ‘That people’s memories are maybe the fuel they burn to stay alive. Whether those memories have any actual importance or not, it doesn’t matter as far as the maintenance of life is concerned. They’re all just fuel.’ ”
pg. 186 – It’s not as if our lives are divided simply into light and dark. There’s a shadowy middle ground.
pg. 191 – “I’ll write to you,” he says. “A super-long letter, like in an old-fashioned novel.”
the shadow of the wind by carlos ruiz zafón part 1
pg. 23 – … after the classics what he most enjoyed were tales of crime, boudoir intrigue, and questionable conduct.
pg. 27 – That book taught me that by reading, I could live more intensely.
pg. 29 – … we were always two fugitives riding on the spine of a book, eager to escape into worlds of fiction and secondhand dreams.
pg. 44 – These people who see sin everywhere are sick in their souls…
pg. 83 – … because tragedy and dead languages give me the goose pimples.
pg. 91 – With women the best part is the discovery. There’s nothing like the first time, nothing. You don’t know what’s life is until you undress a woman the first time. A button at a time, like peeling a hot sweet potato on a winter’s night.
pg. 91 – Cinemas are full of lonely people, I thought. Like me.
pg. 96 – Like the good ape he is, man is a social animal, characterized by cronyism, nepotism, corruption and gossip.
pg. 98 – The only use for military service is that it reveals the number of morons in the population… And that can be discovered in the first two weeks; there’s no need for two years. Army, Marriage, the Church, and Banking: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
pg. 106 – Television, my dear Daniel, is the Antichrist and I can assure you that after only three or four generations people will no longer even know how to fart on their own. Humans will return to living in caves, to medieval savagery, and to the general state of imbecility that slugs overcame back in the Pleistocene era. Our world will not die as a result of the bomb, as the papers say – it will die of laughter, of banality, of making a joke of everything, and a lousy joke at that.
pg. 125 – People talk too much. Humans aren’t descended from monkeys. They come from parrots.
pg. 133 – Trust me: I wrote the book on taking shit from everybody and his mother.
pg. 157 – For everyone who can reason, I have to battle with nine orang-utans.
pg. 159 – The neighbors have doped her with shots of brandy, and when I saw her, she had collapsed onto the sofa and was snoring like a boar and letting off farts that pierced bullet holes through the upholstery.
pg. 166 – He was a very private person, and sometimes it seemed to me that he was no longer interested in the world or in people.
pg. 168 – He replied that he had no right to love anyone, that he deserved to be alone.
pg. 186 – You cannot understand such things right now, because you’re young. But in good time you’ll see that sometimes what matters isn’t what one gives but what one gives up.
pg. 186 – Only three or four things are worth living for; the rest is manure.
pg. 196 – There are few reasons for telling the truth, but for lying the number is infinite.
Stefan Sagmeister
* Complaining is silly. Either act or forget.
* Thinking life will be better in the future is stupid. I have to live now.
* Being not truthful works against me.
* Helping other people helps me.
* Organizing a charity group is surprisingly easy.
* Everything I do always comes back to me.
* Drugs feel great in the beginning and become a drag later on.
* Over time I get used to everything and start taking if for granted.
* Money does not make me happy.
* Traveling alone is helpful for a new perspective on life.
* Assuming is stifling.
* Keeping a diary supports my personal development.
* Trying to look good limits my life.
* Worrying solves nothing.
* Material luxuries are best enjoyed in small doses.
* Having guts always works out for me.
citizen rights
Mr Wang argues in his just the facts ma’am manner that Singapore citizens “should get priority” for university admission.
He’ll be happy to know that at least when transvestites are concerned, it pays to be local.
In Orchard Towers, foreign sex workers operate in different sections. A club on the third floor is only for Thai ladyboys.
And different clubs are patronised by different nationalities.
Singaporean ladyboys – experienced or not – are always top in the hierarchy.
They have ‘home advantage’ and can work anywhere in the building, and in any club within their own turf, whether it is Orchard Towers, in Geylang, Changi Point or Desker Road.
These days, one has to be a transvestite to be treated like a lady proper citizen.
US$12
my mum is not a fan of the US$12 a night hostel where men and women sleep in the same room.
“what happens if i get raped?”, she asks me.
sahel
the iraqis have a word that’s unique to them.
that word is sahel, which means “to utterly defeat and humiliate someone by dragging his corpse through the streets”.
kafka on the shore – part 1
pg. 4 – This storm is you, something inside you. So all you can do is to give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing your eyes and plugging up your ears so the sand does not get in, and walk through it, step by step.
pg. 4 – … you’ve got to be the world’s toughest 15-year-old.
pg. 9 – Let’s face it, teachers are basically a bunch of morons.
pg. 11 – Being really clean is sometimes the most important thing there is.
pg. 26 – … chance encounters are what keep us going.
pg. 49 – Anyway, my point is that it’s really hard for people to live their lives alone.
pg. 62 – “You do understand what I mean by sex?”
“I haven’t done it myself, but I think I understand.”
pg. 145 – “That’s why I like to listen to Schubert while I’m driving. Like I said, it’s because all of the performances are imperfect. A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness, keeps your alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I’m driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of–that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect.”
pg. 146 – People soon get tired of things that aren’t boring, but not of what is boring.
pg. 147 – But solitude comes in different varieties.
kafka on the shore – part 96
pg. 418 – “There’s nothing inside me you need to know,” she says.
pg. 426 – Life’s crappy, no matter how you cut it.
pg. 427 – A world full of geniuses would have significant problems.
pg. 429 – But the longer I’ve lived, the more I’ve lost what’s inside me – and ended up empty. And I bet the longer I live, the emptier, the more worthless, I’ll become.
pg. 439 – We all die and disappear, but that’s because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss.
pg. 459 – Nobody can help you. That’s what love’s all about…
pg. 575 – The most important thing about life here is that people let themselves be absorbed into things.
pg. 581 – Putting it into words will destroy any meaning.
pg. 604 – Better not to try to explain it, even to yourself.
pg. 610 – “Every one of us is losing something precious to us,” he says after the phone stops ringing. “Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads—at least that’s where I imagine it—there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library.”
kafka on the shore – part 74
pg. 334 – My grandpa always said that asking questions is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking’s embarrassing for a lifetime.
pg. 357 – He couldn’t think of anything else but coming, and come he did.
pg. 357 – “The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.”
pg. 360 – A revelation leaps over the borders of the everyday. A life without revelation is no life at all. What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts. That’s what critical. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about, you gold-plated whale of a dunce?
pg. 363 – With you it’s always long stories.
pg. 375 – I might not be a god or a Buddha, but I do have a few connections. I’ll make sure you’re not cursed.
pg. 385 – But metaphors help eliminate what separates you and me…
That’s the oddest pickup line I’ve ever heard.
pg. 394 – A shabby, miserable sort of building. The kind where shabby people spent one shabby day after another doing their shabby work.
p g. 414 – The strength I’m looking for isn’t the kind where you win or lose. I’m not after a wall that’ll repel power coming from outside. What I want is the kind of strength to be able to absorb that outside power, to stand up to it. The strength to quietly endure things – unfairness, misfortune, sadness, mistakes, misunderstandings.
kafka on the shore – part 33
pg. 179 – The intense loneliness and helplessness I felt under those millions of stars has vanished.
pg. 179 – Along with the pain there’s a feeling of closeness, as though for once in my life the world’s been treating me fairly.
pg. 201 – You’re seeking something, but at the same time you’re running away for all you’re worth.
pg. 204 – Let’s go to the library, then. So you can become a part of it.
pg. 207 – There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes.
pg. 212 – …in everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward any more. And when we reach that point, all we can do is to quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.
pg. 239 – But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T.S. Eliot calls ‘hollow men’. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they’re doing.
pg. 239 – Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it’s important to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive. They’re a lost cause…
pg. 248 – People who look normal and live a normal life – they’re the ones you have to watch out for.
pg. 283 – He lived in a world circumscribed by a very limited vocabulary.
pg. 290 – Japan has its share of problems… but we sure know how to make a good sound system.
pg. 294 – While they are still alive, people can become ghosts.
pg. 296 – The darkness in the outside world has vanished, but the darkness in our hearts remains, virtually unchanged.
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