June 2010
“…why did we wait for any thing?—why not seize the pleasure at once?—How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!”
—Emma, Jane Austen (via fuckyeahjaneites)
“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees - just as things grow fast in movies - I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”
—~ The Great Gatsby (via gatekeeper)
“It’s all the same in the end, matter and motion, simple or complex. No difference, finally. Death, transfiguration. Ashes to ashes and slime to slime, amen.”
—John Gardner, Grendel
“The air was unusually warm and humid and I wondered if everyone else associated that sensation with childhood, with bare feet and wet grass and fireflies and heat lightning, and repeated entreaties to come in for dinner.”
—Losing Julia, Jonathan Hull (via fuckyeahliteraryquotes)
“i don’t know what i want; i am as inconsistant, non-committal, passive; i like the indefinate, the boundless; i like continual uncertainty.”
—German artist Gerhard Richter (via miesinberlin)
Play
“Anyway, it meant that I arrived at Oxford absolutely determined to learn —- not English Lit, obviously, but how to have fun. The rule from now on would be that I would go to every party I was invited to, flirt with every man I ever met, drink every drink, smoke every joint, never sacrifice a lunch for a lecture, or a party for a tutorial.”
—Lynn Barber, An Education
“Metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.”
—Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
An Education
I’m so excited to be reading a book that people have described like this:
“Candid, unsentimental and extremely funny. I read it in one glorious go, laughing and crying throughout.” - Zoe Heller
“The most riveting memoir you will read this year. It is short, pithy, fast-paced, comic and tragic by turns…a small masterpiece.” - Valerie Grove, Literary Review
Play
“She knew, of course, that she was being supremely unfair, that Franz was the best man she had ever had—-he was intelligent, he understood her paintings, he was handsome and good—-but the more she thought about it, the more she longed to ravish his intelligence, defile his kindheartedness, and violate his powerless strength.”
—
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Fence 2008
I pursue no objectives, no system, no tendency; I have no program, no style, no direction. I have no time for specialized concerns, working themes or variations that lead to mastery. I steer clear of definitions. I don’t know what I want. I am inconsistent, noncommittal, passive; I like the indefinite, the boundless; I like continual uncertainty.~ Gerhard Richter
“‘Beauty by mistake’—-the final phase in the history of beauty.”
—Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“Her soul had lost its onlooker’s curiosity, its malice and pride; it had retreated deep into the body again, to the farthest gut, waiting desperately for someone to call it out.”
—
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“We might also call vertigo the intoxication of the weak. Aware of his weakness, a man decides to give in rather than stand up to it. He is drunk with weakness, wishes to grow even weaker, wishes to fall down in the middle of the main square in front of everybody, wishes to be down, lower than down.”
—Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“Culture is perishing in overproduction, in an avalanche of words, in the madness of quantity.”
—
Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“But I can’t go on believing what the majority says or what’s written in books. I have to think over things myself and try to understand them.”
—Henrik Ibsen, A Doll’s House
“We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.”
—Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“Her life was split. Both day and night were competing for her.”
—Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
“I’m constantly distracted by my ambition, narcissism, vanity, desire, lust.”
—Russell Brand
