Quote of the day

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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Luigi Pirandello from Six Characters in Search of an Author

Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.


If only, for some, merely because they believe they are.

But don't you see that the whole trouble lies here? In words, words. Each one of us has within him a whole world of things, each man of us his own special world. And how can we ever come to an understanding if I put in the words I utter the sense and value of things as I see them; while you who listen to me must inevitably translate them according to the conception of things each one of you has within himself. We think we understand each other, but we never really do.

Exactly.
I take out of your words what I put into them: me.
You take out of my words what you put into them: you.
I merely note how this is far, far, far more applicable in regard to value judgments.


If only we could see in advance all the harm that can come from the good we think we are doing.

If that actually matters to you, of course.

For man never reasons so much and becomes so introspective as when he suffers; since he is anxious to get at the cause of his sufferings, to learn who has produced them, and whether it is just or unjust that he should have to bear them. On the other hand, when he is happy, he takes his happiness as it comes and doesn't analyse it, just as if happiness were his right.

Anyone doubt for women too?

When a character is born, he acquires at once such an independence, even of his own author, that he can be imagined by everybody even in many other situations where the author never dreamed of placing him; and so he acquires for himself a meaning which the author never thought of giving him.

A postmodern thing let's call it.

Thus, sir, you see when faith is lacking, it becomes impossible to create certain states of happiness, for we lack the necessary humility. Vaingloriously, we try to substitute ourselves for this faith, creating thus for the rest of the world a reality which we believe after their fashion, while, actually, it doesn't exist.

Those of little faith here...what doesn't actually exist for you?
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Re: Quote of the day

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The Onion

Congress Takes Field Trip To Goldman Sachs To Learn How Laws Get Made


The Deep State. And it doesn't get any deeper than this no matter who is in the White House.

Somebody Should Do Something About All The Problems

Of course that never changes.

Fetus Panics After Ballooning Up To 500 Times Her Original Weight: ‘I Gotta Lay Off The Placenta,’ Says Worried Fetus

In a parallel universe say.

240 Killed In Stampede After Bucketful Of Oscars Just Dumped On Stage

Not hard to imagine that.

Archaeological Dig Uncovers Ancient Race Of Skeleton People

It was bound to happen.

Eight-Pound Man Removed From Woman's Vagina

It was bound to happen.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Mieko Kawakami

It's always about them. They're only thinking about themselves. They never think about the kid being born. No one gives a damn how that child is going to feel. Isn't that crazy? Once they've had a baby, most parents would do anything to shelter them from any form of pain or suffering. But here it is, the only way to actually keep your child from ever knowing pain. Don't have them in the first place.


Yeah, Mom, what about that?!

As long as you're living on this planet, you have to be serious about something, but it's better to be serious about a limited number of things.

How's being serious about nothing at all working out, he asked me.

Why does the night have to be so beautiful? As I walk through the night, I remember what Mitsutsuka said to me. “Because at night, only half the world remains."

Trust me: not really.

I’d been on my own for ages, and I was convinced that there was no way I could be any more alone, but now I’d finally realized how alone I truly was.

Posting here for example.

If you don’t like it, stopping it is up to you and no one else. It’s that simple.

You know, providing that you actually can stop it.

You should know that this rule about treating others the way you want to be treated is bullshit. Total bullshit. It’s just this thing that people with no power and no talent tell themselves. Wake the hell up.

You know, providing this is actually true.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Don DeLillo from White Noise

At breakfast, Babette read all our horoscopes aloud, using her storytelling voice. I tried not to listen when she got to mine, although I think I wanted to listen, I think I sought some clues.


Really, who isn't that applicable to?
Right, Jacob?


Something lurked inside the truth.

Uh-oh.

You are sure that you are right but you don’t want everyone to think as you do. There is no truth without fools.

Moral nihilism in a nutshell?

In the dark the mind runs on like a devouring machine, the only thing awake in the universe.

Unless, of course, yours is too.

It just means you are the sum total of your data. No man escapes that.

Existentially as it were.
Women too.


A band played live Muzak.

And in the elevator no less.
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Re: Quote of the day

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The Onion

Girl Moved To Tears By 'Of Mice And Men' Cliffs Notes


Plus she got an A on her exam.

Oscars Officials Warn Only Famous Actors Permitted To Get Political In Acceptance Speech

Right, like any of them will be these days.

Twin Absorbs Sibling At 62

Ah, of course: believe it or not.

Parakeet Unaware Its Companionship The Only Thing Stopping Man From Committing One Of Bloodiest Acts In American History

Why would it be?

Milk Rushing Through Jug Handle Having The Time Of Its Life

Besides, we all know what's next for it.

Ron DeSantis Bans Births In Florida Due To Exposure Of Impressionable Infants To Vagina

Well, that was inevitable.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Joseph Heller from Catch--22

While none of the work we do is very important, it is important that we do a great deal of it.


That may well be you, right?

Good God, how much reverence can you have for a Supreme Being who finds it necessary to include tooth decay in His divine system of creation? Why in the world did He ever create pain?
Pain? Lieutenant Shiesskopf's wife pounced upon the word victoriously. Pain is a warning to us of bodily dangers.
And who created the dangers? Yossarian demanded. Why couldn't He have used a doorbell to notify us, or one of His celestial choirs? Or a system of blue-and-red neon tubes right in the middle of each person's forehead?
People would certainly look silly walking around with red neon tubes right in the middle of their foreheads.
They certainly look beautiful now writhing in agony, don't they?


Yeah, what about that, ye of considerable faith.

What the hell are you getting so upset about, he asked her bewilderedly, in a tone of contrived amusement. I thought you didn't believe in God.
I don't, she sobbed, bursting violently into tears. But the God I don't believe in is a good God, a just God, a merciful God. He's not the mean and stupid God you make Him to be.


Sure, some will get reduced down to this.

You're an intelligent person of great moral character who has taken a very courageous stand. I'm an intelligent person with no moral character at all, so I'm in an ideal position to appreciate it.

Hey, whatever works.

That crazy bastard may be the only sane one left.

And who might that be here?

The chaplain had mastered, in a moment of divine intuition, the handy technique of protective rationalization, and he was exhilarated by his discovery. It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.

Could it really be as simply as that?
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Re: Quote of the day

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Doris Lessing from The Golden Notebook

And thinking about this, which I have done so much, I discover that I come around, by a back door, to another of the things that obsess me. I mean, of course, this question of ‘personality’. Heaven knows we are never allowed to forget that the ‘personality’ doesn’t exist any more. It’s the theme of half the novels written, the theme of the sociologists and all the other -ologists. We’re told so often that human personality has disintegrated into nothing under pressure of all our knowledge that I’ve even been believing it.


Yep, you know what's coming: personality and dasein.

The nightmare takes various forms, comes in sleep, or in wakefulness, and can be pictured most simply like this: There is a blindfolded man standing with his back to the brick wall. He has been tortured nearly to death. Opposite him are six men with their rifles raised ready to shoot, commanded by a seventh, who has his hand raised, When he drops his hand, the shots will ring out, and the prisoner will fall dead. But suddenly there is something unexpected—yet not altogether unexpected, for the seventh has been listening all this while in case it happens. There is an outburst of shouting and fighting in the street outside. The six men look in query at their officer, the seventh. The officer stands waiting to see how the fighting outside will resolve itself. There is a shout: ‘We have won!’ At which the officer crosses the space to the wall, unties the bound man, and stands in his place. The man, hitherto bound, now binds the other. There is a moment, and this is the moment of horror in the nightmare, when they smile at each other: It is a brief, bitter, accepting smile. They are brothers in that smile. The smile holds a terrible truth that I want to evade. Because it cancels all creative emotion. The offer, the seventh, now stands blindfolded and waiting with his back to the wall. The former prisoner walks to the firing squad who are still standing with their weapons ready. He lifts his hand, then drops it. The shots ring out, and the body by the wall falls twitching. The six soldiers are shaken and sick; now they will go and drink to drown the memory of their murder. But the man who was bound, is now free, smiles as they stumble away, cursing and hating him, just as they would have cursed and hated the other, now dead. And in this man’s smile at the six innocent soldiers there is a terrible understanding irony. This is the nightmare.

At least admit that here, you're clueless.

Yet I am incapable of writing the only kind of novel which interests me: a book powered with an intellectual or moral passion strong enough to create order, to create a new way of looking at life.

Have I told you about the two I wrote? No? Then don't ask me to.

Nothing is more powerful than this nihilism, an angry readiness to throw everything overboard, a willingness, a longing to become part of dissolution. This emotion is one of the strongest reasons why wars continue.

That and the military industrial complex of course.

The boulder is the truth that the great men know by instinct, and the mountain is the stupidity of mankind.

Next up: the pinheads explain that.

If someone cracks up, what does that mean? At what point does a person about to fall to pieces say: I'm cracking up?

Since that may well be you, when?
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Re: Quote of the day

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Kurt Vonnegut Jr. from Slaughterhouse-Five

Why me?
That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
Yes.
Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.


Next up: "Why me?" on Mars.

All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.

Metaphysically as it were.

The nicest veterans...the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who'd really fought.

Trust me: not all of them.

Trout, incidentally, had written a book about a money tree. It had twenty-dollar bills for leaves. Its flowers were government bonds. Its fruit was diamonds. It attracted human beings who killed each other around the roots and made very good fertilizer.

Nope, none around here.

People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.

Actually, though, he did. Everyone does.

I think you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren't going to want to go on living.

Of course, we're still around, aren't we?
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Re: Quote of the day

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Jennifer Egan from A Visit from the Goon Squad

Rebecca was an academic star. Her new book was on the phenomenon of word casings, a term she'd invented for words that no longer had meaning outside quotation marks. English was full of these empty words--"friend" and "real" and "story" and "change"--words that had been shucked of their meanings and reduced to husks. Some, like "identity" and "search" and "cloud," had clearly been drained of life by their Web usage. With others, the reasons were more complex; how had "American" become an ironic term? How had "democracy" come to be used in an arch, mocking way?


Of course, that could never happen with dasein.

...we have some history together that hasn’t happened yet.

And that doesn't happen often.

...it was like trying to remember a song that you knew made you feel a certain way, without a title, artist, or even a few bars to bring it back.

Tell me about it: https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=193519

The world is full of shitheads, Rhea. Don’t listen to them—listen to me. And I know that Lou is one of those shitheads. But I listen.

Next up: shitheads, pinheads and how to tell them apart.

When does a fake Mohawk become a real Mohawk? Who decides? How do you know if it's happened?

Start here: https://youtu.be/i33IN94ZRqI

Kathy was a Republican, one of those people who used the unforgivable phrase "meant to be"---usually when describing her own good fortune or the disasters that had befallen other people.

Any Republicans here? So, what's meant to be?
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Re: Quote of the day

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The Onion

Financial Experts Recommend Investing In Businesses Government Will Bail Out Anytime They Fuck Up


Ah, of course: socialism for the rich.

5,000-Mile-Wide Blob Of Seaweed Heading Towards Florida

No, really: https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/seaw ... index.html

TurboTax Threatens To Tell IRS Customer Cheated On Taxes Unless They Upgrade To Deluxe Version

So, update then, right?

Dog Who Successfully Detected Cancer In Owner Put Down For Practicing Medicine Without A License

Let's decide: is that logical?

Jimmy Carter Promises To Deliver Biden’s Eulogy

And [maybe] Obama's.

Area Teen Watching March Madness Entering 2-Week Phase Where Dream School Is Creighton

I call it March Idiocracy myself.
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Re: Quote of the day

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John Updike from Rabbit, Run

If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.


Not counting all the nasty exceptions, of course.

You do things and do things and nobody really has a clue.

And sometimes even after you explain why.

There is this quality, in things, of the right way seeming wrong at first.

In some things, let's say.

I once did something right. I played first-rate basketball. I really did. And after you're first-rate at something, no matter what, it kind of takes the kick out of being second-rate.

Or, here, as often as not, third rate.

The difficulty with humorists is that they will mix what they believe with what they don’t—whichever seems likelier to win an effect.

In other words, even if it makes you the butt of the joke.

Laws aren't ghosts in this country, they walk around with the smell of earth on them.

If you get his drift.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Cormac McCarthy from No Country for Old Men

You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.


Bet you never gave that much thought, did you?

You think when you wake up in the mornin yesterday don't count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else.

On the other hand, who in the hell thinks that?

The point is there ain't no point.

Not counting all the points there actually are of course.

How does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?

He flips a coin?

People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they don't deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things.

So, would you like me to tell you?

It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people can't be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it.

Maybe on another planet.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Anthony Burgess from A Clockwork Orange

The not-self cannot have the bad, meaning they of the government and the judges and the schools cannot allow the bad because they cannot allow the self.


Or, perhaps, the sociopathic self.

The sweetest and most heavenly of activities partake in some measure of violence - the act of love, for instance; music, for instance. You must take your chance, boy. The choice has been all yours.

And look how that turned out.

As we walked along the flatblock marina, I was calm on the outside, but thinking all the time - Now it was to be Georgie the general, saying what we should do and what not to do, and Dim as his mindless greeding bulldog. But suddenly, I viddied that thinking was for the gloopy ones, and that the oomny ones use like, inspiration and what Bog sends. Now it was lovely music that came into my aid. There was a window open with the stereo on, and I viddied right at once what to do.

Forunately, we don't have to just imagine it: https://youtu.be/HtRGeyznv7k

The common people will let it go, oh yes. They will sell liberty for a quieter life. That is why they must be prodded, prodded.

And prodded they were.

It may not be nice to be good, 6655321. It may be horrible to be good. And when I say that to you I realize how self-contradictory that sounds. I know I shall have many sleepless nights about this. What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?

Back to that again.

When we're healthy we respond to the presence of the hateful with fear and nausea.

Not unlike when we're not healthy.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Italo Calvino from If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Once the process of falsification is set in motion, it won't stop. We're in a country where everything that can be falsified has been falsified: paintings in museums, gold ingots, bus tickets. The counterrevolution and the revolution fight with salvos of falsification: the result is that nobody can be sure what is true and what is false, the political police simulate revolutionary actions and the revolutionaries disguise themselves as policemen.
And who gains by it, in the end?
It's too soon to say. We have to see who can best exploit the falsifications, their own and those of the others: whether it's the police or our organization.
The taxi driver is pricking up his ears. You motion Corinna to restrain herself from making unwise remarks.
But she says, Don't be afraid. This is a fake taxi. What really alarms me, though, is that there is another taxi following us.
Fake or real?
Fake, certainly, but I don't know whether it belongs to the police or to us.


Sound familiar?

You turn the book over in your hands, you scan the sentences on the back of the jacket, generic phrases that don't say a great deal. So much the better, there is no message that indiscreetly outshouts the message that the book itself must communicate directly, that you must extract from the book, however much or little it may be. Of course, this circling of the book, too, this reading around it before reading inside it, is a part of the pleasure in a new book, but like all preliminary pleasures, it has its optimal duration if you want it to serve as a thrust toward the more substantial pleasure of the consummation of the act, namely the reading of the book.

Sound familiar?

In general confusion youth recognizes itself and rejoices.

Of course, that never changes.

How can you keep up with her, this woman who is always reading another book besides the one before her eyes, a book that does not yet exist, but which, since she wants it, cannot fail to exist?

Ask her to explain this.

...again I am torn between the necessity and the impossibility of answering.

Don't you just hate that?

How is it possible to defeat not the authors but the functions of the authors, the idea that behind each book there is someone who guarantees a truth in that world of ghosts and inventions by the mere fact of having invested in it his own truth, of having identified himself with that construction of words?

You tell me. But only before or after I tell you.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Luigi Pirandello from Six Characters in Search of an Author

What is the stage? It's a place, baby, you know, where people play at being serious, a place where they act comedies. We've got to act a comedy now, dead serious.


Next up: our stage here.

The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die.

Next up: our creations here.

Nowhere! It is merely to show you that one is born to life in many forms, in many shapes, as tree, or as stone, as water, as butterfly, or as woman. So one may also be born a character in a play.

Let's decide what that explains.

For man never reasons so much and becomes so introspective as when he suffers...

Tell me about it.

But a fact is like a sack which won't stand up when it is empty. In order that it may stand up, one has to put into it the reason and sentiment which have caused it to exist.

Unfortunately, the rest is history.

Ours is an immutable reality which should make you shudder when you approach us if you are really conscious of the fact that your reality is a mere transitory and fleeting illusion, taking this form today and that tomorrow...

Right, an immutable illusion.
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