#83

“Get it? Art? You get it where you get anything you buy (...) don't try and tell me in this day and age there isn't enough around for everybody great art, pictures music books who's heard all the great music there is, you? You read all the great books there are? seen all these great pictures? Records of any symphony you want reproductions you can get them that are almost perfect, the greatest books ever written you can get them at the drugstore” (id, 48).

#82

“Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you assume that organization is an inherent property of the knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside. In fact it's exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos” (Gaddis, 2003: 20).

GADDIS, William (2003). J R. London: Atlantic Books.

#81

“(...) Socrates and Christ they never wrote a line yet their teachings are still valid, while others are less read the more books they publish, history's revenge you might call it (...)” (id, 83).

#80

“(...) what a fate for a handsome young man trained in the art or carpentry, fo sawing boards and beams, and boom! off he goes to teach the world that loving your neighbour doesn't mean somersaults on the sofa (...)” (id, 64).

#79

“(...) real poetry must hurt as if you'd forgotten you wrapped a razor blade in your handkerchief and you blow your nose, no book worth its worth its salt is meant to put you to sleep, it's meant to make you jump out of bed in your underwear and run and beat the author's brains out (...)” (id, 30).

#78

“(...) what I'm giving you now, young ladies, are like windows on the world, points goals, scores, the principle the late Strauss applied to his heavenly melodies, sending them out into the world to refine emotions, like the European Renaissance, for which Themistocles and Miltiades and Socrates and Goethe and Mozart did so much and which has made it impossible for us to say to a beauty we're tired of, get lost, or even Adieu, because our refined emotions require us to compose a farewell melody or poem to be dispatched with a bouquet of roses (...)” (id, 27-28).

#77

“(...) any young lady will tell you you might as well be buried alive if the man in your life has a faulty fandangle (...)” (id, 6).

#76

“I dont want to ruin the clean sheets the clean linen I wore brought it on too damn it damn it and they always want to see a stain on the bed to know youre a virgin fir them thats all thats troubling them theyre such fools too you could be a widow or divorced 40 times over a daub of red ink would do or blackberry juice no thats too purply” (id, 914).

#75

“I must stretch myself I wished he was here or somebody to let myself go with and come again like that I fell fire inside me or if I could dream it when he made me spend the 2nd time tickling me behind with his finger I was coming for about 5 minutes with my legs around him I had to hug him after O Lord I wanted to shout out all sorts of things fuck or shit or anything at all only not to look ugly or those lines from the strain” (id, 893-894).

#74

“(...) and the infinite possibilities hitherto unexploited of the modern art of advertisement if condensed in triliteral monoideal symbols, vertically of maximum visibility (divined), horizontally of maximum legibility (deciphered) and of magnetising efficacy to arrest involuntarily attention, to interest, to convince, to decide” (id, 799).

#73

“Sounds are impostures (...) Like names, Cicero, Podmore, Napoleon, Mr Goodbody, Jesus, Mr Doyle. Shakespeares were as commons as Murphies. What's in a name?” (id, 717).

#72

“Ocularly woman's bivalve case is worse. Always open sesame. The cloven sex. Why they fear vermin, creeping things. Yet Eve and the serpent contradict. Not a historical fact. Obvious analogy to my idea. Serpents too are gluttons for woman's milk. Wind their way through miles of omnivorous forest to sucksucculent her breast dry. Like those bubblyjocular Roman matrons one reads in Elephantuliasis” (id, 632-633).

#71

“(...) since my decision must violate some sympathy, I feel guilty about decision. Question. Does one, then, go thru life, «letting things take care of themselves?»” (id, 181).

#70

“Art for art's sake is a delusion. The Satanist, the moralist, the poet, the politician are all poor fools. Only the dilettante is the example of realism” (id, 121).

#69

“Gauguin? He defeated his own end – indifference – by taking the positive step of setting fire to his pictures. If he really had been freed from his ego, he would have seen no need, have felt no desire, to destroy his art. His method of communication – was destruction. His ego-pleasure was in the beau geste, the vicarious pleasure of destruction, the big defiance, the completely self-conscious – and self-defeating attitude of indifference. His greatest work of art was his attitude – and that he reasonlessly carried to an extreme and corruption by burning his pictures. He thought he freed himself from the ego and suprerego. He merely expressed it in a different from” (id, 81).

#68

“Art = conscious selective creative self expression, which is therefore potentially communicative.
It is wasteful for an artist to create uncommunicative art. It is creative for him to communicate, creative because of the physical fact that more people are enriched by communicative than uncommunicative art. The uncommunicative artist's value is lost to all but himself”(id, 38).

#67

“«After all, a deficiency in manners is a deficiency in perception.» – H. R. Steeves” (Ginsberg, 2006: 34).

#66

“I was never 'strong'. Only determined. One foot in front of the other. Punctuality. Honesty. Courtesy” (Roth, 2006: 22).