I don't really read that much. I would like too, but I have a short attention span combined with lack of time. Even though this webpage probably makes people think otherwise. heh. Oh no. It is true. I just also have bursts of motivation to do random things.
I think I am just going to make this a literary quote page of books I have read and want to remember some quotes some day far off and such.
A man may act stupid and top tippity and bigtime 19th-century boss type dominant with a woman but it won't help him when the chips are down--the loss lass'll make it back, it's hidden in her eyes, her future triumph and strength--on his lips we hear nothing but "of course love."
-The Subterraneans, Kerouac
According to Mona Sabbat, people who eat or drink too much, people addicted to drugs or sex or stealing, they're really controlled by spirits that loved those things too much to quit after death. Drunks and kleptos, they're possessed by evil spirts.
You are the culture medium. The host.
Some people still think they run their own lives.
You are possessed.
We're all of us haunting and haunted.
Something foreign is always living itself through you. Your whole life is the vehicle for something to come to earth. An evil spirt. A theory. A marketing campaign. A political strategy. A religious doctrine.
-Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk
After not feeling anything for years, I'm having this Feeling Festival. The medication wears off and the feelings just fall on you. And they're not you're basic fun feelings, either. These are the feelings you've been specifically avoiding--the ones you almost killed yourself to avoid. The ones that tell you, you're something on the bottom of someones shoe, and not even someone interesting.
-Postcards from the Edge, Carrie Fisher
I felt like a racehorse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory dhurnk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone.
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.
From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another was a famouse poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.
I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.
- The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
I cracked...the only man in South City who ever walked away from the neat suburban homes and went and hid by boxcars to think--- broke. ---Something fell loose in me---O blood of my soul I thought and the good Lord or whatever's put me here to suffer and groan and to top of that be guilty and gives me the flesh and blood that is so painful the--women all mean well---this I knew---women love, bend over you---you'd be as soon betray a love as spit on your own feet
-The Subterraneans, Kerouac
This is what passes for civilization.
People who would never throw litter from their car will drive past you with their radio blaring. People who'd never blow cigar smoke at you in a crowded restaurant will bellow into their cell phone. They'll shout at each other across the space of a dinner plate.
These people who would never spray herbicides or insecticides will fog the neighborhood with their stereo playing Scottish bagpipe music. Chinese Opera. Country and western.
You turn up your music to hide the noise. Other people turn up their music to hide yours. You turn up yours again. Everyone buys a bigger stereo system. This is the arms race of sound. You don't win with a lot of treble.
This isn't about quality. It's about volume.
This isn't about music. This is about winning.
You stomp the competition with the bass line. You rattle windows. you drop the melody line and shout the lyrics. you put in foul language and come down hard on each cussword.
You dominate. This is really about power.
-Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk
They are hip without being slick, they are intelligent without being corny, they are intellectual as hell and know all about Proud without being pretentious or talking to much about it, they are very quiet...
The Subterraneans, Kerouac
--I think it has something to do with "Let's break up really and truly, I don't want to make it, not because I don't like you, but it's by now or should be obvious to both of us by now--"that kind of argument that I can, as of yore and again, break, by saying "But let's, look, I have, wait---"for always the man can make the little woman bend, she was made to bend, the little woman was---so I wait confindently for this kind of talk, tho feel bleak, tragic, grim, and the air cold.--
-The Subterraneans, Kerouac.
They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"
On The Road, Kerouac
Making a new start, starting from fresh in the rain, 'Why should anyone want to hurt my little heart, my feet, my little hands, my skin that I'm wrapt in because God wants me warm and Inside, my toes--why did God make all this so decayable and dieable and harmable and wants to make me realize and scream--why the wild ground and bodies bare and breaks--I quaked when the giver creamed, when my father screamed, my mother dreamed---I started small and ballooned up and now I'm big and a naked child again and only to cry and fear. - Ah - Protect yourself, angel of no harm, you who've never and could never harm and crack another innocent in its shell and thin veiled pain - wrap a robe around you, honeylamb - protect yourself from harm and wait, till Daddy comes again, and Mama throws you warm inside her valley of the moon, loom at the loom of patient time, be happy in the mornings.
The Subterraneans, Kerouac.
Big Brother isn't watching. He's singing and dancing. He's pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother's busy holding your attention every moment you're awake. He's making sure you're always distracted. He's making sure you're fully absorbed.
He's making sure your imagination withers. Until it's as useful as your appendix. He's making sure your attention is always filled.
And this being fed, it's worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what's in your mind. With everyone's imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.....
There are worse things than finding your wife and child dead.
You can watch the world do it. You can watch your wife get old and bored. You can watch your kids discorver everything in the world you've tried to save them from. Drugs, divorce, conformity, disease. All the nice clean books, music, television. Distraction.
The music and laughter eat away at your thoughts. The noise blots them out. All the sound distracts. your head aches from the glue.
Anymore, no one's mind is their own. You can't concentrate. You can't think. There's always some noise worming in. Singers shouting. Dead people laughing. Actors crying. All these little dead emotions.
Someone's always spraying the air with their mood.
Their car stereo, broadcasting their grief or joy or anger all over the neighborhood.
-Lullaby, Chuck Palahniuk
"Neurotic, ha!" I let out a scornful laugh. "If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days."
Buddy put his hand on mine.
"Let me fly with you."
-The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath