Alice Neel
The Righteous by Jorges Luis Borges
A man who cultivates a garden, as Voltaire wished.
He who is grateful for the existence of music.
He who takes pleasure discovering an etymology.
Two employees at a cafe in the South play a silent game of chess.
The potter, contemplating a color and shape.
A typographer who sets this page well, which he perhaps does not like
A woman and a man who read the last tercets of a specific Cantos.
He who strokes a sleeping animal.
He who justifies, or wishes to justify a wrong he himself has done.
He who is grateful for the existence of Stevenson.
He who prefers that the others are right.
These people, unaware of each other, are saving the world.
(Source: nevver)
“A writer’s job is to imagine everything so personally that the fiction is as vivid as memories.”
—John Irving (Born 1942), NovelistI often worry, however, that in my old age, I’ll become so senile I may believe the fiction was what really happened … and that my real memories are but figments of the imagination.
Photo courtesy of The New York Times.
(Source: jayfingers)
”Lilly’s Weltschmerz, as Frank would come to call it. ‘ The rest of us have anguish,’ Frank would say. ‘ The rest of us have grief, the rest of us merely suffer. But Lilly ‘, Frank would say, ‘ Lilly has true Weltschmerz. It shouldn’t be translated as “world-weariness,” ‘ Frank would lecture us, ‘ that’s much too mild for what Lilly’s got. Lilly’s Weltschmerz is like “world-hurt,” ‘ Frank would say. ‘ Literally “world”- that’s the Welt part- and “hurt”, because that’s what the Schmerz part really is: pain, real ache. Lilly’s got a case of world-hurt, ‘ Frank concluded, proudly.”
The Hotel New Hampshire, John Irving
(Source: smilie2712)
But every single damn thing matters! Only we don’t realize. We just tell ourselves that art runs on one track and life, our lives, on another, and we don’t realize that’s a lie.
—Roberto Bolaño from “Dentist”, Last Evenings on Earth
(Source: fuckyeahrobertobolano)
