Bluest Eyes - Like a sore tooth that is not content to throb in isolation, but must diffuse its own pain to

other parts of the body --making breathing difficult, vision limited, nerves unsettled, so a hated piece

of furniture produces a fretful malaise that asserts itself throughout the house and limits the delight of

things not related to it.

They seemed to have taken all of their smoothly cultivated ignorance, their exquisitely learned self-

hatred, their elaborately designed hopelessness and sucked it all up into a fiery cone of scorn that had

burned for ages in the hollows of their minds--cooled –and spilled over lips of outrage, consuming

whatever was in its path.

He must enter her surreptitiously, lifting the hem of her night gown only to her navel. He must rest his

weight on his elbows when they make love, ostensibly to avoid hurting her breasts but actually to keep

her from having to touch or feel too much of him.While he moves inside her, she will wonder why

they didn't put the necessary but private parts of the body in some more convenient place --like the

armpit, for example, or the palm of the hand. Someplace one could get to easily, and quickly, without

undressing. She stiffens when she feels one of her paper curlers coming undone from the activity of

love; imprints in her mind which one it is that is coming loose so she can quickly secure it once he is

through. She hopes he will not sweat. the damp may get into her hair; and that she will remain dry

between her legs--she hates the glucking sound they make when she is moist.When she senses some

spasm about to grip him, she will make rapid movements with her hips, press her fingernails into his

back, suck in her breath, and pretend she is having an orgasm.

They were old enough to be irritable when and where they chose, tired enough to look forward to

death, disinterested enough to accept the idea of pain while ignoring the presence of pain.

Sullen, irritable, he cultivated his hatred of Darlene. Never did he once consider directing his hatred

toward the hunters. Such an emotion would have destroyed him. They were big, white, armed men. He

was small, black, helpless. His subconscious knew what his conscious mind did not guess –that hating

them would have consumed him, burned him up like a piece of soft coal, leaving only flakes of ash

and a question mark of smoke.

She found his fastidiousness and complete lack of humor touching, and longed to introduce him to the

idea of delight. He resisted the introduction, but she married him anyway, only to discover that he was

suffering from and enjoying an invincible melancholy. When she learned two months into the

marriage how important his melancholy was to him, that he was very interested in altering her joy to a

more academic gloom, that he equated lovemaking with communion and the Holy Grail, she simply

left. She had not lived by the sea all those years, listened to the wharfman's songs all that time, to

spend her life in the soundless cave of Elihue's mind.

Soaphead was revolted by Bob and wished he would hurry up and die. He regarded this wish for the

dog's death as humane, for he could not bear, he told himself, to see anything suffer. It did not occur to

him that he was really concerned about his own suffering, since the dog had adjusted himself to frailty

and old age.

But this neatness, the neatness of Dante, was in the orderly sectioning and segregating of all levels of

evil and decay. In the world it was not so. The most exquisite-looking ladies sat on toilets, and the

most dreadful-looking had pure and holy yearnings.

INFO: Jane & Dick primer

All of us--all who knew her--felt so wholesome after we cleaned ourselves on her. We were so

beautiful when we stood astride her ugliness. Her simplicity decorated us, her guilt sanctified us, her

pain made us glow with health, her awkwardness made us think we had a sense of humor. Her

inarticulateness made us believe we were eloquent. Her poverty kept us generous. Even her waking

dreams we used-- to silence our own nightmares. And she let us, and thereby deserved our contempt.

We honed our egos on her, padded our characters with her frailty, and yawned in the fantasy of our

strength. And fantasy it was, for we were not strong, only aggressive; we were not free, merely

licensed; we were not compassionate, we were polite; not good, but well behaved.

Hitchens: "If you gave Falwell an enema, you could bury him in a matchbox."

Gut Symmetries – The new physics belch at the politely seated table of common sense.

Frankl - Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined

whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your

inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance,

renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and,

furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but

rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of

ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk

and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find

the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

Moon Tiger – The least I can do is try to behave now in a way that she would consider

decent. And decency consists in leaving things unsaid, ignoring the inescapable, applying

oneself to inessentials.

1956 – It was as if Hungary was not another place but another time, and therefore

inaccessible.

We all act as hinges – fortuitous links between other people

Anonymous – Na nezávislosť a demokraciu sa tu hráme všetci. Rozdiel je len v tom, kto

udáva pravidlá.

Somerset Maugham – Art for art’s sake makes no more sense than gin for gin’s sake.

Mark Gungor – Unforgiveness is like taking poison hoping the other guy would die.

Roger Scruton – It may be that human beings aren’t created by political conditions but that

political conditions are created by human beings.

Theodore Dalrymple – To Have or To Be - The first phrase of the message caught my

attention: “More than 500 million adults worldwide now have obesity.”Have obesity, please

note—not “are obese,” much less “are fat.” Would anyone have written “500 million adults

worldwide now have fatness”? So it seems that there might be something in a name after all.

To have obesity is to suffer from an illness, like multiple sclerosis—

something that happens to you by virtue of an impersonal fate. To be obese

is simply a physical description that leaves open the question of how you

became obese in the first place.

Eating, the most elementary of social activities, had become in these settings

solitary, almost solipsistic, having lost all connection with anything except

the appetite of the moment: and appetite grows by what it feeds on.

The inevitable existence of circumstances does not mean absence or

abrogation of choice.

... false and sentimental belief that, in taxing people with even partial

responsibility for their downfall, you must thereby be withdrawing all

sympathy from them. 

It is sentimental—and, in the last analysis, condescending, dehumanizing,

and even brutal—to regard people with self-destructive habits as simply

victims of circumstances, who contribute nothing to their unhappy situation. 

It is likely that the effort that people make in any endeavor is proportional to

how much they believe that they influence its outcome.

INFO: Part of the current formula for rationing bariatric surgery in our

system is a Body Mass Index (the weight of the patient in kilos divided by the

height, in meters squared) greater than 40—that is, no operations for people

with BMIs of less than 40, or 35, if diabetes or severe hypertension is also

present. 

...[British Overweight Surgery Patients‘ Association’s rules to follow after

surgery]... Do not these golden rules require precisely the kind of self-control

the supposed sheer impossibility of which for the fat person is the

justification in the first place for regarding obesity, and not merely its

consequences, as a disease? 

George Eliot – “...for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on

unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might

have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and

rest in unvisited tombs.”

Socrates - "The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more,

but in developing the capacity to enjoy less."

Dominik Tatarka - „Krajina je výtvarným dielom národa."

Robert Frost – “Free verse is like playing tennis with the net down.”

Carlos Luis Zafón - “Los ricos querían serlo aún más. Los poderosos

querían más poder. Los mezquinos querían sentirse santos y los santos

querían ser castigados por pecados que lamentaban no haber tenido el valor

de cometer.”

Anonym – “Nos mean y los periódicos dicen que llueve.”