Follow on
Trap
To know better.
Cecily: Oh, yes. Dr. Chasuble is a most learned man. He has never written a single book, so you can imagine how much he knows.
in The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde
Flings
Lady Bracknell: To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.
in The Importance of Being Earnest
Oscar Wilde
Charity
[...] queira Deus que nunca se extinga a caridade para que não venha a acabar-se a pobreza [...]
[...] God forbid charity from ceasing so that poverty never ends [...]
in O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis
José Saramago
Chosen
[...] provavelmente a língua é que vai escolhendo os escritores de que precisa, serve-se deles para que exprimam uma parte pequena do que é, quando a língua tiver dito tudo, e calado, sempre quero ver como iremos nós viver.
[...] perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is, when language has said everything, and silenced, I wonder how we will survive.
in O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis
José Saramago
(♪) Others' Mistakes
They are about to graduate.
They are about to get married.
They are kids. They are dumb.
All they know is they are innocent,
they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say,
"Stop, don't do it.
She's the wrong woman,
he's the wrong man.
You are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do.
You are going to do bad things
to children.
You are going to suffer
in ways you never heard of.
You are going to want to die. "
I want to go up to them there
in the late May sunlight and say it.
But I don't do it. I want to live.
in Into the Wild
Please
Hunger/Unease
Leaning into the wall as if all of the hunger of looking would find the secret of her sleepless unease there.
in Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury
Sex & Death
Miles Monroe: Right.
Luna Schlosser: So then, what do you believe in?
Miles Monroe: Sex and death - two things that come once in a lifetime... but at least after death, you're not nauseous.
in Sleeper
Relativity
There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love.
in The Picture of Dorian Grey
Oscar Wilde
Absolution of Self.
There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel that no one else has a right to blame us. It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
in The Picture of Dorian Grey
Oscar Wilde
Photo: My Contact Sheet
So did Adriana Calcahotto...
I like persons better than principles, and I like persons with no principles better that anything else in the world.
in The Picture of Dorian Grey
Oscar Wilde
Photo: Just My Imagination
The Life and Death of a Male Body
Religion was a lie that he had recognized early in life, and he found all religions offensive, considered their superstitious folderol meaningless, childish, couldn't stand the complete unadultness — the baby talk and the righteousness and the sheep, the avid believers. No hocus-pocus about death and God or obsolete fantasies of heaven for him. There was only our bodies, born to live and die on terms decided by the bodies that had lived and died before us. If he could be said to have located a philosophical niche for himself that was it - he'd come upon it early and intuitively, and however elemental, that was the whole of it. Should he ever write an autobiography, he'd call it The Life and Death of a Male Body.
in Everyman
Philip Roth
Photo: spermatogenesis
A sunset
One might fancy that day, the London day, was just beginning. Like a woman who had slipped off her print dress and white apron to array herself in blue and pearls, the day changed, put off stuff, took gauze, changed to evening, and with the same sigh of exhilaration that a woman breathes, tumbling petticoats on the floor, it too shed dust, heat, colour; the traffic thinned; motor cars, tinkling, darting, succeeded the lumber of vans; and here and there among the thick foliage of the squares an intense light hung. I resign, the evening seemed to say, as it paled and faded above the battlements and prominences, moulded, pointed, of hotel, flat, and block of shops, I fade, she was beginning. I disappear, but London would have none of it, and rushed her bayonets into the sky, pinioned her, constrained her to partnership in her revelry.
in Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf
On Intellectual Expression
But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid.
in The Picture of Dorian Grey
Oscar Wilde
Photo: Just My Imagination
Not to run.
(♪) Music for a Funeral
But I could not even change my underwear
And when the shit got really really out of hand
I had it all the way up to my hairline
Which keeps receding like my self-confidence
As if I ever had any of that stuff anyway
I hope I didn't destroy your celebration
Or your Bar Mitzvah, birthday party or your Christmas
You put me in this cage and threw away the key
It was this 'us and them' shit that did me in
You tell me that my life is based upon a lie
I casually mention that I pissed in your coffee
I hope you know that all I want from you is sex
To be with someone that looks smashing in athletic wear
And if your haircut isn't right you'll be dismissed
Get your walking papers and you can leave now
Don't know what to want from this world
I really don't know what to want from this world
I don't know what it is you wouldn't want from me
You have no right to want anything from me at all
Why don't you take it out on somebody else?
Why don't you tell somebody else that they're selfish?
Weepy coward and pathetic ...
Who's gonna be the one to save me from myself?
You'd better bring a stun gun and perhaps a crowbar
You'd better pack a lunch and get up really early
And you should probably get down on your knees and pray
It's really fun to look embarrassed all the time
Like you could never cut the mustard with the big boys
I really don't know who the fuck you think you are
Can I please see your license and your registration?
So Jesus hasn't come in here to pick you up
You'll still be sitting here ten years from now
You're just a sucker but we'll see who gets the last laugh
Who knows, maybe you'll be the next queen of Denmark
in Queen of Denmark
John Grant
Photo: Ccal
Aroma
in Cosmopolis
Don Delillo
Shape.
He tried to read his way into sleep but only grew more wakeful. He read science and poetry. He liked spare poems sited minutely in white space, ranks of alphabetic strokes burnt into paper. Poems made him conscious of his breathing. A poem bared the moment to things he was not normally prepared to notice.
in Cosmopolis
Don Delillo
(♪) You're never going to change.
I keep thinking that you are going to rearrange
But I’m a fool to think something so impossible
You ain’t ever gonna change
Oh no Jericho
Until I blow
I keep thinking that you are going to rise
I keep thinking that you are going to compromise
But I’m a fool to think something so improbable
You ain’t ever gonna rise
Oh no Jericho
Until I take you by surprise
Baby I know that you’re too sad to cry
But my little darling guess what? So am I
[...]
I don’t even think you hear me at all
Under your medieval ceiling behind your biblical wall
[...]
in Jericho
Rufus Wainwright
Photo: via Makiavel
On Evolution
Perhaps evolution is the process of becoming tastier.
in Kimssi pyoryugi (Castaway on the Moon)
Unholy pleasure.
His collar pulled and his tie strained against the intrusion. He blinked. He was irresistibly aware of the oddness of moving things.
in At Swim, Two Boys
Jamie O'Neill
Photo: barely audible
(♪) Com quem eu quero
Eu durmo com quem eu quero
E faço o que me apetece.
Com quem eu quero, aquilo que quero fazer.
I sleep with who I want to,
And I do what I feel like doing.
With who I want, what I want to do.
in Com Quem Eu Quero
Miúda
Photo: Just My Imagination
(♪) Do you?
Do you think we'll be in love forever?
Do you think we'll be in love?
in Diet Mountain Dew
Lana Del Rey
Photo: Dark Cookies
Silence in danger
It seems that danger assigns to public voices the responsibility of a rhythm, as if in metrical units there is a coherence we can use to balance whatever senseless and furious event is about to come rushing around our heads.
in White Noise
Don Delillo
Photo: Spermatogenesis
Fasten your seat-belts.
She is the kind of child who feels a protective tenderness toward her own beginnings. It is part of her strategy in a world of displacements to make every effort to restore and preserve, keep things together for their value as remembering objects, a way of fastening herself to a life.
in White Noise
Don Delillo
Photo: Just My Imagination
Pittsburgh?
The students tend to stick close to campus. There is nothing for them to do in Blacksmith proper, no natural haunt or attraction. They have their own food, movies, music, theater, sports, conversation and sex. This is a town of dry cleaning shops and opticians. Photos of looming Victorian homes decorate the windows of real estate firms. These pictures have not changed in years. The homes are sold or gone or stand in other towns in other states. This is a town of tag sales and yard sales, the failed possessions arrayed in driveways and tended by kids.
in White Noise
Don Delillo
The Invention of Life-style
"Words, pictures, numbers, facts, graphics, statistics, specks, waves, particles, motes. Only a catastrophe gets our attention. We want them, we need them, we depend on them. As long as they happen somewhere else. This is where California comes in. Mud slides, brush fires, coastal erosion, earthquakes, mass killings, et cetera. We can relax and enjoy these disasters because in our hearts we feel that California deserves whatever it gets. Californians invented the concept of life-style. This alone warrants their doom."
Cotsakis crushed a can of Diet Pepsi and threw it at a garbage pail.
in White Noise
Don Delillo
Photo: Just My Imagination
On Crowds
Crowds came to form a shield against their own dying. To become a crowd is to keep out death. To break off from the crowd is to risk death as an individual, to face dying alone.
in White Noise
Don Delillo
(♪) Definition of Family
Now I'm cleaning up,
and I'm moving on.
[...]
I'm gonna be just like you.
The job, the family,
the fucking big television...
the washing machine,
the car, the compact disc
and electrical tin opener...
good health, low cholesterol,
dental insurance...
mortgage, starter home,
leisure wear, luggage...
three-piece suite, D.I.Y.,
game shows, junk food, children...
walks in the park,
nine-to-five, good at golf...
washing the car, choice of sweaters,
family Christmas...
indexed pension, tax exemption,
clearing gutters...
getting by, looking ahead,
the day you die.
in Trainspotting
Photo: Contact Sheet
Self Development
He is trying to develop a vulnerability that women will find attractive. He works at it consciously, like a man in a gym with weights and a mirror.
in White Noise
Don Delillo
A simple way to describe happiness
I stop it in the exact moment of our mountain descent.
I see your strong shoulders
Making effort on the way down,
The muscles of your legs
Supporting your entire pungent figure.
I go back to allowing time to pass.
Slowly.
As you turn your head and smile,
With the breeze messing your hair,
I smile to your smile.
I smile to the imperfection of it,
With its missing tooth,
And because I know you are happy.
“It was such a great day”.
The sun and the moon breathtakingly align on our way up,
Closing the cycle of that particular space.
This is how I describe happiness.
This and waking up warm,
Feeling the scent of the coffee you are preparing for us
Spread out in the house made of wood.
(♪) Cold Blood
Tu nunca choras ao ver sangue
Tu nunca ficas transparente
És daquela raça tão rara
Que tem no olhar o gelo quente
You never cry at the sight of blood
You never become transparent
You belong to that particular breed
Who has warm ice in the gaze
in Sangue Frio
Clã
Secrets
(♪) Where?
Cuddle
Start spreading the news
Uh, no. Make that "He romanticised it all out of proportion. To him, no matter what the season was, this was still a town that existed in black and white and pulsated to the great tunes of George Gershwin. "
Uh... no. Let me start this over.
"Chapter one. He was too romantic about Manhattan, as he was about everything else. He thrived on the hustle, bustle of the crowds and the traffic. To him, New York meant beautiful women and street-smart guys who seemed to know all the angles. "
Ah, corny. Too corny for a man of my taste. Let me... try and make it more profound.
"Chapter one. He adored New York City. To him, it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. The same lack of integrity to cause so many people to take the easy way out... ... was rapidly turning the town of his dreams..."
No, it's gonna be too preachy. I mean, face it, I wanna sell some books here.
"Chapter one. He adored New York City, although to him it was a metaphor for the decay of contemporary culture. How hard it was to exist in a society desensitised by drugs, loud music, television, crime, garbage..."
Too angry. I don't wanna be angry.
"Chapter one. He was as tough and romantic as the city he loved. Behind his black-rimmed glasses was the coiled sexual power of a jungle cat. "
I love this.
"New York was his town and it always would be. "
in Manhattan
Woody Allen
(♪) Hey you, Mushroom Grower...
Grows dark and full of clouds
And that old north wind begins to blow
Keep your head together
And call my name out loud
Soon you'll hear me knocking at your door
in You've Got a Friend
Carole King
(♪) 11.11.11 (to B&H)
Ei tenho asas nos pés
Tenho asas
Ei tenho molas nos pés
E salto
Sinto um formigueiro
Nas mãos e nos braços
Passarinhos na cabeça
Catavento nos ouvidos
Mil antenas nos cabelos
Quem me leva, tenho pressa
Pé de cabra, pé de dança
Dançar por gosto, não cansa
Não vou só, levo o meu bando
A dança nos vai juntando
Se me pesa o traseiro
Levanto o meu nariz
Perco o medo e a vergonha
Fecho os olhos e aí vou
Já não estou onde estou
Nem sei quando posso parar
in Asas Delta
Clã
(♪) Scratching my soul. Thinking of you.
Cansei-me dos poemas que escrevi
mas não tive coragem de os rasgar.
São versos, meu amor...falam de ti
mesmo que, às vezes, finjam não falar.
I got tired of the poems I wrote
but I did not dare to tear them.
They are verses, my love ... they speak of you
even if sometimes they pretend not to speak.
in A Rima Mais Bonita (The Most Beautiful Rhyme)
Marco Rodrigues
(♪) Alone
Fake conversations on a non-existent telephone
Like the words of a man who spent a little too much time alone
When one has spent too much time alone
in Effigy
Andrew Bird
Happy Halloween
All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
(...)
We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.
in Haunted Houses
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Twenty-four
He says, I don’t want to be
twenty-four again.
Twenty-four was a handful:
the flawless
meatflesh, best self, miraculous
leap/thump on the hardwood,
the twist and splash.
in Rondo
Janet Holmes
(♪) The Origin of the Universe
Pilar: José, has leído esta noticia, que quieren recrear el origen del universo en Suiza?
José: Eu não sei o que é que sairá dessa experiência. Oxalá não saia daí outro universo tão mau como este, ou um planeta tão disparatado como este em que vivemos. Mas... mas enfim.
Pilar: José, have you read the news where they say they want to recreate the origin of the universe in Switzerland?
José: I don't know what will come out of that experiment. I just hope that it doesn't come out an universe as bad as this one, or a planet as silly as this in which we live. But... but whatever.
in José e Pilar
