When something is new and hard and bright, there ought to be something a little better for it than just being safe, since the same things are just the things that folks have been doing so long they have worn the edges off and there’s nothing to the doing of them that leaves a man to say, That was not done before and it will not be done again.
William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
my love is building a building
around you,a frail slippery
house,a strong fragile house
(beginning at the singular beginningof your smile)a skillful uncouth
prison,a precise clumsy
prison(building thatandthis into Thus,
Around the reckless magic of your mouth)my love is building a magic,a discrete
tower of magic and(as i guess)when Farmer Death(whom fairies hate)shall
crumble the mouth-flower fleet
He’ll not my tower,
laborious,casualwhere the surrounded smile
hangs
breathless
—E. E. Cummings
Me up at does
out of the floor
quietly Stare
a poisoned mousestill who alive
is asking What
have i done that
You wouldn’t have
E. E. Cummings
CLYTEMNESTRA: You hate me, my child, but what disturbs me more is your likeness to me, as I was once. I used to have those clean-cut features, that fever in the blood, those smoldering eyes—and nothing good came of them.
ELECTRA: No! Don’t say I’m like you! Tell me, Philebus—you can see us side by side—am I really like her?
ORESTES: How can I tell? Her face is like a pleasant garden that hail and storms have ravaged. And upon yours I see a threat of storm; one day passion will sear it to the bone.
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Flies
THE TUTOR: No memories, master? What ingratitude, considering that I gave ten years of my life to stocking you wit them! And what of all the journeys we have made together all the towns we visited? And the course in archeology composed specially for you? No memories, indeed! Palaces, shrines, and temples—with so many of them is your memory peopled that you could write a guide-book of all Greece.
ORESTES: Palaces—that’s so. Palaces, statues, pillars—stones, stones, stones! Why, with all those stones in my head, am I not heavier? While you are about it, why not remind me of the three hundred and eighty-seven steps of the temple at Ephesus? I climbed them, one by one, and I remember each. The seventeenth, if my memory serves me, was badly broken. And yet—! Why, an old, mangy dog, warming himself at the hearth, and struggling to his feet with a little whimper to welcome his master home—why, that dog has more memories than I! At least he recognizes his master. His master. But what can I call mine?
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Flies
ESTELLE: Anyhow, you must remember. You must have had reasons for acting as you did.
GARCIN: I had.
ESTELLE: Well?
GARCIN: But were they the real reasons?
ESTELLE You’ve a twisted mind, that’s your trouble. Plaguing yourself over such trifles!
GARCIN: I’d thought it all out, and I wanted to make a stand. But was that my real motive?
INEZ: Exactly. That’s the question. Was that your real motive? No doubt you argued it out with yourself, you weighed the pros and cons, you found good reasons for what you did. But fear and hatred and all the dirty little instincts one keeps dark—they’re motives too. So carry on, Mr. Garcin, and try to be honest with yourself—for once.
Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit
“Ah, Kannegieter, you are not so simple as you make out,” said the Count. “Why? Because, my friend, the aversion to snakes is a sound human instinct, the people who have got it have kept alive. The snake is the deadliest of all the enemies of men, but what, except our own instinct of good and evil, is there to tell us so? The claws of the lions, the size, and the tusks, of the Elephants, the horns of the Buffaloes, all jump to the eye. But the snakes are beautiful animals. The snakes are round and smooth, like the things we cherish in life, of exquisite soft colouring, gentle in all their movements. Only to the godly man this beauty and gracefulness are in themselves loathsome, they smell from perdition, and remind him of the fall of man. Something within him makes him run away from the snake as from the devil, and that is what is called the voice of conscience. The man who can caress a snake can do anything.” Count Schimmelmann laughed a little at his own course of thoughts, buttoned his rich fur-coat, and turned to leave the shed.
The showman had stood for a little while in deep thoughts. “Your Excellency,” he said at last, “you must needs love snakes. There is no way round it. Out of my own experience in life, I can tell you so, and indeed it is the best advice that I can give you: You should love the snakes. Keep in your mind, your Excellency, how often,—keep in mind, your Excellency, that nearly every time that we ask the Lord for a fish, he will give us a serpent.”
—Isak Dinesen, Out of Africa
My greatest enemies are Woman and the Sea. These things I hate. Women because they are weak and stupid and love in the shadow of men and are nothing compared to them, and the sea because it has always frustrated me, destroying what I have built, washing away what I have left, wiping clean the marks I have made. And I’m not all that sure the wind is blameless either.
—Iain Banks, The Wasp Factory