Awesome “put them in their place” quotes from Nick Marino‘s piece on “Thriller”/Michael Jackson in Paste #40:
Not long ago I caught a concert by teenaged R&B star Chris Brown, who is sort of a less charismatic verson of Usher, who is himself a less charismatic version fo Michael Jackson.
Today we’re left with Chris Brown, Usher and Justin Timberlake, whose most famous stage move to date involved ripping the bodice of Michael Jackson’s sister.
[Underlines = emphasis de moi]
Category Archives: Lit Quotes
(Fictional?) Memoir: “The Life of Hunger” by Amelie Nothomb
An somewhat philosophical memoir of hunger, being hungry, (at some points, actually anorexic), but also of being sated, in all of their various meanings: not just physically, but also emotionally, intellectually, etc. Also a book about “home”, going there, leaving, about living places that aren’t that. A book about feeling lost and alone even within the midst of your own family, let alone a strange city, school, country etc.
Very good. A very slim, quick read. But weighty in thought.
I thought I knew the meaning of the word ‘big’. You have to have driven across the United States before you can have any idea of what that means: whole days of straight road without seeing a single human being.
My parents were forty, the age at which you pull up your sleeves and put your responsibility to the test of work. [Really? Uh oh! Danger ahead!]
Is it not enough to have some very good chocolate in your mouth, not only to believe in God, but also to feel that one is in his presence? God isn’t chocolate, he’s the encounter between chocolate and a palate capable of appreciating it.
Self-fulfilling prophecies.
“I used to write really shitty, gloomy songs about how everything sucked,” he says, “but I realized that everything sucked because I wrote those songs. My music controlled me much more than I controlled my music.”
–Jens Lekman, as interviewed by Austin L. Ray, in Paste #37.
No present without the past.
I’d like to say that I’ve lived from this moment on without regret, but what makes a life worth living are the small calamities and the train wrecks we live through; a scar becomes a story of endurance.
–Tod Goldberg, from the story “Myths of Our Time” in the collection “Simplify”
Nonfiction: “A Field Guide to Getting Lost” by Rebecca Solnit.
Hard to know how to classify this book. Not really ‘travel’ although she does go a few places. Not really ‘memoir’ although there are memories discussed Maybe: Philosophical musings from a personal viewpoint?
Regardless, I loved it. Completely engaging. Calm, yet intense underneath. Asking tough questions. Pondering, considering, studying.
The important thing is not that Elijah might show up someday. The important thing is that the doors are left open to the dark every year.
Not a book about religion, although that quote uses it. But certainly a book about personal belief, personal musings. I really don’t lead this kind of contemplative life. But it was an inspiring read.
The chapter “Abandon” about her friend Marine really reminded me of “Truth and Beauty” by Ann Patchett, a memoir about Patchett’s friend Lucy, another soul in trouble.
Don’t be surprised to see me reading a LOT more Solnit in the days ahead.
What gets lost.
A happy love is a single story, a disintegrating one is two or more competing, conflicting versions, and a disintegrated one lies at your feet like a shattered mirror, each shard reflecting a different story, that it was wonderful, that it was terrible, if only this had, if only that hadn’t. The stories don’t fit back together, and it’s the end of stories, those devices we carry like shells and shields and blinkers and occasionally maps and compasses. The people close to you become mirrors and journals in which you record your history, the instruments that help you know yourself and remember yourself, and you do the same for them. When they vanish so does the use, the appreciation, the understanding of those small anecdotes, catchphrases, jokes: they become a book slammed shut or burnt.
-Rebecca Solnit “A Field Guide to Getting Lost”
Risk Taking.
The young live absolutely in the present, but a present of drama and recklessness, of acting on urges and running with the pack. They bring the fearlessness of children to acts with adult consequences, and when something goes wrong they experience the shame or the pain as an eternal present too. Adulthood is made up of a prudent anticipation and a philosophical memory that make you navigate more slowly and steadily. But fear of making mistakes can itself become a huge mistake, one that prevents you from living, for life is risky and anything less is already loss.
-Rebecca Solnit “A Field Guide to Getting Lost.
Caught ya!
She thought about that word “capture,” how it put a writer on par with a fur trapper or big-game hunter, and how it implied that stories were whole and roaming around loose in the world, and a writer’s job was to catch them. Except of course that a writer didn’t kill what she caught, didn’t stuff it and hang it on a wall; the point was to keep the stories alive. She felt skeptical about this way of thinking of writing, she decided, but was glad to have considered it.
–Maria de los Santos, “Love Walked In”
Unbelievable yet, sad to say, actually believable.
A 2006 poll showed that atheists are the group most feared by the public as a threat to the American way of life (“below Muslims, recent immigrants, gays and lesbians,” according to the study’s press release.
—Paste Magazine, issue #34, in the article on Greg Graffin of Bad Religion.
The people who voted that way in that poll? They’re the ones that scare me!!!!!!!!!!!
Fantasy/Mystery: “Blood Bound” by Patricia Briggs
Second in the series (#1 here).
Still involved with the werewolves but the mystery here centers around the local vampires and their seethe. Very spooky stuff!
Some neat religious imagery with Mercy insisting on wearing a lamb necklace instead of a cross: “I don’t wear a cross. As a child, I’d had a bad experience with one. Besides, a crucifix was the instrument of Our Lord’s death — I don’t know why people think a torture device should be a symbol of Christ. Christ was a willing sacrifice, a lamb, not a cross for us to hang ourselves on; or at least that’s my interpretation.”