Collections, Findings

Stream of quotations, sometimes in order of what I'm reading

[exhaustingmemory]

You are becoming tense; it is becoming tense. How hard to tell the difference between what is you and what is it! You respond, carefully, perhaps. You say why you think what they have said is problematic. You might be speaking quietly, but you are beginning to feel "wound up," recognizing with frustration that you are being wound up by someone who is winding you up. In speaking up or speaking out, you upset the situation. That you have described what was said by another as a problem means you have created a problem. You become the problem you create.

Feminist Killjoys (And Other Willful Subjects) by Sara Ahmed

[exhaustingmemory]

What To Say Of The Entirety by Anne Carson

[exhaustingmemory]

And yet, by halogen-light, I think my loneliness as reckless as any souvenir bought with free coupons.

Variation on a Theme Park by Harryette Mullen

[exhaustingmemory]

They'd fix her oral tradition or she'd trade her oral fixation.

Free Radicals by Harryette Mullen

[exhaustingmemory]

Is it possible I'll sprout a head at last, all my very own, in which to brew poisons worthy of me, and legs to kick my heels with, I'd be there at last, I could go at last, it's all I ask, no I can't ask anything. Just the head and the two legs, or one, in the middle, I'd go hopping. Or just the head, nice and round, nice and smooth, no need of lineaments, I'd go rolling, downhill, almost a pure spirit, no, that wouldn't work, all is uphill from here, the leg is unavoidable, or the equivalent, perhaps a few annular joints, contractile, great ground to be covered with them.

Texts for Nothing 3 by Samuel Beckett

[exhaustingmemory]

There you are now on your feet, I give you my word, I swear they're yours, I swear it's mine, get to work with your hands, palp your skull, seat of the understanding, without which nix, then the rest, the lower regions, you'll be needing them, and say what you're like, have a guess, what kind of man, there has to be a man, or a woman, feel between your legs, no need of beauty, nor of vigor, a week's a short stretch, no one's going to love you, don't be alarmed.

Texts for Nothing 3 by Samuel Beckett

[exhaustingmemory]

I don't know why I told this story. I could just as well have told another. Perhaps some other time I'll be able to tell another. Living souls, you will see how alike they are.

The Expelled by Samuel Beckett

[exhaustingmemory]

I have always been amazed at my contemporaries' lack of finesse, I whose soul writhed from morning to night, in the mere quest of itself.

The Expelled by Samuel Beckett

[exhaustingmemory]

I remember the day I stood in front of a great, famous sculpture by a great, famous sculptor and didn't like it. Such a moment is a landmark in the life of any young artist. It begins in confusion and guilt and self-doubt and ends in a triumphant breakthrough: I see the world and I see that I am free before it, I am not at the mercy of historical opinion and what I want to turn away from, I turn away from, what I want to approach, I approach.

Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle

[exhaustingmemory]

Remember also that "youth culture" of this country, founded after the Second World War, is an enormous economic force, is a commodity unto itself. If it is based on irreverence, that irreverence continues to make money, unabated. Revolt has the capacity to grow very rich very fast.

Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle

[exhaustingmemory]

One who wants to talk back to the book, not take notes but make them: one who might write, "The giraffe speaks!" in the margin. In our marginal existence, what else is there but this voice within us, this great weirdness we are always leaning forward to listen to?

Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle

[exhaustingmemory]

If the book we are reading doesn't shake us awake like a blow to the skull, why bother reading it in the first place? So that it can make us happy? Good God, we'd be just as happy if we had no books at all; books that make us happy we could, in a pinch, also write ourselves.

Madness, Rack, and Honey by Mary Ruefle

[exhaustingmemory]

Poetry and sex have this in common: they are the instant consumption of energy, that is, they do not accumulate, they do not have a value dependent upon the consequences of furthering anything outside themselves, though of course they can do that.

Madness, Rack, and Honey “On Secrets” by Mary Ruefle

[exhaustingmemory]

All secrets have an inside and an outside, they must, because they are concealed or hidden--that is their nature--and every secret is the perfect example of form and theory. Form is theory.

Madness, Rack, and Honey “On Secrets” by Mary Ruefle

[exhaustingmemory]

The fascinating panorama of literature trots on, never really leaving its preoccupation with secrets, only modifying it to include, stylistically, the voice of the autobiographical real over the more symbolic life span.

Madness, Rack, and Honey  “On Secrets” by Mary Ruefle

[exhaustingmemory]

This is the theory behind intimate conversations between friends or lovers, and the theory behind centuries or private conversations with clergy, taken over in the early twentieth century by private conversations with the therapist, taken over in the late twentieth century by pharmaceutical conversations with cells.

Madness, Rack, and Honey “On Secrets” by Mary Ruefle

[exhaustingmemory]

Only highly developed cultures foster feelings of nostalgia. The revolutionists must stop for orangeade.

Madness, Rack, and Honey “On Sentimentality” by Mary Ruefle