A heavy task, but there was light relief In the Germanic ambience, boisterous, brash, Torchlit parades and pogroms, guttural grief In emigration queues, the smash and crash Of pawnshop windows by insentient beef In uniform, the gush of beer, the splash Of schnapps, the joy of being drunk and Aryan, Though Hitler was a teetotalitarian. Human pain meant But little in the Gulf War's visual grammar, a Big feast of death to feed the cinecamera.
Anthony BurgessRelated topics
aryan beef beer brash crash death drunk emigration feast feed germanic grammar grief gush heavy human joy light mean pain splash task visual Hitler ambienceRelated quotes
Art is the principal way in which the human mind has tried to remake the world in a way that makes sense. The carefully edited, slow-motion, action replay of a rugby tackle, a car crash or a sex act has more significance than the original event. Thanks to virtual reality, we will soon be moving into a world where a heightened super-reality will consist entirely of action replays, and reality will therefore be all the more rich and meaningful.
J. G. Ballard
Every time is a time for comedy in a world of tension that would languish without it. But I cannot confine myself to lightness in a period of human life that demands light... We all know that, as the old adage has it, "It is later than you think."..., but I also say occasionally: "It is lighter than you think." In this light let's not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness.
James Thurber
It was rumored, in 1946, that the hangman in Nuremberg adjusted the nooses of some of the condemned to magnify the pain of suffocation. Such sadism was not called for then and is not called for now. But if fornication is wrong, there is no denying that it can bring pleasure. The death of Saddam Hussein at rope's end brings a pleasure that is undeniable, and absolutely chaste in its provenance.
William F. Buckley
You cannot die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare I feel happy. How dare I be glad in a world where my father is no more. And then you cry fresh tears, because you do not miss him as much as you once did, and giving up your grief is another kind of death.
Laurell K. Hamilton
How sad, ye gods, how sad the world is at evening, how mysterious the mists over the swamps. You will know it when you have suffered greatly before dying, when you have walked through the world carrying an unbearable burden. You know it too when you are weary and ready to leave this earth without regret; it's mists, it's swamps and it's rivers; ready to give yourself into the arms of death with a light heart, knowing that death alone can comfort you.
Mikhail Bulgakov