Hell is Truth Seen Too Late

Thomas Hobbes

"We’re not stupid! We’re just poor! And we have the right to insist on this distinction.”

Orhan Pamuk, Snow

...if possibility of evil be to exclude good, no good ever can be done. If nothing is to be attempted in which there is danger, we must all sink into hopeless inactivity.

Samuel Johnson to James Boswell, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson

...as he sank below the crust of the visible world, into his dazzling kingdom, he understood that he had travelled a long way from the early days, that he still had far to go, and that, from now on, his life would be difficult and without forgiveness.

Steven Millhauser, "In the Reign of Harad IV," The New Yorker (April 10, 2006)

People incapable of taking pleasure in expressing themselves are not likely to be much good at conversation.

Russell Baker, “Talking It Up,” NYRB (May 11, 2006)

The glove compartment is inaccurately named
And everybody knows it.
So I'm proposing a swift orderly change.

Death Cab for Cutie, "Title and registration"

I walk on water
Every chance I get.

Counting Crows, "Time and Time Again"

The study showed that people were most content when they were experiencing … “flow” … “the state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one’s abilities.”

John Lanchester, The New Yorker, February 27, 2006

We boil at different degrees.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

What seems clear is that the US, which grew more rapidly than other nations for most of its history, came to depend on such growth to solve its social problems in ways other nations did not….If American family incomes do not continue to grow, it may become increasingly difficult to mobilize broad support for a government committed to social equity and public investment.

Jeff Madrick, “The Way to a Fair Deal,” NYRB (January 12, 2006)

In this context, the Director stated that he feels relieved that he is not dismissed for corruption or for not performing of municipal duties but only for construction an individual house at the location for which unfortunately the permits are not issued yet. He also said: "if my house hinders urbanism of the city in any way, I will personally blow it up."

From a dismissed Municipal Director of Inspections in Kosovo to the Municipal Assembly.

I talk in pictures not in words.

Peter Gabriel, ...And Through The Wire.

"I think all of my life and all of everybody's life we have had struggles," he said. "You can act like the storm doesn't exist, you can go through it or you can go above it. I have chosen to ride above the storm, and God will carry me over to the other side."

Former Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry, January 15, 2006 (as quoted in the Washington Post).

Every human generation has its own illusions with regard to civilization; some believe that they are taking part in its upsurge, others that they are witnesses of its extinction. In fact, it always both flames up and smolders and is extinguished, according to the place and the angle of view.

Ivo Andric, The Bridge Over The Drina.

…such moments of social upset and great inevitable change usually throw up just such men, unbalanced and incomplete, to turn things inside out or lead them astray. That is one of the signs of times of disorder.

Ivo Andric, The Bridge Over The Drina.

So, on the kapia, between the skies, the river and the hills, generation after generation learnt not to mourn overmuch what the troubled waters had borne away. They entered there into the unconscious philosophy of the town; that life was an incomprehensible marvel, since it was incessantly wasted and spent, yet none the less it lasted and endured “like the bridge on the Drina.”

Ivo Andric, The Bridge Over The Drina.

You, children, be zealous for the
beautiful gifts of the
violetlapped Muses
and for the clear songloving lyre.

But my skin once soft is now
taken by old age,
my hair turns white from black.

And my heart is weighed down
and my knees do not lift,
that once were light to dance as
fawns.

I groan for this. But what can I
do?
A human being without old age is
Not a possibility.

There is the story of Tithonos,
loved by Dawn with her arms
of roses
and she carried him off to the
ends of the earth

when he was beautiful and young.
Even so was he gripped
by white old age. He still has his
deathless wife.

Sappho, Fragment 58, translated by Anne Carson (NYRB, October 20, 2005)

I am nothing by myself. I am something only when mixed with others.

A principle of science recently rediscovered.

What matters is deciding in your heart to accept another person completely.

Haruki Murakami, in the New Yorker of September 26, 2005.

You must always be careful in the jungle. I listen to my dreams. If I have a dream of danger, then I stay in the village. Many accidents happen to white people because they don’t believe their dreams.

Vajuvi, of the Kalapalo people of the Brazilian Amazon as quoted in the New Yorker of September 19, 2005.