"The violet sea longs for the birth of gods, for to be born here is an unspeakable feast, a drumroll of commanding retinues and tritons."

--

Source : José Lezama Lima (2005). “José Lezama Lima: Selections”, p.9, Univ of California Press

Jose Lezama Lima

#Sea Quotes #Violet Quotes #Birth Quotes

“During the air war of 1944, a four-man combat crew on a B-17 bomber took a vow to never abandon one another no matter how desperate the situation. The aircraft was hit by flak during a mission and went into a terminal dive, and the pilot ordered everyone to bail out. The top turret gunner obeyed the order, but the ball turret gunner discovered that a piece of flak had jammed his turret and he could not get out. The other three men in his pact could have bailed out with the parachutes, but they stayed with him until the plan hit the ground and exploded. They all died.”
“Sitting in the darkness of the cinema, I got to see another world. This imaginary world was a refuge for many of us. Of course, the films were controlled and censored by the regime. But I still thought, around this time, that maybe making films would be good for me. I thought of expressing myself through this medium, and of doing something for the Kurds. The options were clear: either I'd work as a lawyer under the Baath regime or make movies independently.”
“As the world becomes ever more crowded, so folding will become ever more important.”

Source : "How to... fold things" by Guy Browning, www.theguardian.com. March 3, 2000.
“Not to be born is, past all prizing, best.”
“Real evidence is usually vague and unsatisfactory. It has to be examined---sifted. But here the whole thing is cut and dried. No, my friend, this evidence has been very cleverly manufactured---so cleverly that it has defeated its own ends.”
“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.”
“The Word of God makes use of poetic imagery when discussing... formless intelligences but... it does not do so for the sake of art, but as a concession to the nature of our own mind. It uses scriptural passages in an uplifting fashion as a way, provided for us from the first, to uplift our mind in a manner suitable to our nature.”
“You count on it, you rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then, just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.”

Source : A. Bartlett Giamatti (1998). “A Great and Glorious Game: Baseball Writings of A. Bartlett Giamatti”, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

You may also like: