‘Any messiah who comes is false. The essence of the messiah is that he will always be coming.’
— Yeshayahu Leibowitz.
‘Any messiah who comes is false. The essence of the messiah is that he will always be coming.’
— Yeshayahu Leibowitz.
‘If you’re reading to find friends, you’re in deep trouble.’
— Claire Messud.
Cade, you motherless lamb.
‘I cannot inhabit the mindset of a primitive form of the species: a creature with concepts for stone or tree, but not for arguing that non-existents may have properties but still be non-existent, such as the specifications for a devil.’
— Laura Del-Rivo, ‘Notes on Time’
‘…the inexhaustible energies of despair…’
— Enzo Traverso, Revolution: An Intellectual History.
‘[O]ne day, I too would die and … I would prop myself up and remain upright, looking straight ahead until the last, and, when death triumphed over my gaze, I would be like a proud monument raised with hatred in the face of silence’.
— Jacqueline Harman, The Mistress of Silence
‘Why do all the English poems end with a little laugh?’
— Franco Fortini
‘[T]he notion that one day the red dawn will indeed break over Clapham is the one thing that keeps me going.’
— Angela Carter.
‘…an earth of asymptotic approach to which we beckon, bite of dust…’
— Nathaniel Mackey.