Died on June 19 — Quotes

It is with my hand and with my heart that I write, not with my eyes

Unexpected confidence fills me. Slowly I feel it emerge. Is this maturity? I run my hand over my face to feel the first transformations in my features. Yes, I have changed. My moist lips are parted on a tentative decision still unclear to me. I realize my worth. Everything that has fermented in my mind over forty years-my unappeased desires, my unheard pleas, the oblivion of solitary pleasure-is rising up within me. A revolution. I feel ready to answer to the demands of my being. (p67-8)

The price of training is always a certain "trained incapacity": the more we know how to do something, the harder it is to learn to do it differently.

Пламя задело древесный ствол, вспорхнуло на него яркой белкой. Дым рос, слоился, клубился, раскатывался. Белка на крыльях ветра перенеслась на другое стоячее дерево, стала поедать его с верхушки. Под темным покровом дыма и листвы огонь подкрался, завладел лесом и теперь остервенело его грыз. Акры черного и рыжего дыма упрямо валили к морю. Глядя на неодолимо катящее пламя, мальчики пронзительно, радостно завизжали. Огонь, будто он живой и дикий, пополз, как ползет на брюхе ягуар, к молодой, похожей на березовую поросли, опушившей розоватую наготу скал. Он набросился на первое попавшееся дерево, мгновенно изукрасил его пылающей листвой. Потом проворно прыгнул на следующее и тотчас заполыхал, качая их уже строем. Под тем местом, где ликовали мальчики, лес на четверть мили кругом бесновался в дыму и пламени. Треск огня дружно ударял в уши барабанным боем, и гору от него будто бросало в дрожь.

NEDRA ROSE LATE IN SUMMER AND winter, whenever she could. Her real self lay in bed until nine, stirred, stretched, breathed the new air. Long sleepers are usually nonconformists; they are pensive and somewhat withdrawn.

In time they could not even fly after their hats. Want of practice, they called it; but what it really meant was that they no longer believed.

Now, at twenty-four, he has come to the time of choice. I know quite well how all that is. And then, I read his letters. His father writes to him in the most beautiful, educated hand, the born hand of a copyist. Admonitions to confront life, to think a little more seriously about this or that. I could have laughed. Words that meant nothing to him. He has already set out on a dazzling voyage which is more like an illness, becoming ever more distant, more legendary. His life will be filled with daring impulses which cause him to disappear and next be heard of in Dublin, in Veracruz… I am not telling the truth about Dean, I am inventing him. I am creating him out of my own inadequacies, you must always remember that.

After a while, the second phase begins: the time of few choices. Uncertainties, strange fears of the past. Finally, of course, comes the third phase, the closing, and one must begin shutting out the world as if by panels because the strength to consider everything in all its shattering diversity is gone and the shape of life-but he will be in a poet's grave by then-finally appears, like a drop about to fall.

The greatest ideas are the simplest. Now there was something to be done they worked with passion.

"I'm warning you. I'm going to get waxy. D'you see? You're not wanted. Understand? We are going to have fun on this island. Understand? We are going to have fun on this island! So don't try it on, my poor misguided boy, or else — -" Simon found he was looking into a vast mouth. There was blackness within, a blackness that spread.

The air was heavy with unspoken knowledge.

Perhaps the various burnings of the Alexandria Library were necessary, like those Australian Forest Fires without which the new seeds cannot burst their shells and make a young, healthy forest.

She is married. I suppose there are children. They walk together on Sundays, the sunlight falling upon them. They visit friends, talk, go home in the evening, deep in the life we all agree is so greatly to be desired.

Women fall in love when they get to know you. Men are just the opposite. When they finally know you they're ready to leave

The Persian ruler Nadir Shah, in his invasion of India in 1738, killed some 200,000 people and returned with a huge quantity of booty and a large number of slaves, including a few thousand beautiful girls. Alain Danielou (d. 1994), French scholar of Indian philosophy, religion, history and arts, described Nadir Shah’s assault of Delhi as follows: ‘…for a week his soldiers massacred everybody, ransacked everything, and razed the entire countryside, so that the survivors would have nothing to eat. He went back to Iran taking with him precious furniture, works of art, horses, the Kohinoor diamond, the famous Peacock throne, and 150 million rupees in gold.’

And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.