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Tropic of Capricorn

Book by Henry Miller · 18 quotes · Muerte, Existencia, Vida

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Tropic of Capricorn Quotes

“Спокойно осъзнавам каква цивилизована личност съм - нуждата, която имам от хора, от разговори, книги, театър, музика, кафенета, питиета и прочие. Ужасно е да бъдеш цивилизован, защото, когато стигнеш края на света, няма с какво да облекчиш ужаса от самотата. Да бъдеш цивилизован, означава да имаш сложни потребности. А човек, когато е напълно завършен, не бива да има нужда от нищо.”

LonelinessCivilization
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“I wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation. I wanted to shake the stone and light out of my system. I wanted the dark fecundity of nature, the deep well of the womb, silence, or else the lapping of the black waters of death. I wanted to be that night which the remorseless eye illuminated, a night diapered with stars and trailing comets. To be of night so frighteningly silent, so utterly incomprehensible and eloquent at the same time. Never more to speak or to listen or to think.”

LightStarsNatureSilenceBloodVeinsWombEloquentAnnihilationStoneIncomprehensibleFecundity
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“I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a chance to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard - and in order to forget.”

ForgetAloneDesiresCavesMetamorphosisReflectCandlelightLeviathanYawn
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“Everything goes forward like oiled clocks; for each minute of the dial there are a million noiseless clocks which tick off the rinds of time. We are traveling faster than the lightning calculator, faster than starlight, faster than the magician can think. Each second is a universe of time. And each universe of time is but a wink of sleep in the cosmogony of speed. When speed comes to its end we shall be there, punctual as always and blissfully undenominated. We shall shed our wings, our clocks and our mantelpieces to lean on. We will rise up feathery and jubilant, like a column of blood, and there will be no memory to drag us down again.”

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“Even if I could write the book I want to write nobody would take it - I know my compatriots only too well. Even if I could begin again it would be no use, because fundamentally I have no desire to work and no desire to become a usefull member of society. I sit there staring at the house across the way. It seems not only ugly and senseless, like all the other houses on the street, but from staring at it so intently, it has suddenly become absurd. The idea of constructing a place of shelter in that particular way strikes as absolutely insane. The city itself strikes me as a piece of the highest insanity, everything about it, sewers, elevated lines, slot machines, newspapers, telephones, cops, doorknobs, flophouses, screens, toilet paper, everything. Everything could just as well not be and not only nothing lost but a whole universe gained. I look at the people brushing by me to see if by chance one of them might agree with me. Supposing I intercepted one of them and just asked him a simple question. Supposing I just said to him suddenly: "Why do you go on living the way you do?" He would probably call a cop. I ask myself - does anyone ever talk to himself the way I do? I ask myself if there isn't something wrong with me. The only conclusion I can come to is that I am different.”

ApathyAbsurdityInertiaMeaninglessness
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