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Amsterdam Stories

Book by Nescio · 8 quotes · Amsterdam Stories, Nescio, The Netherlands

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Amsterdam Stories Quotes

“There you were, [Japi] said, hurtling on this earth through the icy blackness of space, where night never ends, the sun had disappeared never to rise again. The earth raced on through the darkness, the icy wind howling behind it. All those heavenly bodies hurtling through space. If one of them hurtles into you, then you're lost, lost with all the other fifteen hundred million unlucky people. The Freeloader”

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“It was in December. I stood in the back of the tram, all the way in the back. It drove through the country and stopped and started again, it took hours, the countryside was endless. And the sky got bluer and bluer and the sun shone until it seemed like flowers would have to start sprouting out of the country bumpkins. And the red roofs in the villages and the black trees and the fields, most of them covered with straw, had it nice and warm, and the dunes sat bareheaded in the sun. And the road lay there, white and smarting, it couldn't bear the sunlight, and the glass panes of the village streetlamp flashed, they had trouble withstanding the glare too. But I got colder and colder. And the tram ran as long as the sun shone. It's a long ride from Hillegom to Leiden and the days are short in December. By the end, a block of ice was standing there on the tram staring into the big stupid cold sun that was flaming red as though the revolution was finally starting, as though offices were being blown up all over Amsterdam, but still it couldn't bring a spark of life back to my cold feet and stiff legs. And it kept getting bigger and colder, the sun, and I got colder and stayed the same size, and the blue sky looked down very disapprovingly: What are you doing on that tram?”

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“But these aren’t the first eventful times I have lived through and if I’m granted even more years then with God’s help I will most likely get to my third war. The silent course of things takes its silent, implacable course, the little man who is a hero today will tomorrow, when peace comes, be scolded in his stupid little job or maybe won’t have a job at all and will turn back into the useless piece of clockwork he used to be. And if he has a little more to him, maybe he will read the first chapter of Ecclesiastes: “All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it.” Eventful times. What remains from Italy’s eventful times in the thirteenth century except Dante’s Inferno? Do. As if I haven’t had enough pointless doing. Oh they have nothing else, they only are when they do. I want to be, and for me to do is: not to be.”

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