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Timbuktu

Book by Paul Auster · 6 quotes · Animals, Empathy, Aesthetics

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Timbuktu Quotes

“The difference was not that one was a pessimist and the other an optimist, it was that one's pessimism had led to an ethos of fear, and the other's pessimism had led to a noisy, fractious disdain for Everything-That-Was. One shrank, the other flailed. One toed the line, the other crossed it out. Much of the time they were at loggerheads, and because Willy found it so easy to shock his mother, he rarely wasted an opportunity to provoke an argument. If only she'd the wit to back off a little, he probably wouldn't have been so insistent about making his points. Her antagonism inspired him, pushed him into ever more extreme positions, and by the time he was ready to leave the house and go off to college, he had indelibly cast himself in his chosen role: as malcontent, as rebel, as outlaw poet prowling the gutters of a ruined world.”

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“And if, as all philosophers on the subject have noted, art is a human activity that relies on the senses to reach the soul, did it not also stand to reason that dogs -- at least dogs of Mr. Bones' caliber -- would have it in them to feel a similar aesthetic impulse? Would they not, in other words, be able to appreciate art? As far as Willy knew, no one had ever thought of this before. Did that make him the first man in recorded history to believe such a thing was possible? No matter. It was an idea whose time had come. If dogs were beyond the pull of oil paintings and string quartets, who was to say they wouldn't respond to an art based on the sense of smell? Why not an olfactory art? Why not an art for dogs that dealt with the world as dogs knew it?”

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“Oliko Mr Bones enkeli, joka oli jäänyt vangiksi koiranruumiiseen? Siltä Willystä tuntui. Tehtyään kahdeksantoista kuukauden ajan hyvin läheisiä ja tarkkoja havaintoja hän oli siitä varma. Miten muuten selittyisi se taivaallinen sanaleikki, joka kaikui hänen korvissaan päivin ja öin? Sanoman tulkitsemiseksi ei tarvinnut kuin hiukan järjestellä kirjaimia uudelleen. Voisiko mikään olla ilmeisempää? Koira, dog, ja mitä seuraavaksi tuli? God, Jumala, koko totuus. Yhdellä vaatimattomimmista olennoista oli nimensä kautta yhteys kaikkein korkeimpaan, Luojaan.”

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