Book detail: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980 is presented as a focused source page for quotations connected with this book, collection, transcript, or source record.
This volume offers a glimpse into the intellectual and creative process of the author, showcasing their thoughts and experiences from 1964 to 1980. The content includes musings on philosophy, art, science, and personal anecdotes, providing a rich tapestry of the author's inner world during this significant period of their life.
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“What makes me feel strong? Being in love and work. I must work.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“Decline of the letter, the rise of the notebook! One doesn't write to others any more; one writes to oneself.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“A good listener: a physical presence that is warm, alert, intelligent - more important than any words.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“A lot of what I've written in criticism of my lust for virtue - my discovery that I've committed idolatry, making of the good an idol - is open to the charge of being still caught within the dialectic of idolatry. I've made a moral criticism of my moral consciousness. Meta-idolatry.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“I feel inauthentic at a party. ... Going to a party is a 'low' activity - the authentic self is compromised, fragmented - one plays 'roles.' One isn't fully present, beyond role-playing. One doesn't (can't) tell the full truth, which means one is lying, even if one doesn't literally tell lies.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“The unit of the poet is the word, the unit of the prose writer is the sentence.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“Each generation has to reinvent spirituality.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“Intelligence is not necessarily a good thing, something to value or cultivate. It's more like a fifth wheel - necessary or desirable when things break down. When things go well, it's better to be stupid ... Stupidity is as much a value as intelligence.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“I write - and talk - in order to find out what I think.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“One man thinks before he acts. Another man thinks after he acts. Each is of the opinon that the other thinks too much.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“The only transformation that interests me is a total transformation - however minute”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces ‘intelligence.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“Mad people = People who stand alone and burn. I'm attracted to them because they give me permission to do the same.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“My library is an archive of longings.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“I'm only interested in people engaged in a project of self-transformation.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“One criticizes in others what one recognizes and despises in oneself. For example, an artist who is revolted by another’s ambitiousness.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“I like to feel dumb. That’s how I know there’s more in the world than me.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“Nothing is mysterious, no human relation. Except love.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“One can never ask anyone to change a feeling.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“All great art contains at its center contemplation, a dynamic contemplation.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“The only interesting ideas are heresies”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“I perceive value, I confer value, I create value, I even create — or guarantee — existence. Hence, my compulsion to make “lists.” The things (Beethoven’s music, movies, business firms) won’t exist unless I signify my interest in them by at least noting down their names. Nothing exists unless I maintain it (by my interest, or my potential interest). This is an ultimate, mostly subliminal anxiety. Hence, I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“The solution to a problem - a story that you are unable to finish - is the problem. It isn't as if the problem is one thing and the solution something else. The problem, properly understood = the solution. Instead of trying to hide or efface what limits the story, capitalize on that very limitation. State it, rail against it.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“There is a great deal that either has to be given up or be taken away from you if you are going to succeed in writing a body of work.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“Art is a form of consciousness.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“The only story that seems worth writing is a cry, a shot, a scream. A story should break the reader's heart.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“Kindness, kindness, kindness. I want to make a New Year's prayer, not a resolution. I'm praying for courage.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“I must remain always, both in principle + actively, interested in everything. Taking all of knowledge as my province.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“Writing is a little door. Some fantasies, like big pieces of furniture, won’t come through.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“In ‘life,’ I don’t want to be reduced to my work. In ‘work,’ I don’t want to be reduced to my life.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“Being in love means being willing to ruin yourself for the other person.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“Self-respect. It would make me lovable. And it's the secret to good sex.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“Feeling of discontinuity as a person. My various selves—how do they all come together? And anxiety at moments of transition from one “role” to another. Will I make it fifteen minutes from now? Be able to step into, inhabit the person I’m supposed to be? This is felt as an infinitely hazardous leap, no matter how often it’s successfully executed.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“I feel profoundly alone, cut off, unattractive…I feel unloveable. But I respect that unloveable solider—struggling to survive, struggling to be honest, just, honourable. I respect myself.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“Contempt
The contempt I feel for others—for myself different, less internal than guilt.
It’s not that I think (or have ever thought) I was bad—through and through. I think I’m unattractive, unloveable, because I’m incomplete. It’s not what I am that’s wrong, it’s that I’m not more (responsive, alive, generous, considerate, original, sensitive, brave etc.).
My profoundest experience is of indifference, rather than censure.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980
“Alone, alone. I am alone – I ache … Yet for the first time, despite all the anguish and the reality problems, I’m here. I feel tranquil, whole, ADULT.”
Source: As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh: Journals and Notebooks, 1964-1980