Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Cornell Woolrich

Quote by Cornell Woolrich

“Perry, the manager, had come up with him, in trousers and bathrobe. He was a stout, jovial-looking man ordinarily, but right now he was only stout. ("The Room With Something Wrong")”

Quote by Cornell Woolrich

Create image

Author

Cornell Woolrich
Cornell Woolrich

Cornell Woolrich was an American novelist known for his suspense novels. His works are characterized by their tense atmosphere and complex psychological descriptions, which have had a profound impact on detective novels and thrillers in films. more

You May Also Like

“No matter the border, the Mekong has been an indiscriminate giver and taker of life in Southeast Asia for thousands of years. It’s a paradox like civilization’s other great rivers—be it the Nile, Indus, Euphrates, Ganges or China’s Sorrow the Huang He—for without its waters life is a daily struggle for survival; yet with its waters life is a daily bet that natural disasters and diseases will visit someone else’s village, because it’s not if, but when it’s going to happen that’s the relevant question.”

RiversChinaVietnamLaosRainy SeasonFloodsMekong
Book:The Rainy Season
Create image

“Laos is the most heavily bombed country in the history of the world. From 1964 to 1973, the United States dropped more than two million tons of ordnance on Laos to disrupt the Ho Chi Minh Trail and try to stanch a Communist insurgency—more than was dropped on all of Germany and Japan during World War II. There were 580,000 bombing missions, which averages out to one every eight minutes for nine years. Sometimes, U.S. planes returning to Thailand from missions over Vietnam indiscriminately dropped their remaining bombs on Laos. More than 270 million cluster munitions—“bombies”—were used, and 80 million of them failed to detonate. In the four decades since the end of the war, only 1 percent have been cleared. More than fifty thousand people have been killed or injured in UXO accidents; over the last decade, nearly half of those casualties have been children.”

CommunismForeign PolicyLaos
Book:The World As It Is: Inside the Obama White House
Create image

“C'est un retour sans joie. Le monde que nous avons laissé derrière nous n'existe plus. L'Indochine française s'est effacée. Le Royaume du Laos a basculé. Une république communiste s'est emparée des terres et des esprits. Nous avons rompu avec ce système-là. Notre pays imaginaire te hante, je le sais. Par mon ignorance, je suis préservée de son emprise. Moi, je n'ai que des hypothèses. Mes fictions claudicantes sont bien inoffensives. Elles ne génèrent aucun regret, aucun sentiment coupable. C'est mon amnésie que tu nommes ingratitude et que tu tentes de mater par ton "toujours une Vietnamienne". ~ p 29”

VietnamLaosDébatEthnie
Book:L'Imprudence
Create image

“Befangen in arg konventionellen Vorstellungen von "guter Literatur", ist Rinaldi und Naulleau offenbar noch nie aufgegangen, dass Houellebecqs Kunstgriff genau darin besteht, jede Art von korruptem Literaturgetue aus seinen Texten bewusst zu eliminieren, um stattdessen eine mausgraue Angestelltenprosa diesseits des akademischen Kunst- und Bildungsbetriebs zu erfinden. Die Stillosigkeit, die Houellebecq für sich in Anspruch nimmt und die ihm von Mitgliedern der Académie française natürlich übel genommen wird, ist deswegen kein Mangel. Sie ist vielmehr ein Verfahren, dem geschwätzigen Betrieb der Hochliteratur zu entgehen. Und zwar genau dorthin, wo den Kritikern nur noch Naserümpfen bleibt: in die Bahnhofskioske und Supermarktregale. Dort werden Bücher in der Tat nicht fürs Regal und für den sozialen Distinktionsgewinn erworben, sondern zum richtigen Lesen. Proust gegen Houellebecq auszuspielen, wie Angelo Rinaldi es tut, ist nicht nur billig, es ist von bestürzender Begriffsstutzigkeit. Im Übrigen zeugt es von eher bescheidener Kenntnis des Werks und seiner Zusammenhänge. Dass der "Bahnhofsliterat" kluge Einleitungen zu Auguste Comtes "Allgemeiner Religionstheorie" verfasst hat, geht im aufgeregten Invektivenhagel unter.”

Michel Houellebecq
Author:Clemens Pornschlegel
Create image

“Houellebecq has created a new genre—the dystopian conversion tale. Submission is not the story some expected of an armed coup d’état, and no one in it expresses hatred or even contempt of Muslims. At one level it is simply about a man who through suffering and indifference finds himself slouching toward Mecca. At another level, though, it is about a civilization that after centuries of a steady, almost imperceptible sapping of inner conviction finds itself doing the same thing. The literature of civilizational decline, to which Zemmour’s Le Suicide français is a minor contribution, is typically brash and breathless. Not so Submission. There is not even drama here—no clash of spiritual armies, no martyrdom, no final conflagration. Stuff just happens, as in all Houellebecq’s fiction. All one hears at the end is a bone-chilling sigh of collective relief. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. Whatever.”

Michel Houellebecq
Book:The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction
Create image

“El amor, el amor En un cine porno, unos jubilados cascados Contemplaban, escépticos, Los retozos mal filmados de dos lascivas parejas; No había argumento. He ahí, pensaba yo, el rostro del amor, El auténtico rostro. Algunos son seductores, y seducirán siempre, Y el resto sobrevive. No existe ni el destino ni la fidelidad, Sólo cuerpos que se atraen. Sin sentir ningún apego ni, desde luego, piedad, Uno juega, y después destroza. Algunos son seductores y por lo tanto muy amados; Sabrán lo que es un orgasmo. Pero hay tantos otros cansados y sin nada que ocultar, Ni siquiera un fantasma. Si acaso, una soledad agravada por la impúdica Alegría de las mujeres; Si acaso, una certeza: “eso no es para mí”, Un oscuro y pequeño drama. Con certeza morirán un poco desengañados, Sin ilusiones poéticas; Practicarán a conciencia el arte de despreciarse, Será algo mecánico. Me dirijo a todo aquel que nunca haya sido amado, Que nunca supo gustar; Me dirijo a los ausentes del sexo liberado, Y del placer corriente. No teman amigos, su pérdida es mínima: El amor no existe en ninguna parte. Sólo es una broma cruel de la que ustedes son víctimas, Una jugada de experto.”

Michel Houellebecq
Book:Poemas
Create image