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T Quotes

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All T Quotes

“That part of our conscious experience representable by physical symbols ought not to claim to be the whole. As a conscious being you are not one of my symbols; your domain is not circumscribed by my spatial measurements. If, like Hamlet, you count yourself king of an infinite space, I do not challenge your sovereignty. I only invite attention to certain disquieting rumours which have arisen as to the state of Your Majesty's nutshell.”

“That part of your life is over. Set it aside as something you have finished. Complete or no, it is done with you. No being gets to decide what his life is "supposed to be"...'Be a man. Discover where you are now, and go on from there, making the best of things. Accept your life, and you might survive it. If you hold back from it, insisting this is not your life, not where you are meant to be, life will pass you by. You may not die from such foolishness, but you might as well be dead for all the good your life will do you or anyone else.”

“That particular fear has the texture you can neither forget nor describe. It is like the fear of the victims of an earthquake, of people who have lost faith in the stillness of the earth. And yet it is not the same. It is without analogy for it is not comparable to the fear of nature, which is the most universal of human fears, nor to the fear of violence of the state, which is the commonest of modern fears. It is the fear that comes from the knowledge that normalcy is utterly contingent, that spaces that surround one, the streets that one inhabits, can become, suddenly and without warning, as hostile as a desert in a flash flood. It is this that sets apart the thousand million people who inhabit the subcontinent from the rest of the world - not language, not food, not music - it is the special quality of loneliness that grows out of the fear of the war between oneself and one's image in the mirror.”

“That particular situation was problematic enough, but it is emblematic of much larger and more entrenched questions and conflicts around who speaks for parks, who speaks for land. The claim that parks should be accessible to “all” is a performatively liberal stance, one that undercuts any agonistic claims and becomes atheoretical and depolitical in the hands of state bureaucracies. All land is saturated with stories and histories, much of it beautiful and honourable, and some awful and violent. Claiming land to be “common” or to be commonly held does not wipe history clean. We live among the accumulating ruins of colonial rationalities, and stating that parks should “benefit all” willfully ignores history and obscures the highly political choices that are being made all around us. Any claim that parks are “open to all” is a naked lie — a lie that is designed to buttress colonial rationalities.”

“That peculiar light just before sunset, before gloaming: it is then that Essa sees for the first time the famous dunes at Avanue, which roll like fat people in their sleep, and shift restlessly forever. “They cast long shadows, these sleeping giants, and Essa shivers. She has walked too far—after the trip north she was so grateful to be out of hospital—her hands and feet are cold, and she is dizzy with exhaustion. She sits down on the ragged grass at the edge of the bluff which overlooks the dunes, and tries not to hate them. “Her mother’s words, remembered in a dream, sound like water flowing in her thoughts. There is no water here. The grasses under her are dry and stiff, and they grow in sand so fine it grits through her clothing against the skin of her ass. The sea is too far away to see or smell. But at least she is alone. “Though she is shivering, it is still a hot day, and the sun has warmed the sand. The ground radiates heat into her body. She lies down flat on her belly, her head to one side so that she can still see the dunes, and puts her hands beneath her; gradually they warm. “Gradually her body comes back into balance and she starts to see an eerie beauty before her. The sun is fully down when she sits up, brushes the sand away as well as she can, and hugs her knees to her chest. She puts her chin on her knees and watches darkness descend over the low rolling landscape. “This is unlike any cliff on which she has rested yet. It is low and gives no perspective. The dunes come up almost to her feet. Yet the demarcation is quite abrupt: there is no grass growing anywhere after this brief crumbling drop-off, and she can see as the land-breeze begins to quicken that ahead of her the sand is moving. In fact, she realizes, she can hear it, a low sweeping sound which has mounted from inaudibility until it inexorably backs every other sound: sounds of grasses moving, insects scraping, birds calling from the invisible sea far beyond her viewpoint are all subsumed in one great sand-song. “It is a sound so relentlessly sad that Essa can hardly bear to listen, but so persistent that she cannot ignore it now that she has become aware of its susurration. She pulls her sweater—the one her mother made by her knitting—around her and waits. “When it is fully dark and the wind has died again, she rises and begins the long walk back to town in the dim light of stars and crescent moon.”

“That people choose friendships and alliances based on political, religious, moral convictions; instead of basing on a shared sense of humour and a shared sense of compassion, is testament to how backwards and senile we are as a collective society. Politics, religion, and morals, are naturally divisive because they are built on specific background types. A sense of humour and compassion: these are universal, and people from all backgrounds can be united by these. People are actively looking into the world for reasons to see what they believe to be wrong in others, and huddling together in their small groups; rather than actively looking to find what they can laugh at together. Or what they can help, together.”