Best Blankness Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“She could, at this stage of things, recognize signals like that, as the epileptic is said to—an odor, color, pure piercing grace note announcing his seizure. Afterward it is only this signal, really dross, this secular announcement, and never what is revealed during the attack, that he remembers. Oedipa wondered whether, at the end of this (if it were supposed to end), she too might not be left with only compiled memories of clues, announcements, intimations, but never the central truth itself, which must somehow each time be too bright for her memory to hold; which must always blaze out, destroying its own message irreversibly, leaving an overexposed blank when the ordinary world came back.”

Revelation Blankness

Book:The Crying of Lot 49

Source: The Crying of Lot 49

“Er livet en eneste lang øvelse i å late som ingenting? Er det derfor de gamle sitter og stirrer ut i luften og hverken gråter eller ler?”

Blankness Dissembling

Book:Orgien, og andre fortellinger

Source: Orgien, og andre fortellinger

“The music left only this bad hurt in her, and a blankness. She could not remember any of the symphony, not even the last few notes. She tried to remember, but no sound at all came to her. Now that it was over there was only her heart like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.”

Heart Lasts Remember Left Sound Hurt Terrible Notes Emptiness Rabbits Detachment Symphony Numbness Blankness

Book:The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

Source: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

“What is Mona Lisa thinking? Nothing, of course. Her blankness is her menace and our fear. [...] Walter Pater is to call her a 'vampire,' coasting through history on her secret tasks.”

Thinking Courses Secret Tasks Vampire Menace Mona Lisa Blankness

Author:Camille Paglia

“I must not fall asleep in the middle of my life. Out of the blankness that surrounds me I must pluck the incident after incident after incident whose little explosions keep me going.”

Life Littles Fall Middle Surround Explosions Incidents Pluck Blankness

Book:In the Heart of the Country: A Novel

Source: In the Heart of the Country: A Novel

“The Nazis, for him, are merely available movie tropes--articulate monsters with a talent for sadism. By making the Americans cruel, too, he escapes the customary division of good and evil along national lines, but he escapes any sense of moral accountability as well. In a Tarantino war, everyone commits atrocities. Like all the director's work after 'Jackie Brown,' the movie is pure sensation. It's disconnected from feeling, and an eerie blankness--it's too shallow to be called nihilism--undermines even the best scenes.”

Source: Do the Movies Have a Future?

“It seemed to me the basic definition of mental illness, this persistent, painful inability to simply be with someone else. It might be lifelong, or it might descend like a sudden catastrophe, this blankness between ourselves and the rest of the world. The blankness might not even be obvious to others. But on our side of that severed connection, it was hell, a life lived behind glass. The only difference between mild depression and severe schizophrenia was the amount of sound and air that seeped in.”

“Yes, the fear of its blankness. At the same time, I kind of loved it. Mallarmé was trying to make the page a blank page. But if you're going to make the page a blank page, it's not just the absence of something, it has to become something else. It has to be material, it has to be this thing. I wanted to turn a page into a thing.”

Ifs Trying Kind Wanted Turns Materials Pages Absence Blank Blank Pages Blankness

Author:Vito Acconci

“For me, the beauty of the blank page, or empty screen,staring up at nine thirty after two cups of coffee and a deep breath remains unique. The blankness invites scribbling on, mental drawing , and the best feeling I know - apart from the more obvious sensual ones - is the feeling of putting down the first thought and seeing it turn into symbols. Making an idea into an emotion.”

“In them was not the savage blankness of the reptile species. Instead there was something far worse - burning, unquenchable rage mixed with the self-mocking irony of great intelligence.”

Self Species Rage Burning Irony Savages Reptiles Blankness

Author:Whitley Strieber

“When we went in the late 1990s, Nigeria was still in a dictatorship. So we didn't go with a mission. It started really with a sort of blankness and open-endedness.”

Stills Late Missions Dictatorship Nigeria Blankness

Author:Rem Koolhaas

“Some people have a mistaken idea that all thoughts disappear through meditation and we enter a state of blankness. There certainly are times of great tranquility when concentration is strong and we have few, if any, thoughts. But other times, we can be flooded with memories, plans or random thinking. It's important not to blame yourself.”

People Ifs Thinking Important Ideas States Strong Memories Meditation Plans Blame Disappear Concentration Mistaken Tranquility Blankness

Author:Sharon Salzberg

“He was conscious of nothing except the blankness of the page in front of him, the itching of the skin above his ankle, the blaring of the music, and a slight booziness caused by the gin.”

Writing Fronts Pages Conscious Skins Ankles Gin Itching Blankness

Book:Animal Farm and 1984

Source: Animal Farm and 1984

“The world, the human world, is bound together not by protons and electrons, but by stories. Nothing has meaning in itself: all the objects in the world would be shards of bare mute blankness, spinning wildly out of orbit, if we didn't bind them together with stories.”

Ifs World Humans Stories Would Be Together Objects Bounds Spinning Mute Orbit Electrons Proton Blankness

Book:Starting Out in the Evening

Source: Starting Out in the Evening

“If you stare at the center of the universe, there is coldness there. A blankness. Ultimately, the universe doesn't care about us. Time doesn't care about us. That's why we have to care about each other.”

Ifs Life Care Universe Staring Coldness Center Of The Universe Blankness

Author:David Levithan

“I want to escape from myself. For when I do start up and stare myself seedily in the face, as happens to be my case at present, my blankness is inconceivable--indescribable--my misery amazing.”

Want Happens Faces Cases Misery Staring Indescribable Blankness

Book:The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens

Source: The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens

“In the next few galactic seconds, the fate of the universe will be decided. Life - the ultimate experiment - will either explode into space, and engulf the star-clouds in a fire storm of children, trees, and butterfly wings; or Life will fail, fizzle, and gutter out, leaving the universe shrouded forever in impenetrable blankness, devoid of hope.”

Children Universe Next Stars Space Forever Fire Fate Failing Tree Decided Ultimate Philosophical Wings Leaving Clouds Storm Experiments Seconds Butterfly Gutters Butterfly Wings Blankness

Author:Marshall Savage

“There comes a time when the blankness of the future is just so extreme, it's like such a black wall of nothingness. Not of bad things like a cave full of monsters and so, you're afraid of entering it. It's just nothingness, the void, emptiness and it is just horrible. It's like contemplating a future-less future and so you just want to step out of it. The monstrosity of being alive overwhelms you.”

Want Black Steps Alive Wall Depression Extremes Monsters Horrible Emptiness Bad Things Void Contemplating Nothingness Entering Caves There Comes A Time Monstrosity Blankness

Author:Stephen Fry

“Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny - and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do).”

Failing Theory Tests Positive Atheism Abandon Willingness Harsh Recognizing Preference Objectivity Scrutiny Blankness

Author:Stephen Jay Gould