SACRED SUNDAY EXTRACTS

Continuing with the American Gothic themed images of the extracts...

1)

'People do not go to the North Pole and fall off icebergs; they go to offices, quarrel with their wives and eat cabbage soup.'

- Chekhov on truth and mundanity in literature.

2)

'Every life is in many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.'

- James Joyce on the basics of being alive.

3)

'Cecil Graham: What is a cynic?

Lord Darlington: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.'

- Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde. The same format was used in The Picture of Dorian Gray: 'Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.'

4)

'If you are not very careful/ You're possessions will possess you/ TV taught me how to feel/ Now real life has no appeal.'

- OH NO! by Marina and the Diamonds (still listening to that first album...)

And that's all I got. Now get out there and enjoy your Sunday!

Forget truth it lacks lyricism

Gayest stolen image so far? But it's a poetic illusion, so...

Here are some Sacred Sunday Extracts from the past few days:

1)

'A man likes his own handwriting the way he likes the smell of his own farts.'

- W.H. Auden

2)

'If you could either be God's worst enemy or nothing, which would you choose?'

- Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk (finally got round to reading it. It's super good by the way, if you can handle a Brad-Pitt-less Fight Club experience.)

3)

'Never get so close to a poem that you forget truth it lacks lyricism.'

- En Gallop (yes, it's a song) by Joanna Newsom - I just can't get enough of this album, like, ever.

4)

'Ahh, Chloe. Chloe looked the way Joni Mitchell's skeleton would look if you made it smile and walk around a party being extra nice to everyone.'

- the cynical/psychotic narrator of Fight Club again, describing a girl dying of cancer at a cancer support group with chilling yet dryly comic accuracy (you totally know what he means, right?).

5)

'Are your emotions pure? Are your nerves adjustable? How do you stand in relation to the potato? Should it still be Constantinople? Does a nameless horse make you more nervous or less nervous than a named horse? In your view, do children smell good?'

- The opening passage to Padgett Powell's The Interrogative Mood. Every sentence in this book is a question to the reader. I haven't finished it yet. Who knows if I ever will. I'm hoping for it to be life-changing.

I hope you had a lovely Sunday.