January 2012
“It is generally recognized that words are signs; but poets are practically the...”
– Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology
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“It is certainly not then—not in dreams—but when one is wide awake, at moments of...”
– Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory
1 tag
“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is...”
– First words of Speak, Memory, Vladimir Nabokov
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird
I Among twenty snowy mountains, The only moving thing Was the eye of the blackbird.
II I was of three minds, Like a tree In which there are three blackbirds.
III The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds. It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV A man and a woman Are one. A man and a woman and a blackbird Are one.
V I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of...
“Who of us knows all the words of the language he speaks and the full meaning of...”
– Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
“This entire study rests on the postulate that the unanimous feelings of...”
– Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
“I was a loner as a child, and for me everything was a strange symbol, the...”
– Italo Calvino, “Love Far from Home”, Numbers in the Dark
“?למה אנחנו צריכים לגור בטבע”
“For society, that unique source of all that is sacred, is not satisfied to move...”
– Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
“I’m respecting you enough here to give you what I believe is the straight...”
– David Foster Wallace on Politics on the English Language and delicate conversations he has had with his students that I will maybe have to have eventually this is complicated oh my
