Bokelskere.no

Did you intend to kill me? There's no flesh or blood within this cloak to kill. There's only an idea. Ideas are bulletproof.

Når vi selv er ulykkelige, lengter vi etter et fellesskap med andre som har det som vi, etter denne bittersøte bekreftelsen på at vi ikke lider fordi vi har vært uheldige eller valgt feil, men fordi det er livets lov.

I seem to move around perfectly easily among people, to have perfectly normal relations with them. Is it possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money. “It is as if I were to visit friends, and to make some polite remark about the lamp in their living-room, and they were to say, ‘Yes, it’s nice, isn’t it? Polish-Jewish skin it’s made of, we find that’s best, the skins of young Polish-Jewish virgins.’ And then I go to the bathroom and the soap-wrapper says, ‘Treblinka — 100% human stearate.’ Am I dreaming, I say to myself? What kind of house is this?

As the years have passed, the time has grown longer. The sad truth is that what I could recall in 5 seconds all too soon needed 10, then 30, then a full minute - like shadows lengthening at dusk. Someday, I suppose, the shadows will be swallowed up in darkness.

Any death is stupid from the viewpoint of whoever is undergoing it, Adam One used to say, because no matter how much you've been warned, Death always comes without knocking. Why now? is the cry. Why so soon? It's the cry of a child being called home at dusk, it's the universal protest against Time.

What is it about our own Species that leaves us so vulnurable to the impulse to violence? Why are we so addicted to the shedding of blood? Whenever we are tempted to become puffed up, and to see ourselves as superior to all other Animals, we should reflect on our own brutal history.

I always feel as if I'm struggling to become someone else. As if I'm trying to find a new place, grab hold of a new life, a new personality. I suppose it's part of growing up, yet it's also an attempt to re-invent myself. By becoming a different me, I could free myself of everything. I seriously believed I could escape myself - as long as I made the effort. But I always hit a dead end. No matter where I go, I still end up me. What's missing never changes. The scenery may change, but I'm stil the same old incomplete person. The same missing elements torture me with a hunger that I can never satisfy. I think that lack itself is as close as I'll become to defining myself.

"Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star," I said. "It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn't even exist any more. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything."

I solemnly swear that I am up to no good.

Det finnes til og med dem som den dag i dag som ikke vet hvem de er, kameleoner som gikk fra Beatles til Doors til Bowie til Roxy Music til Sex Pistols til reggae til synthpop og New Age og nå ser ut som en blanding av Magne Raundalen og brødrene Blystad, digger country og Sinatra uten å skjønne noen av delene, naturlige svikere vil jeg kalle dem, mennesker uten kjerne

Among other things, you'll find that you are not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimlulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them - if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry.

Og alt det andre nye; kvinnene, ja, selv arbeiderkvinnene, arbeidskolleger og venninner av Liljan, sitter hjemme i husene sine med én eller to unger og har ikke noe å gjøre. De skulle være hjemme og ikke ha noe å gjøre, det var ihvertfall det de sa, om årsaken aldri så mye er et trangt arbeidsmarked; det er riktignok noe som heter "barneoppdragelse", men det går stort sett ut på at heller ikke ungene skal ha noe å gjøre.

Historien skrives av seierherrene, heter det, og det er sannere enn behagelig er, for når den fattige til slutt seirer, er hans dumme og og bedøvede hjerne så lettet og glad over å kunne viske ut sin fortid - en mislykket streik for eksempel, at han hater alt som ligner på det og trår det under foten som den bakfulle Jeppe baronens tjenere.

UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.

Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what’s going on. In fact, things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes. (...) Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won’t make time stand still.

Everyone of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads—at least that’s where I imagine it—there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own little private library.