Bokelskere.no

If your own side does not believe your propaganda what hope is there that the enemy might?

When you walk along the street, you're in a movie; when you have a row, you're in a movie; when you make love, you're in a movie. When you skim stones over the water, buy a newspaper, park your car, line up in a McDonald's, stand on a rooftop looking down, meet a friend, joke in the pub, wake suddenly in the night or fall asleep dead drunk, you're in a movie. But when you are alone, dead alone, without props or co-stars, then you're on the cutting-room floor. Or, worse, you're in a novel; you're on stage, stuck inside a monologue; you're trapped in a poem. You are CUT.

"Political nationalism has become for the European of our age," quotes Zuckermann, coming through with a wobbling tray, "the most important thing in the world, more important than humanity, decency, kindness, piety; more important than life itself."

...the truth about things was like a bowl of fish-hooks: you try to examine one little truth and the whole lot comes out in a black and vicious bunch.

En kvinne kan på mange måter klare seg selv, mens en mann bare blir patetisk om han bor alene.

"Mamma, liker du å være på kjøkkenet?" Du spurte henne om det en gang, men det var akkurat som om hun ikke forstod hva du snakket om. "Liker du å være på kjøkkenet? Liker du å lage mat og koke ris?" Mamma stirret på deg. "Det handler ikke om å like eller mislike kjøkkenet. Jeg laget mat fordi jeg måtte. Jeg måtte være på kjøkkenet sånn at dere skulle få mat og kunne gå på skolen. Man kan da ikke bare gjøre det man har lyst til? Noen ting må man gjøre enten man liker det eller ikke." Mamma så på deg med et uttrykk som sa: Hva slags spørsmål er det? Hun mumlet. "Hvis man bare gjør det man liker, hvem skal da gjøre tingene ingen liker?"

...the intelligence community's very success fostered the illusion among most of the nation's leaders that covert operations could be a strategic and not just a tactical tool -that they could be used in place of real diplomacy to end the geographic, ethnic, religious, and national disputes in which Israel is mired...Indeed, in many respects the story of Israel's intelligence community as recounted in this book has been one of a long string of impressive tactical successes, but also disastrous strategic failures.

The pilot started to close the canopy. His base commander came running up to his plane and climbed the ladder to his cockpit. "Do you want to know who it is?" he asked the pilot and the navigator. Who they were going to kill, he meant.
"Get off my plane," the pilot said. "We don't want to know. It means nothing."
In a way, it didn't. The men who did the actual killing, who flew the missions and released the bombs, often knew the least. At altitude, all they could see were small targets idientified by the twelve numbers of the coordinates, and there was no need to look for anything more.

The policemen claimed they were obeying an order to shoot curfew breakers, but judge Bejamin Halevy, in one of Israel's most important judicial rulings, said that soldiers must not obey an order that is clearly illegal. "The distinguishing mark of a manifestly illegal order," Halevy wrote, "is that above such an order should fly, like a black flag, a warning saying: 'Prohibited!' Not merely formally illegal, not covered up or partly covered...but an illegality that stabs the eye and infuriates the heart, if the eye is not blind and the heart is not obtuse or corrupt."

De som var innstilt på å drepe på grunn av sin overbevisning, manglet alltid empati, det menneskelige lyset i øynene deres var dempet til ingenting.

"You are describing Tyranny," Percitia said grandly -Temeraire heard the capital letter quite distinctly- "and a moment's reflection will show you its numerous flaws: only one can be a tyrant, and therefore such a political system will rarely be just, or serve the needs of all."
"That is lamentable, to be sure," Ning said practically, "-unless one should happen to be the tyrant, whereupon it makes everything very easy."

All maps are fiction when the world is seen from the sky. But if ten thousand dragons choose to believe in this one, I think you will find it nearer the truth than otherwise.

'Chiamanka, stop looking for a partner in your madness. And what does it actually mean to be known? You want somebody to study you and cram you like a textbook?'
'Yes, and anticipate me.'
'Anticipate you.'
'If you live your life and die without one person fully knowing you, then have you even lived?'
'Well, I know you fully.'
'It has to be romantic.'
'Why?'
'It just has to be.'
'Your thesis is falling apart. So you're not looking to be known, on principle; you're looking for a hetereosexual man who will study you like a textbook'.
'It doesn't sound as nice when you say it like that.'
We were both laughing and I thought of how much I had missed my cousin, how I longed to hug her again.

Zikora felt a bifurcation of self, two parts of her existing in parallel. At work she was meticulous, sceptical, reading everything twice and asking questions, but with men she blundered ahead, wanting to believe whatever she was told.

I have never lied in my life as often as I lied to Darnell. I lied to please him, to be the person he wanted me to be, and sometimes I lied to wrest wretched scraps of reassurance from him. I'm sick, I would write, to force a reply, after days of sending him unaswered texts. Sometimes he replied right away, and other times he waited a day or two. Fell better, was all he would write; not a question that opened the door for more, not How are you feeling now? or What's going on? My days passed in emptiness until I saw him again. My phone lay always beside me on my desk, never on silent, for fear I might miss his call. When it beeped a text message, I snatched it up and felt annoyed with whoever had texted, as if by texting they had taken up the space meant for him. His silences astonished me; how could my force of feeling not cause in him a smilar obsession?

Men mange av propagandistene i Diktaturklubben har lært av feilene som ble gjort på 1900-tallet. De gir ikke sine medborgere en visjon om en utopi, og de inspirerer dem ikke til å bygge en bedre verden. I stedet lærer de folk å være kyniske og passive, siden det ikke finnes noen bedre verden å bygge. Målet deres er å overbevise folk om å passe sine egne saker, holde seg borte fra politikken og aldri håpe på et demokratisk alternativ.

I have quite settled it that he is a bounder: he will say anything, and do anything, and be friendly to anyone, only to be back as governor; but I do not think it is because he wishes so much to do anything pleasant or nice for anyone.' 'No, he only wishes to be vindicated, I believe,' Laurence answered, 'and revenged.'

Jeg antar at man kunne slengt hele Europa fra seg et tilfeldig sted på dette kontinentet og ikke klare å finne det igjen.

Forstadsliv: en (vibrerende, varmegenererende) bikube.
Famlieliv: liten, selvgod bikube inni en bikube.

Når jeg har sagt nei, føles maset til en mann helt uutholdelig. Selv om han gjør det høflig eller forsiktig, overkjører han den tydelig uttalte hensikten min. Budskapet er: Valget ditt spiller egentlig ingn rolle. Mitt ønske er det som har noe å si, og jeg har ikke lyst til å få dårlig samvittighet for å tvinge deg. Så kanskje du burde tenke deg om på nytt?