Angels in America

, avsnitt 5:6.

Roy Cohn: [under the impression that Belize is the Angel of Death] Can I ask you something, sir?
Belize: [going along with it] "Sir"?
Roy Cohn: What's it like? After?
Belize: After...?
Roy Cohn: This misery ends?
Belize: Hell or heaven?
Roy Cohn: ...heh...
Belize: Like San Francisco.
Roy Cohn: A city! Good! I was worried... it'd be a garden. I hate that shit.
Belize: Mmmm. Big city. Overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like broken teeth, gritty wind, and a gray high sky full of ravens.
Roy Cohn: Isaiah.
Belize: Prophet birds, Roy. Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cowspit streamers in the wind. And voting booths. And everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion. And all the deities are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers. Race, taste and history finally overcome. And you ain't there.
Roy Cohn: And Heaven?
Belize: That was Heaven, Roy.

Idéer och ord

Det var en gång en ung poet som sade till Mallarmé: "Jag fick den mest fantastiska idé till en dikt i eftermiddags." "Kära nån", sade Mallarmé, "så synd." "Vad menar ni?" sade den unge poeten sårat. "Tja", sade Mallarmé, "dikter består inte av idéer, eller hur? De består av ord."

Ur Flodhästen av Stephen Fry.

Jag har läst för många böcker på sistone med fel idé/ord-kvot ...

"en riktig författare,

det vill säga en person som bor långt ute i skogen och som gillar att gå barfota på skogsvägar utmed vattenbryn."

Daniel Sjölin om Monika Fagerholm i Babel 30 september. Underbart sagt! Inte konstigt jag vill bli författare! Och jag längtar egentligen fruktansvärt efter Glitterscenen, men den har fått så otroligt bra recensioner överallt att jag liksom blir lite rädd... Ska låta den vänta ett tag. Åtminstone tills jag läst ut de fyra böcker jag håller på med?

Dagens citat

There is a story told of a celebrated Russian dancer, who was asked by someone what she meant by a certain dance. She answered with some exasperation, "If I could say it in so many words, do you think I should take the very great trouble of dancing it?


(Ur Introduktionen i min utgåva av The Sound and the Fury av William Faulkner)

Citat ur Palimpsest

Har börjat läsa Palimpsest av Catherynne M Valente. Den handlar om den drömska sagostaden Palimpsest - en gåtfull, märklig plats som ger underbara Spirited Away-vibbar - dit man bara kan komma genom att älska med någon som varit där. Och den är skriven på väldigt vackert språk. Helst skulle jag vilja citera alltihop, men nöjer mig med två exempel:

Oleg är låssmed; allt i hans lägenhet är "locked away, safer than treasure, safer than a heart."

Keys did not really fascinate him, though he collected them as well, matching them carefully, not to the lock that was made for them, modern to modern, brass to brass, keycard to slot, as a common locksmith might, but to the ones he felt they yearned for, deep in their pressed metal hearts. He possessed a rusted iron key with an ornate lion's grimace at its head, slung alongside a gleaming hotel's card-slot lock, its red and green lights dead. He had laid an everyday steel housekey against the rarest of locks, real gold, with lilies raised up on its surface, a complex system of bolts and tumblers concealed within. Only Oleg had heard their cries for each other. Only Oleg knew their silent grief that they could not join.

Och det här får t o m mig att längta efter kaffe ("she" är biodlaren November):

She often felt that she chased the ideal cup of coffee in her mind from table to table, the rich, thick, creamy coffee, spicy, bittersweet, that betrayed no hint of thinness or chemical flavoring, nothing less than total, fathomless devotion to the state of being itself. Every morning she pulled a delicate cup from its brass hook and filled it, hoping that it would be dark and deep and secret as a forest, and each morning it cooled too fast, had too much milk, stained the cup, made her nervous.

Dagens citat

"It was a book to kill time for those who like it better dead."
Dame Rose Macaulay

Dagens citat

"Det har föreslagits att 'palindromskräck' ska kallas ibofobi." :-D

(från susning.nu)