Blockquote
A NOTEBOOK · EMPHASIS MINE
The block quotation is a typographic device used to designate an extended quoted passage. A block quote appears as its own verical unit and is distinguished from surrounding text through indentation, italics, type size, or some combination of these. The <blockquote> tag dates to the first draft of HTML.
Blockquote.org is the weblog of Justin Skolnick.
In time all quotations will be properly documented, because it matters.
I love Camus
To ensure the adoration of a theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough; a police force is needed as well.
— Albert Camus, The Rebel
At 3am I woke freezing to find the batteries in the thermostat dead. The screeching drawers of an old desk yielded nothing from my housemates’ common property so I dug through my own for a pair of double-As, replaced them, and tossed in bed for an hour. My alarm didn’t rouse me on account of its newly dead triple-A. When I roused myself and checked the other clock, I figured if I was going to be late, I could be late. I showered a long hot shower and ate my oatmeal over email. I saw a coworker cleaning snow off his car. “I’m not going in today,” he said. “I’m going in late,” I said. He said that sounds like a plan. I stopped at a favorite cafe halfway to work for a green tea to go, and the barista said everyone has those days.
spam subjects as plot lines
drier paranoia albright windowsill inve
ministerial woke masterpiece vestigial
gusset brandt modus buret hetman
doomsday complaint shopkeep lying blurt
But deep inside me, in my most intimate thought, Truth, which is neither Hebrew nor Greek nor Latin nor any foreign speech, would speak to me, though not in syllables formed by lips and tongue.
...
Our use of words is generally inaccurate and seldom completely correct, but our meaning is recognized none the less.
— Augustine
They fall out.
I have the house to myself. When sitting alone the rattles drop from my ear canal one by one between sofa cushions. We will never find them.
Sticky sticky sticky
What the Church has taught down through the centuries, we also teach. In simple terms that which was assumed, is now explicit; that which was uncertain, is now clarified; that which was meditated upon, discussed and sometimes argued over, is now put together in one clear formulation.
— Paul VI
Sometime prior to its acquisition by another company and after it moved to occupy a space larger than some convention halls the company lost the majority of its staff. I’d estimate one half to two thirds of the cubicles were vacant, along with the conference rooms and copy rooms and the corridors where food might be prepared if the mini-fridges admitted more than bottled water for meetings. When I heard my own keystrokes on one of those spongy white boards Apple’s been selling the last few years I realized half the morning had passed and the space was as empty as when I clocked in. The distance between people being physical for once more than emotional, it brought my imagination to picturing life after plagues and wars and after the ensuing grief and trauma.
Yesterday Damon and Veronica and I waited half an hour for the Chicago bus, watching two pass overfull. The one we finally boarded crammed before long and I loved every minute of it, in contrast to nothing and without reserve.
Why have we until now held such lofty views about human nature? Why have we not recognized its frailty and liability to temptation? We must form our estimate of men less from their achievements and failures, and more from their sufferings.
— Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “After Ten Years”
But you cannot simply list all the moments when the world tickles your senses, only to seep away between your fingers and eyelashes, leaving you alone to tell the story of your life to an audience interested only in the fireworks of universal experiences, the roller coaster rides of sympathy and judgment.
— Aleksandar Hemon, Nowhere Man
I am just able to imagine, in some primitive perspective, the author of, say, King Lear returning home for lunch and allowing that the morning’s work had gone well or poorly. Any such image fails me in respect of the composition of the speeches from the whirlwind in the Book of Job, of the central sections of Ecclesiastes or of chapters 13-17 in the Fourth Gospel. It is equally futile, I feel, in reference to “Before the Law.” This text persuades me as being informed by revelation.
— from George Steiner’s introduction to Kafka’s The Trial