10 quotes
Certain memories, certain trains of thought are like the aching tooth one must always be touching just to make sure it still hurts.
Eyeless in Gaza (1936)
Hell is the incapacity to be other than the creature one finds oneself ordinarily behaving as.
Eyeless in Gaza (1936)
Chastity — the most unnatural of all the sexual perversions, he added parenthetically, out of Remy de Gourmont.
Eyeless in Gaza (1936)
"Death," said Mark Staithes. "It's the only thing we haven't succeeded in completely vulgarizing."
Eyeless in Gaza (1936)
Life was so short, and books so countlessly many.
Eyeless in Gaza (1936)
Leaving you defenceless against the full consciousness of the fact that you can’t do without your fellow humans, and that, when you’re with them, they make you sick.
Eyeless in Gaza (1936)
He acted as if he could detect in her face nothing but its external beauties of form and texture. Whereas, of course, flesh is never wholly opaque; the soul shows through the walls of its receptacle.
Eyeless in Gaza (1936)
That was the chief difference between literature and life. In books, the proportion of exceptional to commonplace people is high; in reality, very low.
Eyeless in Gaza (1936)
Query: how to combine the belief that the world is a to a great extent illusory with belief that it is none the less essential to improve the illusion? How to be simultaneously dispassionate and not indifferent, serene like an old man and active like a young one?
Eyeless in Gaza (1936)
I used to think I had no will to power. Now I perceive that I vented it on thoughts, rather than people. Conquering an unknown province of knowledge. Getting the better of a problem. Forcing ideas to associate or come apart. Bullying recalcitrant words to assume a certain pattern. All the fun of being a dictator without any risks and responsibilities.
Eyeless in Gaza (1936)