41 Text Quotes

I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. Then words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young. And the words wander away, looking in the nooks and crannies of vocabulary for new company, bad company.

The composer does not want the self-sufficiency of a richly complex text: he or she wants to feel that the text is something in need of musical setting.

Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.

Take any country that has laws against hate crimes, inspiring hatred and genocide and so on. The first thing they would do is ban the Old Testament. There's nothing like it in the literary canon that exalts genocide, to that extent. And it's not a joke either. Like where I live, New England, the people who liberated it from the native scourge were religious fundamentalist lunatics, who came waving the holy book, declaring themselves to be the children of Israel who are killing the Amalekites, like God told them.

It doesn't say anywhere in the Constitution this idea of the separation of church and state.

'The Old Testament is responsible for more atheism, agnosticism, disbelief - call it what you will - than any book ever written; it has emptied more churches than all the counterattractions of cinema, motor bicycle, and golf course.'

It is one thing, then, to say, 'The Bible contains the religion revealed by God,' and quite another to say, 'Whatever is contained in the Bible is religion, and was revealed by God.' If the latter be accepted, metaphor and allegory become literal statements and the errors and absurdities of bibliolatry follow.

The whole history of these books is so defective and doubtful that it seems vain to attempt minute enquiry into it: and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right, from that cause, to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine. In the New Testament there is internal evidence that parts of it have proceeded from an extraordinary man; and that other parts are of the fabric of very inferior minds. It is as easy to separate those parts, as to pick out diamonds from dunghills.

You can find things in the traditional religions which are very benign and decent and wonderful and so on, but I mean, the Bible is probably the most genocidal book in the literary canon. The God of the Bible - not only did He order His chosen people to carry out literal genocide - I mean, wipe out every Amalekite to the last man, woman, child, and, you know, donkey and so on, because hundreds of years ago they got in your way when you were trying to cross the desert - not only did He do things like that, but, after all, the God of the Bible was ready to destroy every living creature on earth because some humans irritated Him. That's the story of Noah. I mean, that's beyond genocide - you don't know how to describe this creature. Somebody offended Him, and He was going to destroy every living being on earth? And then He was talked into allowing two of each species to stay alive - that's supposed to be gentle and wonderful.

All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the 'elect' have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so 'slow,' so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle - keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.

What I'm saying is, if God wanted to send us a message, and ancient writings were the only way he could think of doing it, he could have done a better job.

Many Christians base the belief of a soul and God upon the Bible. Strictly speaking, there is no such book. To make the Bible, sixty-six books are bound into one volume. These books are written by many people at different times, and no one knows the time or the identity of any author. Some of the books were written by several authors at various times. These books contain all sorts of contradictory concepts of life and morals and the origin of things. Between the first and the last nearly a thousand years intervened, a longer time than has passed since the discovery of America by Columbus.

This quotation actually comes from page 211 of Emile Cammaerts' book The Laughing Prophets (1937) in which he quotes Chesterton as having Father Brown say (in 'The Oracle of the Dog' from 1923): 'It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense.' Cammaerts then interposes his own analysis between further quotes from Father Brown: ''It's drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it's coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition.' The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything: 'And a dog is an omen and a cat is a mystery.'' Note that the remark about believing in anything is outside quotes - it is from Cammaerts. The American Chesterton Society has explained the origin of the phrase.

And so I penned It down, until at last it came to be, For length and breadth, the bigness which you see.

??????,?????!? (From a Chinese skimming drink advertisement)

breakfast breakfast i am full of breakfast and they are at breakfast in heaven they breakfast in heaven all s well with the world

No book had ever really hinted of it, though the deathless Chinamen said that there were double meanings in the Necronomicon of the mad Arab Abdul Alhazred which the initiated might read as they chose, especially the much-discussed couplet:

Observer review of Houellebecq's HP Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life + Extract

And so on.

'I will say the spell,' said Lucy. 'I don't care. I will.' She said I don't care because she had a strong feeling that she mustn't. But when she looked back at the opening words of the spell, there in the middle of the writing, where she felt quite sure there had been no picture before, she found the great face of a lion, of The Lion, Aslan himself, staring into hers. It was painted such a bright gold that it seemed to be coming towards her out of the page; and indeed she never was quite sure afterwards that it hadn't really moved a little. At any rate, she knew the expression on his face quite well. He was growling and you could see most of his teeth. She became horribly afraid and turned over the page at once. (ch. 10)

The ultimate touchstone of constitutionality is the Constitution itself and not what we have said about it.

I reread? I lied! I don't dare to reread. I cannot reread. What's the point, for me, in rereading?

The Bible tells us how to go to the heavens, not how the heavens go.

Poets don't draw. They unravel their handwriting and then tie it up again, but differently.

Scrutamini scripturas (Let us look at the scriptures). These two words have undone the world.

My man Friday.

Page 21.

Page 26.

Book II, ch. 13

See Moby-Dick

Timequake

Book I, ch. 39

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