Wojtek Capała > Wojtek's Quotes

“Anything can happen in life, especially nothing.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Platform

“It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.”
― Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

“There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“I don't think there is any truth. There are only points of view. ”
― Allen Ginsberg

“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.”
― Philip Larkin, High Windows

“I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse
—The good not done, the love not given, time
Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because
An only life can take so long to climb
Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
But at the total emptiness for ever,
The sure extinction that we travel to
And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
Not to be anywhere,
And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
That vast moth-eaten musical brocade
Created to pretend we never die,
And specious stuff that says No rational being
Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
A small unfocused blur, a standing chill
That slows each impulse down to indecision.
Most things may never happen: this one will,
And realisation of it rages out
In furnace-fear when we are caught without
People or drink. Courage is no good:
It means not scaring others. Being brave
Lets no one off the grave.
Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
Have always known, know that we can’t escape,
Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.
Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
Work has to be done.
Postmen like doctors go from house to house.”
― Philip Larkin, Collected Poems

“Morning, noon & bloody night,
Seven sodding days a week,
I slave at filthy WORK, that might
Be done by any book-drunk freak.
This goes on until I kick the bucket.
FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT”
― Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

“Something, like nothing, happens anywhere.”
― Philip Larkin

“Seriously, I think it is a grave fault in life that so much time is wasted in social matters, because it not only takes up time when you might be doing individual private things, but it prevents you storing up the psychic energy that can then be released to create art or whatever it is. It's terrible the way we scotch silence & solitude at every turn, quite suicidal. I can't see how to avoid it, without being very rich or very unpopular, & it does worry me, for time is slipping by , and nothing is done. It isn't as if anything was gained by this social frivolity, It isn't: it's just a waste.”
― Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

“Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, / Shaped to the comfort of the last to go / As if to win them back”
― Philip Larkin

“Since the majority of me
Rejects the majority of you,
Debating ends forthwith, and we
Divide.”
― Philip Larkin

“Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three.”
― Philip Larkin, Philip Larkin: Letters to Monica

“I wouldn't mind seeing China if I could come back the same day.”
― Philip Larkin

“You fight your superficiality, your shallowness, so as to try to come at people without unreal expectations, without an overload of bias or hope or arrogance, as untanklike as you can be, sans cannon and machine guns and steel plating half a foot thick; you come at them unmenacingly on your own ten toes instead of tearing up the turf with your caterpillar treads, take them on with an open mind, as equals, man to man, as we used to say, and yet you never fail to get them wrong. You might as well have the brain of a tank. You get them wrong before you meet them, while you're anticipating meeting them; you get them wrong while you're with them; and then you go home to tell somebody else about the meeting and you get them all wrong again. Since the same generally goes for them with you, the whole thing is really a dazzling illusion. ... The fact remains that getting people right is not what living is all about anyway. It's getting them wrong that is living, getting them wrong and wrong and wrong and then, on careful reconsideration, getting them wrong again. That's how we know we're alive: we're wrong. Maybe the best thing would be to forget being right or wrong about people and just go along for the ride. But if you can do that -- well, lucky you.”
― Philip Roth, American Pastoral

“You go to someone and you think, 'I’ll tell him this.' But why? The impulse is that the telling is going to relieve you. And that’s why you feel awful later—you’ve relieved yourself, and if it truly is tragic and awful, it’s not better, it’s worse—the exhibitionism inherent to a confession has only made the misery worse.”
― Philip Roth, American Pastoral

“L'ASSIUOLO

Dov'era la luna? ché il cielo
notava in un'alba di perla,
ed ergersi il mandorlo e il melo
parevano a meglio vederla.
Venivano soffi di lampi
da un nero di nubi laggiù;
veniva una voce dai campi:
chiù...

Le stelle lucevano rare
tra mezzo alla nebbia di latte:
sentivo il cullare del mare,
sentivo un fru fru tra le fratte;
sentivo nel cuore un sussulto,
com'eco d'un grido che fu.
Sonava lontano il singulto:
chiù...

Su tutte le lucide vette
tremava un sospiro di vento;
squassavano le cavallette
finissimi sistri d'argento
(tintinni a invisibili porte
che forse non s'aprono più?...);
e c'era quel pianto di morte...
chiù...”
― Giovanni Pascoli, Myricae

“Il dolore è ancor più dolore se tace.”
― Giovanni Pascoli

“Essere felici è già una bella cosa ma fare felici gli altri col fatto di essere felici noi è la cosa più bella del mondo.”
― Giovanni Pascoli

“My land

When I die, may I turn into grass
On my mountains in spring,
In autumn I will turn to seed.

When I die, may I turn into water,
My misty breath
Will fall onto the meadows as rain.

When I die, may I turn into stone,
On the confines of my land
May I be a landmark.

Translated by Robert Elsie”
― Martin Camaj