Wasteland
Ecce picturae intra libros: Comics art for the week of 1 May 2013
‘I met Andy Warhol at a really chic party’ / Blow it out your hairdo, ’cause you work at Hardee’s!
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What I bought – 6 February 2013
“Italians have made the family an extremist group. The family is the instrument of revenge.” (Don DeLillo, from The Names)
What I bought – 19 December 2012
“And the good thing about feeling really happy, you know, Valentin? … It’s that you think it’s forever, that one’s never ever going to feel unhappy again.” (Manuel Puig, from Kiss of the Spider Woman)
What I bought – 28 November 2012
What theater do we have besides beauty contests? (Maxine Hong Kingston, from Tripmaster Monkey)
What I bought – 31 October 2012
His father smiled thinly. “Perhaps not for a while. But in the end, someone always has to have his or her neck popped, as you so quaintly put it. The people demand it. Sooner or later, if there isn’t a turncoat, the people make one.” (Stephen King, from The Gunslinger)
What I bought – 8 August 2012
“People who claim that they’re evil are usually no worse than the rest of us.” He sighed. “It’s people who claim that they’re good, or anyway better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.” (Gregory Maguire, from Wicked)
What I bought – 6 June 2012
“That’s what I came to tell you, that I can’t free our people from the rule of the Romans.”
“Why not?”
“Because that’s not true freedom. Any freedom that can be given can be taken away. Moses didn’t need to ask Pharaoh to release our people, our people didn’t need to be released from the Babylonians, and they don’t need to be released from the Romans. I can’t give them freedom. Freedom is in their hearts, they merely have to find it.” (Christopher Moore, from Lamb)
What I bought – 9 May 2012
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden behind the dark mustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother. (George Orwell, from 1984)
What I bought – 11 April 2012
“An empire that can provide a prince, one who might end up succeeding to the throne, a life of childish foolishness and happiness until the age of twenty-nine is necessarily doomed to collapse, dissolution, and annihilation.” (Orhan Pamuk, from The Black Book)
What I bought – 14 March 2012
‘We are happy lovers. Aren’t we? And happiness makes one stupid. Happiness and wisdom do not go together, just as body and thought do not go together. Because only pain is the thought of the body. In other words, happy people become stupid people. It is only when they get tired of their happiness that lovers can become wise again, if that is what they otherwise are.’ (Milorad Pavić, from Last Love in Constantinople)
What I bought – 15 February 2012
“Usually girls dance together because the boys are too shy to ask. But this boy – I didn’t know him – he asked me to dance, and so we had the first dance and then the next, and by that time we were talking … And you know what it is when you like someone, you know it at once; well, I liked him such a lot. And we kept on talking and then there was a birthday cake. And he took a bit of marzipan and he just gently put it in my mouth – I remember trying to smile, and blushing, and feeling so foolish – and I fell in love with him just for that, for the gentle way he touched my lips with the marzipan.” (Philip Pullman, from The Amber Spyglass)
What I bought – 18 January 2012
“I’ve always believed, Josef, that we are more in love with desire than with the desired!” (Irvin D. Yalom, from When Nietzsche Wept)
What I bought – 30 November 2011
“Maybe I’m crazy. But there’s something in me that loves Death. I think of myself as Death, sometimes. In a scarlet shroud, floating through the night. I’m so beautiful, then. And sad. And hungry to make the whole world happy, by taking them out where I am, into the night, away from all trouble, all unhappiness … Walter, this is the awful part. I know this is terrible. I tell myself it’s terrible. But to me, it doesn’t seem terrible. It seems as though I’m doing something – that’s really best for him, if he only knew it. Do you understand me, Walter?”
“No.” (James M. Cain, from Double Indemnity)
What I bought – 28 September 2011
“… All idealization makes life poorer. To beautify it is to take away its character of complexity — it is to destroy it.” (Joseph Conrad, from The Secret Agent)
What I bought – 9 February 2011
There was no hope for an empire that lost the will to prosecute the grand and awful business of adventure. (Michael Chabon, from Gentlemen of the Road)
