M.attie
@M.attie, member from March 18, 2022
“In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulu waits dreaming”
Source: The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
Fiction, The Call of Cthulhu (1926)
Context: There had been aeons when other Things ruled on the earth, and They had had great cities. Remains of Them, he said the deathless Chinamen had told him, were still be found as Cyclopean stones on islands in the Pacific. They all died vast epochs of time before men came, but there were arts which could revive Them when the stars had come round again to the right positions in the cycle of eternity. They had, indeed, come themselves from the stars, and brought Their images with Them.
These Great Old Ones, Castro continued, were not composed altogether of flesh and blood. They had shape — for did not this star-fashioned image prove it? — but that shape was not made of matter. When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die...
“Maybe God has let everybody who ever lived be reborn — so he or she can see how it ends.”
"Dr. Norbert Woodley"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)
Context: Maybe God has let everybody who ever lived be reborn — so he or she can see how it ends. Even Pitecanthropus erectus and Australopithecus and Sinanthropus pekensis and the Neanderthalers are back on Earth — to see how it ends. They're all on Times Square — making change for peepshows. Or recruiting Marines.
"Wanda June"
Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970)
Context: Hello, I am Wanda June. Today was going to be my birthday, but I was hit by an ice-cream truck before I could have my party. I am dead now. I am in Heaven. That is why my parents did not pick up my cake at the bakery. I am not mad at the ice-cream truck driver, even though he was drunk when he hit me. It didn't hurt much. It wasn't even as bad as the sting of a bumblebee. I am really happy here! It's so much fun. I'm glad the driver was drunk. If he hadn't been, I might not have gone to Heaven for years and years and years. I would have had to go to high school first, and then beauty college. I would have had to get married and have babies and everything. Now I can just play and play and play. Any time I want any pink cotton candy I can have some. Everybody up here is happy — the animals and the dead soldiers and people who went to the electric chair and everything. They're all glad for whatever sent them here. Nobody is mad. We're all too busy playing shuffleboard. So if you think of killing somebody, don't worry about it. Just go ahead and do it. Whoever you do it to should kiss you for doing it. The soldiers up here just love the shrapnel and the tanks and the bayonets and the dum dums that let them play shuffleboard all the time — and drink beer.
“I like people too much or not at all.”
“Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.”
This quotation is from Notebook IV in Notebooks: 1942-1951, not Myth of Sisyphus. The quotation appears in none of Camus books you find in bookstores
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), An Absurd Reasoning
“Kiss me, and you will see how important I am.”
Variant: Kiss me and you will see how important I am.
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.”
Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter One
“I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.”
Source: The Collected Poems