Source: It Shouldn't Happen to a Vet
“I seem to have spent a good part of my life - probably too much – in just standing and staring.”
“What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.”
Leisure
Tailgate Party (2009)
Book Three, Part III “Inside the Hollow Star”, Chapter 6 (p. 408; closing words)
The Birthgrave (1975)
On working with Naomi Watts in Ned Kelly, as quoted in Daily Mail Weekend Magazine (UK), July 5, 2003.
Source: Q's Legacy: A Delightful Account of a Lifelong Love Affair with Books
Source: Pet Sematary (1983)
Context: It's probably wrong to believe there can be any limit to the horror which the human mind can experience. On the contrary, it seems that some exponential effect begins to obtain as deeper and deeper darkness falls - as little as one may like to support the idea that when the nightmare grows black enough, horror spawns horror, one coincidental evil begets other, often more deliberate evils, until finally blackness seems to cover everything. And the most terrifying question of all may be just how much horror the human mind can stand and still maintain a wakeful, staring, unrelenting sanity. That such events have their own Rube Goldberg absurdity goes almost without saying. At some point, it all starts to become rather funny. That may be the point at which sanity begins either to save itself or to buckle and break down; that point at which one's sense of humor begins to reassert itself.
translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek
(original Dutch: citaat van Hendrik Willem Mesdag, in het Nederlands:) Maanden van mijn leven heb ik haar aangestaard, met nooit verflauwende liefde en nooit verminderde belangstelling.
Quote of Mesdag, as cited by J. Poort in Artiste peintre à La Haye, Wassenaar 1981, p. 66
undated quotes
“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”
