Eddie Jessup
Altered States (1980)
Context: I was in that ultimate moment of terror that is the beginning of life. It is nothing. Simple, hideous nothing. The final truth of all things is that there is no final Truth. Truth is what's transitory. It's human life that is real.
Eugene Kennedy, cited in: Kathy Wagoner (2002) The Promise of Friendship. p. 284
“Life is simple," I said. "Ale, women, sword, and reputation. Nothing else matters.”
Source: The Pale Horseman
“People are so lazy, they want everything to be simple, but nothing is simple. Nothing.”
Source: The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (2004), Chapter 31 “Saturday Morning Mission” (p. 173)
Hagakure (c. 1716)
Source: Hagakure: The Book of the Samurai
Context: There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment.
Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else.
As Quoted in The Gerorgian Times in 2008 http://www.geotimes.ge/index.php?m=home&newsid=12354.eng
“Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry.”
Source: The Paris Review interview (1981), p. 325
Message from the Queen, read by the British ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, St Thomas's Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue. 22 September 2001. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1341155/Grief-is-price-of-love-says-the-Queen.html
First Elegy (as translated by Stephen Mitchell)
Source: Duino Elegies (1922)
Context: Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels'
hierarchies? and even if one of them
pressed me against his heart: I would be consumed
in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing
but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains
to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.
