Anathemas and Admirations (49 page)

An oyster, to build up its shell, must pass its weight in seawater through its body fifty thousand times. . . . Where have I turned for my lessons in patience!

Read somewhere the statement “God speaks only of Himself.” On this specific pointy the Almighty has more than one rival.

To be or not to be
.

. . . Neither one nor the other.

Each time I happen upon even the merest sentence of Buddhist lore, I am overcome by a desire to return to that wisdom, which I have tried to absorb for quite a long period of time and which, inexplicably, I have partially forsaken. In that wisdom abides not so much truth as something better still . . . and it is by that wisdom we accede to the state where we are purified of all things, of illusions first of all. No longer to have any such things yet not to risk ruin, to sink into disillusion while avoiding bitterness, to be a little more emancipated every day from the obnubilation in which these living hordes languish. . . .

To die is to change genre, to renew oneself. . . .

Beware of thinkers whose minds function only when they are fueled by a quotation.

If relations between men are so difficulty it is because men have been created to knock each other down and not to have “relations.”

Conversation with him was as conventional as with a dying man.

Ceasing to exist signifies nothings can signify nothing. What is the use of being concerned with what survives a nonreality, with a semblance that succeeds another semblance? Death is in fact nothing, it is at most a simulacrum of mystery, like life itself. Antimetaphysical propaganda of the graveyards.

In my childhood, there was one figure I could never forget, a peasant who, having just inherited some money, went from tavern to tavern, followed by a “musician.” A splendid summer day: the whole village was in the fields; he alone, accompanied by his violinist, wandered the empty streets, humming some tune. After two years, he was as poor as before. But the gods were kind: he died soon after. Without knowing why, I was fascinated, and rightly so. When I think of him now, I still believe he was really someone; of all the inhabitants of the village, he alone had enough imagination to ruin his life.

Longing to yell, to spit in people’s faces, to drag them along the ground, to trample them ... I have trained myself to decency in order, to humble my rage, and my rage takes revenge as often as it can.