“There’s a very curious expression in the eyes - you see it sometimes in photographs of wild animals at bay. But one also saw something else - which no animal has or can have - despair. Not helpless, negative despair. Dynamic despair. The kind that makes dangerous criminals, and, very occasionally, saints.”
“We are intoxicated with this new power we have to re-present ourselves as we wish others to see us. But it comes with the risk of an overawareness of self that can be paralysing. The further we move from true self, the harder it is to live up to the idealised person we are creating for others.”
RUSSH Magazine, June/July 2013. ’Maximum Exposure’, by Miranda Darling
“(Most of the young are bored most of the time - if they have any spirit at all. That is to say, they are outraged - and quite rightly so - because life isn’t as wonderful as they feel it ought to be.)”
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of it’s noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
“We can never establish with certainty what part of our relations with others is the result of our emotions - love, antipathy, charity, or malice - and what part is predetermined by the constant power play among individuals.”
“And suddenly he realised that all his life he had done nothing but talk, write, lecture, concoct sentences, search for formulations and amend them, so in the end no words were precise, their meanings were obliterated, their content lost, they turned into trash, chaff, dust, sand; prowling through his brain, tearing at his head, they were his insomnia, his illness. And what he yearned for at that moment, vaguely but with all his might, was unbounded music, absolute sound, a pleasant and happy all-encompassing, over-powering, window-rattling din to engulf, once and for all, the pain, the futility, the vanity of words.”
“We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.”
“For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.”
“What I learned from Naoko’s death was this: no truth can cure the sadness we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness, can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see that sadness through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sadness that comes to us without warning.”
“I think you lost all interest in this world. You were disappointed and discouraged, and lost interest in everything. So you abandoned your physical body. You went to a world apart and you’re living a different kind of life there. In a world that’s inside you.”
“It was a well-known fact that certain members of the so-called elite had disgusting personalities and dark, twisted tendencies, as if they had taken more than the share of darkness allotted to them.”
“I want to push myself to my limits, and if things don’t work out, then I can give up. But I will do everything I can until the bitter end. That is how I live.”
