June 4, 2013
"I tried to stifle all that was continually seething within me by means of external impressions. And the only external means I had was reading."

Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky

June 4, 2013
"The first emphasis developed in these reflections was that one must believe in love; otherwise one will never become aware that it exists. But now we return again to the first point and say, repeating: believe in love! This is the first and last thing to be said about love if one is to know what love is."

Works of Love by Soren Kierkegaard

June 4, 2013
"[A]s the rays of the sun invite men to observe by their help the glory of the world but reproachfully punish with blindness the presumptuous who try to turn about in order inquisitively and impudently to discover the origin of the light… so also is it the desire and prayer of love that its concealed source and its hidden life in the inmost depths may remain a secret, that no one inquisitively and impudently will disturbingly thrust his way in to see what he cannot see anyway, the joy and blessing of which, however, he forfeits by his curiosity."

Works of Love by Soren Kierkegaard

June 4, 2013
"There is also talk about being deceived by life or in life; but he who self-deceptively cheated himself out of living—his loss is irredeemable."

Works of Love by Soren Kierkegaard

June 4, 2013
"[O]ne can be deceived by appearances, but one can also be deceived by the superficiality of shrewdness, by the flattering conceit which is absolutely certain that it cannot be deceived. Which deception is most dangerous?"

Works of Love by Soren Kierkegaard

June 2, 2013

‘No, it’s not that he’s a self-promoter.’

‘What’s so offensive then.’

‘It’s that he’s better at it.’

‘Man.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Yep.’

‘What an asshole.’

June 2, 2013
"Everyone blames the system, including the system."

The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing by Mark McGurl

May 30, 2013
"That’s just the hell. You succeed. So what? Integrate the state of the art of the sciences—all of ‘em. And? The humanities, then, all those, too. You move toward total knowledge, try perfecting that tin-can brain of yours, your whole life is this task. Which even while you’re approaching you know can’t succeed in aggregating all the savvy that there is in the world, anyhow, and (the hell of it is) if it could succeed, shit, Jeremy, no particular succor’s guaranteed. No succor is likely! Once you know everything you’re going to suffer even worse than the way that you’re suffering now because the hope will be gone. And the hell, Jer, the hell is that it’s irresistible: you are doomed to move for the rest of your life through hope knowingly toward hell. How do you like that? Yes, but my friend, you will be some teacher."

Inferno: A Novel (Robert Langdon) by Dan Brown

May 23, 2013
"Ideas? Another? You want me to hear more. After all this history. Look where we are. Again I must listen?"

Synth Framd by Gobbel Leher

May 23, 2013
"Again it comes down to a suspicion that we’re asking too much of ourselves. One has to be oneself. Otherwise one lacks authenticity, which is a code meaning proper existence, meaning reality. This is asking very much. The authenticity of the self one has to be is recognized in its originality. The message really is that one has to be unprecedented—unique, but, at the same time, in a position of mastery regarding the existing culture. To immerse oneself in the world sufficiently to assure oneself of the absolute originality of one’s postures or ideas while, at the same time, holding far enough aloof from the object of study that one maintains the distinct splendor and uncanny singularity of the lone blessed core personal soul, is very difficult. I’d like to Super Size this please."

— “Fries With That?” by Corey Assweir

May 22, 2013
"The book is fascinating… Unreliable narrators can be so engrossing, especially when it’s a memoir."

— “On Fred Marneull’s ‘Happy Pete’” by Glint Butter

May 3, 2013
basil dog

  • 1/2 grapefruit, squeezed
  • couple-few basil leaves, some of them pounded or muddled
  • couple oz’s good gin like Voyager
  • teaspoon agave nectar
  • splash of soda
  • salt the rim.

Like a not-too-sweet margarita, vigorous on the grapefruit and that airy basil taste over it. OK. 

9:28pm  |   URL: http://tmblr.co/ZkRDWyk9k-Mo
Filed under: coctkails 
April 26, 2013
"The cynicism is no accident, it’s practiced, they mean it, all their intelligence is bound up in it, the totality of their energies. ‘Knights of resignation,’ you might go and call them—and, amazingly, almost beautifully (poignantly, poignantly), having surrendered close to the fullness of their humanity they continue to expect merriment, decency, a level of fulfillment, completion in love, in their friendships and families. It’s profound faith, after a fashion…"

101 Mojitos and Other Muddled Drinks by Kim Haasarud and Alexandra Grablewski 

April 22, 2013
"To be an individual, Schiller sez, is to invent values: legislate, create your own ethics, the ethic without precedent is the mark of the original person. Where among us is the person so original that she condemns her individuality itself?"

Trident K9 Warriors: My Tale From the Training Ground to the Battlefield With Elite Navy SEAL Canines by Michael Ritland and Gary Brozek

April 22, 2013
"[T]he single individual is the particular that has its telos in the universal, and the individual’s ethical task is always to express himself in this, to abrogate his particularity so as to become the universal."

Fear and Trembling by Johannes de Silentio

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