“Limbo is at the apex of visual sophistication: an extra-dimensional loft done out in luxury-plain Jil Sander grey. Empty and placid, with not even a reproduction Eames chair to interrupt the anodyne tastefulness. No mess, no colour, no life. No hint of recidivist ornament – Adolf Loos would have loved limbo. In Harold Pinter’s words, a ‘No man’s land, which never moves, which never changes, which never grows older, which remains forever icy and silent.’”
Kyle Thomas Hemingway: The ephemera edit
An ongoing digital archive of 1,364 items (and counting) proving that I read, I saw, and I actually paid attention.
Category is
Book
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“‘Since one cannot have truth,’ cried Sebastian, struggling into his evening shirt, ‘let us at least have good manners.’”
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“Any adequate response to the mystery of existence must be poetic, for only the poetic can take on the ‘why.’”
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“I’m talking about how we—and I mean here the ‘we’ of people who have experienced some kind of trauma, which I think is a very large category indeed—how we manage the serious burden that we carry, how we contain it, what spent fuel pool or dry cask storage we improvise for material that is even now still leaking its lethal isotopes.”
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“Anna and Tom had grown up with the notion that individuality manifested itself as a set of visual differences, immediately decodable and in constant need of updating.”
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“And so, finding that, for once, I was not sorry to be alone, I said to myself: I am happy. Perfectly happy, I repeated, as my eyes roamed wide over the brilliant desolate sea and the empty contours of the land. Were they, after all, searching for something that was lacking? I hardly knew.”
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“Claims to ordinariness and salt-of-the-earth virtue—‘slumming it,’ as it’s crudely called—are themselves pretentious. The assumption that dropping your aitches or asserting a love of a cheap beer over a fine wine, or processed cheese over a Parmesan, will make you seem unspoiled or somehow more gritty is classic downwardly mobile play-acting.”
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“The act of salvation is never performed, because anyone with the strength to carry it out is unaware that they must do it, and the knowing person is incapable of action.”
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“Sometimes it is the evidence, the spectacle of another person’s grief that harrows you, more than the loss itself.”
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“For Blue there are no boundaries or solutions.”
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“When so many are lonely as seem to be lonely, it would be inexcusably selfish to be lonely alone.”
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“At some point, you have to set down the past. At some point, you have to accept that everyone was doing their best. At some point, you have to gather yourself up, and go onward into your life.”
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“So many of us will accept adoration even if it’s not about us, even if it’s only about the perception of us. Or some service we provide. We are happy to be cast in other people’s plays so long as we’re given a role.”
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“Is this the bar for horses or have I come to the wrong place?”
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“It’s just a real gentle moment. I’m here by myself and I don’t mind. I kind of wish it could just stay like this for maybe a few years, or I just never moved out of this spot. I could just watch the light stay like this. And maybe somebody coming along and just putting their arms around me for a few minutes.”
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“Introducing the idea of beauty as a salve and of aesthetics making something difficult accessible.”
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“Most art will disappear. The past is edited so it always looks clearer to us. Today always looks a bit of a jumble. We’ll put up with rubbish from now, but not with rubbish from the past.”
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“In the Internet, there is a fountain of youth into which at first you drunkenly plunge your face, and then in the dawn light you see your reflection, battered by the years.”
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“The thing that makes life interesting is that it ends. The thing that makes love worthwhile is that it’s all we’ve got.”
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“Art writing helps us to understand art which in turn helps us to understand such crises. But art writing itself is in crisis. Newspapers and magazines offer fewer channels than ever for independent art criticism, persistent institutional biases exclude the positions of many, and a proliferation of platforms presents opportunities and challenges in equal measure.”
