“Doubt everything [...]. Doubt everything at least once. What you decide to keep, you'll be able to be confident of. And what you decide to ditch, you will replace with what your instincts tell you is true.”
“I'm lying here in a tent, pretending to be asleep but actually fearing for my life as I watch a bunny murderer have a conversation with our campfire.”
“Life is easier in black and white. It's the ambiguity of a world defined in grays that has stripped me of my confidence and left me powerless.”
“I want to be someone she respects. Admires. But in order for that to happen, I'm going to have to change. To become stronger. As strong as her.”
“Something is nagging at the edge of my consciousness. It's a good feeling, but I can't quite place it. And then suddenly I do. It's a feeling of being where I'm supposed to be. A feeling of knowing that I'm in the right place at the right time. With the right person.”
“I’m lying here in a tent, pretending to be asleep but actually fearing for my life as I watch a bunny murderer have a conversation with our campfire.”
“Why did I feel safer in a postapocalyptic world than in this functioning, civilized world? Because I knew what to expect, I answer.”
“You look a little lost, my dear,' a nun says behind me, and I jump. 'Were you interested in seeing the Bevington Triptych?'
'Oh,' I say. 'Erm... yes. Absolutely.'
'Up there,' she points, and I walk tentatively towards the front of the chapel, hoping it will become obvious what the Bevington Triptych is. A statue, maybe? Or a.. a piece of tapestry?
But as I reach the elderly lady, I see that she's staring up at a whole wall of stained glass windows. I have to admit, they're pretty amazing. I mean look at that huge blue one in the middle. It's fantastic!
'The Bevington Triptych,' says the elderly woman. 'It simply has no parallel, does it?'
'Wow,' I breathe reverentially, staring up with her. 'It's beautiful.'
It really is stunning. God, it just shows, there's no mistaking a real work of art, is there? When you come across real genius, it just leaps out at you. And I'm not even an expert.
'Wonderful colours,' I murmur.
'The detail,' says the woman, clasping her hands, 'is absolutely incomparable.'
'Incomparable,' I echo.
I'm just about to point out the rainbow, which I think is a really nice touch - when I suddenly notice that the elderly woman and I aren't looking at the same thing.
She's looking at some painted wooden thing which I hadn't even noticed.
As inconspicuously as possible, I shift my gaze - and feel a pang of disappointment. Is this the Bevington triptych? But it isn't even pretty!
'Whereas this Victorian rubbish,' the woman
suddenly adds savagely, 'is absolutely criminal! That rainbow! Doesn't it make you feel sick?' She gestures to my big blue window, and I gulp.
'I know,' I say. 'It's shocking, isn't it? Absolutely...
You know - I think I'll just go for a little wander...”
“There are these rare moments when musicians together touch something sweeter than they've ever found before in rehearsals or performance, beyond the merely collaborative or technically proficient, when their expression becomes as easy and graceful as friendship or love. This is when they give us a glimpse of what we might be, of our best selves, and of an impossible world in which you give everything you have to others, but lose nothing of yourself. Out in the real world there exist detailed plans, visionary projects for peaceable realms, all conflicts resolved, happiness for everyone, for ever – mirages for which people are prepared to die and kill. Christ's kingdom on earth, the workers' paradise, the ideal Islamic state. But only in music, and only on rare occasions, does the curtain actually lift on this dream of community, and it's tantalisingly conjured, before fading away with the last notes.”
“Well fuck me gently with a chainsaw,”
“Victory was for those willing to fight and die. Intellectuals could theorize until they sucked their thumbs right off their hands, but in the real world, power still flowed from the barrel of a gun.”
“Not everything has to have a point. Some things just are. ”
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