“From this, one can make a deduction which is quite certainly the ultimate truth of jigsaw puzzles: despite appearances, puzzling is not a solitary game: every move the puzzler makes, the puzzlemaker has made before; every piece the puzzler picks up, and picks up again, and studies and strokes, every combination he tries, and tries a second time, every blunder and every insight, each hope and each discouragement have all been designed, calculated, and decided by the other.”
― Georges Perec, quote from Life A User's Manual
“I have neither one nor the other, and that has been going on for so long now that I have stopped wondering whether it is hate or love which gives us the strength to continue this life of lies, which provides the formidable energy that allows us to go on suffering, and hoping.”
― Georges Perec, quote from Life A User's Manual
“Who, on seeing a Parisian apartment house, has never thought of it as indestructible? A bomb, a fire, an earthquake could certainly bring it down, but what else? In the eyes of an individual, of a family, or even a dynasty, a town, street, or house seems unchangeable, untouchable by time, by the ups and downs of human life, to such an extent that we believe we can compare and contrast the fragility of our condition to the invulnerability of stone.”
― Georges Perec, quote from Life A User's Manual
“Grace Slaughter - the surname of her fifth husband, a manufacturer of pharmaceutical toners and "prophylactic" products, recently deceased due to a ruptured peritoneum - was sharply chauvinistic and would allow no more than two exceptions to her all-American views, exceptions with which her first spouse, Astolphe de Guéménolé-Longtgermain, no doubt had something to do: cooking had to be done by French nationals of male gender, laundry and ironing by British subjects of female gender (and absolutely not by Chinese). That allowed Henri Fresnel to be hired without having to hide his original citizenship, which is what had to be done by the director (Hungarian), the set designer (Russian), the choreographer (Lithuanian), the dancers (Italian, Greek, Egyptian), the scriptwriter (English), the librettist (Austrian), and the composer, a Finn of Bulgarian descent with a large dash of Romanian.”
― Georges Perec, quote from Life A User's Manual
“No son los elementos los que determinan el conjunto, sino el conjunto el que determina los elementos.
Aisladamente, una pieza de un puzzle no quiere decir nada; es tan sólo pregunta imposible, reto opaco; pero no bien logramos conectarla con una de sus vecinas, desaparece, deja de existir como pieza: la intensa dificultad que precedió aquel acercamiento, no sólo no tiene ya razón de ser, sino que parece no haberla tenido nunca, hasta tal punto se ha hecho evidencia: las dos piezas milagrosamente reunidas ya sólo son una, a su vez fuente de error, de duda, de desazón y de espera”
― Georges Perec, quote from Life A User's Manual
“Busco a un tiempo lo eterno y lo efímero”
― Georges Perec, quote from Life A User's Manual
“The second project is in the field of metaphysics: with the aim of showing that, in the words of Professor H. M. Tooten, “evolution is a hoax”, Olivier Gratiolet has undertaken an exhaustive inventory of all the imperfections and inadequacies to which the human organism is heir: vertical posture, for example, gives man only a precarious balance: muscular tension alone keeps him upright, thus causing constant fatigue and discomfort in the spinal column, which, although sixteen times stronger than it would have been were it straight, does not allow man to carry a meaningful weight on his back; feet ought to be broader, more spread out, more specifically suited to locomotion, whereas what he has are only atrophied hands deprived of prehensile ability; legs are not sturdy enough to bear the body’s weight, which makes them bend, and moreover they are a strain on the heart, which has to pump blood about three feet up, whence come swollen feet, varicose veins, etc.; hip joints are fragile and constantly prone to arthrosis or serious fractures; arms are atrophied and too slender; hands are frail, especially the little finger, which has no use, the stomach has no protection whatsoever, no more than the genitals do; the neck is rigid and limits rotation of the head, the teeth do not allow food to be grasped from the sides, the sense of smell is virtually nil, night vision is less than mediocre, hearing is very inadequate; man’s hairless and unfurred body affords no protection against cold, and, in sum, of all the animals of creation, man, who is generally considered the ultimate fruit of evolution, is the most naked of all.”
― Georges Perec, quote from Life A User's Manual
Georges Perec
Born place: in Paris, France
Born date March 7, 1936
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“ Bad form, Regin! Wrong car."
Immediately after, the house shook again. "Oh, much better!" Nix assured them. "That was Bowen's!”
― Kresley Cole, quote from Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night
“One can say that Javert is our conscience. The ever lurking presence of the law and our own condemnation. The tension between who we were and who we are and who we can be. Javert represents that inescapable, shameful past that forever haunts and persues one's conscience. Javert is the man of the law, and... There are no surprises with the law. The principle of retribution is simple and monotonous, like Euclidean logic. It's closed to all alternatives and shut up against divine or human intervention... Indeed, Javert represents the merciless application of the law, the blind Justice that in the end is befuddled by hope and the possibility of redemption without punishment.”
― Cristiane Serruya, quote from Trust: Betrayed
“Roughly speaking: to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, quote from Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
“Sweetie, the Fae are powerful, and so is the Story that drives all of the Grimms’ futures. But let me tell you that nothing is more powerful than true love. And until you find out whether he is your true love or not, I can tell you from experience that those caught in the Story’s web will have intense moments of déjà vu. So don’t give up.”
― Chanda Hahn, quote from Fairest
“I was caught between going yippy-skippy i get to play with them both, and running like hell.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Cerulean Sins
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