“To others, the universe seems decent because decent people have gelded eyes. That is why they fear lewdness. They are never frightened by the crowing of a rooster or when strolling under a starry heaven. In general, people savor the "pleasures of the flesh" only on condition that they be insipid.
But as of then, no doubt existed for me: I did not care for what is known as "pleasures of the flesh" because they really are insipid; I cared only for what is classified as "dirty." On the other hand, I was not even satisfied with the usual debauchery, because the only thing it dirties is debauchery itself, while, in some way or other, anything sublime and perfectly pure is left intact by it. My kind of debauchery soils not only my body and my thoughts, but also anything I may conceive in its course, that is to say, the vast starry universe, which merely serves as a backdrop.”
― Georges Bataille, quote from Story of the Eye
“Extreme seductiveness is at the boundary of horror”
― Georges Bataille, quote from Story of the Eye
“We did not lack modesty—on the contrary—but something urgently drove us to defy modesty together as immodestly as possible.”
― Georges Bataille, quote from Story of the Eye
“I remember that one day, when we were in a car tooling along at top speed,we crashed into a cyclist, an apparently very young and very pretty girl. Her head was almost totally ripped off by the wheels. For a long time, we were parked a few yards beyond without getting out, fully absorbed in the sight of the corpse. The horror and despair at so much bloody flesh, nauseating in part, and in part very beautiful, was fairly equivalent to our usual impression upon seeing one another.”
― Georges Bataille, quote from Story of the Eye
“That discourse one might call the poetry of transgression is also knowledge. He who transgresses not only breaks a rule. He goes somewhere that the others are not; and he knows something the others don’t know.”
― Georges Bataille, quote from Story of the Eye
“The fact that the site of narrative is an ideal topos disqualifies neither pornography nor science fiction from being literature. Such”
― Georges Bataille, quote from Story of the Eye
“To others, the universe seems decent because decent people have gelded eyes. That is why they fear lewdness. They are never frightened by the crowing of a rooster or when strolling under a starry heaven. In general, people savour the “pleasures of the flesh” only on condition that they be insipid.”
― Georges Bataille, quote from Story of the Eye
“We pedaled rapidly, without laughing or speaking, peculiarly satisfied with our mutual presence, akin to one another in the common isolation of lewdness, weariness, and absurdity.”
― Georges Bataille, quote from Story of the Eye
Georges Bataille
Born place: in Billon, Puy-de-Dôme, France
Born date September 10, 1897
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“The cattle crouched round them in soft shadowy clumps, placidly munching, and dreaming with wide-open eyes. The narrow zone of colour created by the firelight was like the planet Earth - a little freak of brightness in a universe of impenetrable shadows”
― Hope Mirrlees, quote from Lud-in-the-Mist
“It was like we were all so busy trying to be happy or saying we were happy, but underneath there was nothing but bitterness, the kind that could only be bled out in ink, in unspoken word.”
― Elizabeth Scott, quote from The Unwritten Rule
“Two bulls fighting for the cow. And a bony one at that. But in America the loser oftentimes got the cow. Mother instinct? Better wallet? Longer dick? God knows what.…”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Most Beautiful Woman in Town & Other Stories
“All we are, all we can be, are the stories we tell. Long after we are gone, our words will be all that is left, and who is to say what really happened or even what reality is? Our stories, our fiction, our words will be as close to truth as can be. And no one can take that away from you.”
― Nora Raleigh Baskin, quote from Anything But Typical
“Everything is made of atoms. That is the key hypothesis. The most important hypothesis in all of biology, for example, is that everything that animals do, atoms do. In other words, there is nothing that living things do that cannot be understood from the point of view that they are made of atoms acting according to the laws of physics. This”
― Richard Feynman, quote from Six Easy Pieces: Essentials of Physics By Its Most Brilliant Teacher
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