The Floating Opera

So, I begin each day with a gesture of cynicism, and close it with a gesture of faith; or, if you prefer, begin it by reminding myself that, for me at least, goals and objectives are without value, and close it by demonstrating that the fact is irrelevant. A gesture of temporality, a gesture of eternity. It is in the tension between these two gestures that I have lived my adult life.

the enemy you flee is not exterior to yourself

To realize that nothing makes any final difference is overwhelming; but if one goes no farther and becomes a saint, a cynic or a suicide on principle, one hasn't reasoned completely. The truth is that nothing makes any difference, including that truth. Hamlet's question is, absolutely, meaningless.

Intellectual discussion, after all, is the real joy of the winter of life, when other pleasures have flown, as it were.

Although my law practice pays my hotel bill, I consider it no more my career than a hundred other things: sailing, drinking, walking the streets, writing my 'Inquirey', starting at walls hunting ducks and 'coons,reading, playing politics, and whatnot. I'm interested in any number of things, and enthusiastic about nothing.

I think that to understand any one thing entirely, no matter how minute, requires the understanding of every other thing in the world.

I began in earnest what was to be a long process of assuming hard control over myself: the substitution of small, specific strengths for small, specific weaknesses, regarding the latter with the same unresentful disfavor with which one regards a speck of dust on one's coat sleeve, before plucking it quietly off. I unconsciously began to regard my fellow men variously as more or less pacific animals among whom it was generally safe to walk (so long as one observed certain tacitly assumed rules), or as a colony of more or less quiet lunatics among whom it was generally safe to live (so long as one humored, at least outwardly, certain aspects of their madness).

I long ago learned that one's illnesses are both pleasanter and more useful if one keeps their exact nature to himself: one's friends, uncertain as to the cause of one's queer behavior and strange sufferings, impute to one a mysteriousness often subtly convenient.

May I recommend three Maryland beaten biscuits, with water, for your breakfast? They are hard as a haul-seiner's conscience and dry as a dredger's tongue, and they sit for hours in your morning stomach like ballast on a tender ship's keel. They cost little, are easily and crumblessly carried in your pockets, and if forgotten and gone stale, are neither harder nor less palatable than when fresh. What's more, eaten first thing in the morning and followed by a cigar, they put a crabberman's thirst on you, such that all the water in a deep neap tide can't quench --- and none, I think, denies the charms of water on the bowels of morning?

There is no will-o-the-wisp so elusive as the cause of any human act

Idealmente, una nuova posizione filosofica, come una nuova barca a remi, dovrebbe essere lasciata in porto per un giorno o due, perchè le giunture si stringano gonfiandosi, prima di farne uso costante.

No, io tiro fuori il mio dollaro e mezzo ogni mattino per rammentarmi (se dovessi mai dimenticarlo!) che mi prendo così a nolo un altro giorno dall'eternità, pagando l'interesse sul tempo preso a prestito, prendendo in affitto il mio letto nell'eventualità che io possa vivere abbastanza per dormirci ancora una volta, almeno per l'inizio d'un'altra notte.

[...] i nostri amici ci passano davanti come sulla corrente di un fiume, e noi restiamo coinvolti nella loro vita; poi passano oltre, e no dobbiamo fidarci di qualche chiacchiera per sentito dire o perderli completamente di vista; tornano indietro sempre sulla corrente, e ci tocca o rinnovare l'amicizia, aggiornandoci su quello che è successo nel frattempo, o scoprire che non ci comprendiamo più.

So. Todd Andrews is my name. You can spell it with one or two d’s; I get letters addressed either way. I almost warned you against the single-d, for fear you’d say, ‘Tod is German for death: perhaps the name is symbolic.’ I myself use two d’s, partly in order to avoid that symbolism. But you see, I ended by not warning you at all, and that’s because it just occurred to me that the double-d Todd is symbolic, too, and accurately so. Tod is death, and this book hasn’t much to do with death; Todd is almost Tod—that is, almost death—and this book, if it gets written, has very much to do with almost-death.

Am I boring you? I don't really care, I suppose, but I'll be more comfortable if I knew all this interested you. No doubt when I get the hang of storytelling, after a chapter or two, I'll go faster and digress less often.

Mi è sempre parso, nei pochi romanzi che ho letto di quando in quando, che esigano parecchio dai lettori quegli autori che iniziano i loro racconti furiosamente, nel bel mezzo delle cose, invece che entrandovi, indietreggiando o di sbieco, con dolcezza.