Author: manwithoutqualities

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john kennedy toole

A Confederacy of Dunces: quotes (27)

Social note: I have sought escape in the Prytania on more than one occasion, pulled by the attractions of some technicolored horrors, filmed abortions that were offenses against any criteria of taste and decency, reels and reels of perversion and blasphemy that stunned my disbelieving eyes, that shocked my virginal mind, and sealed my valve. …

Italo Svevo

Zeno’s Conscience: quotes (26)

Complete freedom consists of being able to do what you like, provided you also do something you like less. True slavery is being condemned to abstinence: Tantalus, not Hercules. consciousnessItalo Svevophilosophical literatureTriesteZeno’s Conscience

john kennedy toole

A Confederacy of Dunces: quotes (26)

As I have told you in earlier installments, I was emulating the poet Milton by spending my youth in seclusion, meditation, and study in order to perfect my craft of writing as he did; my mother’s cataclysmic intemperance has has thrust me into the world in the most cavalier manner; my system is still in…

Italo Svevo

Zeno’s Conscience: quotes (25)

There I learned only that all four of his daughters had names beginning with A, a highly practical course, in his view, because in this way all the things on which that initial was embroidered could pass from one to the other without having to undergo any alteration. They were called (and I immediately learned…

gastronomy

Nectar of the gods

Maple syrup is the gastronomic analog of pharmaceutical grade crack cocaine. But not just any maple syrup: I was educated in this by a Québécois chum of mine who sent me two items — Beurre d’érable and Tire à l’érable — that disappeared within days — neat, right out of the jars. This was recently…