(via nevver)
Once upon a time, a king was marching with his army. They came upon a dark tunnel, so dark that you could see nothing in it. They wanted to explore the tunnel, so they left lambs by the entrance, and took the mother sheep with them, so that the sheep may lead them back to safety later.
When they entered the tunnel, they felt something underneath their feet, it felt like small rocks. At that moment, something shouted from the dark: “Those who take some of these rocks will regret it, and those who do not will also regret it.”
Some of the soldiers thought: “If I am going to regret it, why should I take any?” while the others thought: “I might as well take one.”
When they came out of the darkness of the tunnel, they realised that the rocks were actually jewels - diamonds, rubies, sapphires.
The ones who didn’t take any regretted not taking any, and the ones who did take some regretted not taking more.
(Source: tamburina, via aclockworkorange)
There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always— do not forget this, Winston— always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.
" — 1984 by George Orwell(Source: thechocolatebrigade)
(via wryer)
(Source: thisisntlisa, via booklover)
Interviewer: In your new novel, Pale Fire, one of the characters says that reality is neither the subject nor the object of real art, which creates its own reality. What is that reality?
Nabokov: Reality is a very subjective affair. I can only define it as a kind of gradual accumulation of information; and as specialization. If we take a lily, for instance, or any other kind of natural object, a lily is more real to a naturalist than it is to an ordinary person. But it is still more real to a botanist. And yet another stage of reality is reached with that botanist who is a specialist in lilies. You can get nearer and nearer, so to speak, to reality; but you never get near enough because reality is an infinite succession of steps, levels of perception, false bottoms, and hence unquenchable, unattainable. You can know more and more about one thing but you can never know everything about one thing: it’s hopeless. So that we live surrounded by more or less ghostly objects— that machine, there, for instance. It’s a complete ghost to me— I don’t understand a thing about it and, well, it’s a mystery to me, as much of a mystery as it would be to Lord Byron.
A BBC interview with Vladimir Nabokov, 1962.
(via aclockworkorange)
(Source: tobia, via aclockworkorange)
