Life was just life, rolling on in inevitable disorder. Now, however, he was aware that he had to work his way up through the sludge that had accumulated in his life. It seemed compacted in his soul. He wanted the clear cool feeling of a…
At the bar I had a whiskey and a wonderful ham and Swiss sandwich. One thing that had gone wrong in America is the acceptance of bad ham. The bartender wasn’t busy and we talked about Jack London. He was curious about my strange accent…
Everything in our culture seems to be marinating in the same plastic sack and the ingredients are deeply suspect. Jim Harrison “The English Major”
To really learn about another culture is a very long and slow process and you’re not liable to receive anything in a spiritual sense unless it’s already in yourself waiting to be discovered. Jim Harrison “Off to the Side”
For years now I’ve found the earth haunted. Azoological beasts rage in untraceable configurations. They are called governments…The argument at bedrock: I don’t want to live on earth, but I want to live…I don’t think I’m meant to be part of anything or to raise…
In the summer of 1924 I was in Obergeogenthal near Brux. On Friday, 20 June, I repeat Friday, 20 June, I received a letter from a friend in Prague, the painter Erich Hirt. He wrote, ‘I have just learnt from the editorial staff of the…
As I learned form my father, for fourteen years, that is to say for nearly half the average length of a generation, Franz Kafka sat behind his smoothly polished desk in the smoke-fumed air of the factory at No. 7 on the Poric. He entered…
rebellion (re-bel’yen), n. 1. an act or state of armed open resistance to authority, government, etc. 2. a defiance of or opposition to any control. 3. a rebelling. SYN.—revolt stresses a casting off of allegiance or refusal to submit to established authority (the revolt of…
One reads in order to ask questions. Kafka Letter to a Friend
Fairy tales for dialecticians… Walter Benjamin …about Kafka