Oblivion Quotes - Page 13

• I stared into her eyes, wide under the thick fringe of lashes, and yearned for sleep. Not for oblivion, as I had before, not to escape boredom, but because I wanted to *dream*. Maybe, if I could be unconscious, if I could dream, I could live for a few hours in a world where she and I could be together. She dreamed of me. I wanted to dream of her.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Dream, Sleep, Eye

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• My mother is currently associating with some undesirables who are attempting to transform her into an athlete of sorts, deprave specimens of mankind who regularly bowl their way to oblivion.

  John Kennedy Toole

  Mother, Athlete, Way

  John Kennedy Toole (2004). “A Confederacy of Dunces”, p.152, LSU Press

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• I see a steady downward slope toward oblivion over the next three years. I'm pessimistic. Everything that's happened to me so far has been kind of flukey. I went into Twentieth Century because I wanted to work for Hal Prince. The part was too small according to my agent. I had been doing only leading parts, and he thought I should continue that. But the part was enlarged in rehearsal: songs were added, and it became more physicalized and showy. Then I won awards and got attention.

  Kevin Kline

  Song, Attention, Pessimistic

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• As many glaciers are melting and icy tundras are decaying, there's an unprecedented amount of woolly mammoth material that's becoming dislodged from the ice. Not just mammoth, but all kinds of fossils from the past. What occurred to me was, had anyone tried to pinpoint the first case of human-induced extinction? What was the first time we as species pushed another one to oblivion? I would argue that's probably going to be one of the defining moral problems of the century, human-induced extinction. And I really wanted to know, when did we first cross that barrier?

  Dario Robleto

  Past, Ice, Becoming

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• I'm making a lot of money. I should be paying a lot more taxes. I'm not paying taxes at a rate that is even close to what people were paying under Eisenhower. Do people think America wasn't ascendant and wasn't an upwardly mobile society under Eisenhower in the '50s? Nobody was looking at the country then and thinking to themselves, "We're taxing ourselves into oblivion." Yet there isn't a politician with balls enough to tell that truth because the whole system has been muddied by the rich. It's been purchased.

  David Simon

  Country, Thinking, America

  Source: progressive.org

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• Human destiny is an episode between two oblivions.

  Ernest Nagel

  Destiny, Two, Episodes

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• I wanted to make pictures that contradicted themselves. I wanted to put one picture on top of another so that there were times when both pictures disappear and other times when they were both manifest. That vibration is basically what the work was about for me - that space in the middle where there is no picture, rather an emptiness, an oblivion.

  Sherrie Levine

  Space, Vibrations, Emptiness

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• The world shrinking down about a raw core of parsible entities. The names of things slowly following those things into oblivion. Colors. The names of birds. Things to eat. Finally the name of things one believed to be true. More fragile than he would have thought. How much was gone already? The sacred idiom shorn of its referents and so of its reality. Drawing down like something trying to preserve heat. In time to wink out forever.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Reality, Drawing, Color

  Cormac McCarthy (2007). “The Road”, p.75, Vintage

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• Precious things lost are transmutable. They refuse oblivion. They simply wait to be rendered into testimonies, into stories and songs.

  Andrew Lam

  Song, Waiting, Stories

  Andrew Lam (2005). “Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora”, Heyday

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• Isabell, she treads so lightly, floating in her gipsy dresses
  Even as her words cut deep, I can't deny the truth in them
  On the phone, she talks a lot, and me, I listen hopelessly
  So directionless, I head into oblivion
  And then I decide to give another random memory
  To remind her of the first time we sang out to the sea
  Oh Isabell, you always understood me
  Please Isabell, forgive me now

  Ben Jelen

  Song, Memories, Cutting

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• I surf because it keeps my life at an even keel, without it I would tip into the oblivion.

  Andy Irons

  Surf, Keel

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• In books I find the dead as if they were alive; in books I foresee things to come; in books warlike affairs are set forth; from books come forth the laws of peace. All things are corrupted and decay in time; Saturn ceases not to devour the children that he generates; all the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, unless God had provided mortals with the remedy of books.

  Richard de Bury

  Children, Book, Law

  Richard De Bury (2006). “The Love of Books: The Philobiblon of R”, p.9, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I gratefully look forward to oblivion, but I must be sure of it

  Taylor Caldwell

  Looks, Agonizing

  "The Search For A Soul". Book by Jess Stearn, 1972.

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• We must identify our enemies and drive them into oblivion.

  Bruce Babbitt

  Enemy

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• Events are the ephemera of history; they pass across its stage like fireflies, hardly glimpsed before they settle back into darkness and as often as not into oblivion. Every event, however brief, has to be sure a contribution to make, lights up some dark corner or even some wide vista of history. Nor is it only political history which benefits most, for every historical landscape - political, economic, social, even geographical - is illumined by the intermittent flare of the event.

  Fernand Braudel

  Firefly, Dark, Light

  Fernand Braudel (1995). “The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II”, p.901, Univ of California Press

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• All the glory of the world would be buried in oblivion, unless God had provided mortals with the remedy of books.

  Richard de Bury

  Book, Reading, Would Be

  Richard de Bury (1889). “Philobiblon”

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• Since fame is an illusion and death is in our future all we have is the next moment before we are swallowed into oblivion.

  Al Goldstein

  Next, Moments, Illusion

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• Writing comes into being to retain information across time and across space. Before writing, communication is evanescent and local; sounds carry a few yards and fade to oblivion. The evanescence of the spoken word went without saying. So fleeting was speech that the rare phenomenon of the echo, a sound heard once and then again, seemed a sort of magic.

  James Gleick

  Communication, Writing, Echoes

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• Do you really like a particular stock? Put 10% or so of your portfolio on it. Make the idea count … Good [investment] ideas should not be diversified away into meaningless oblivion.

  Bill Gross

  Ideas, Portfolios, Investment

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• People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?

  Claude Debussy

  Hype, People, Deception

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• Really the writer doesn't want success. . . . He knows he has a short span of life, that the day will come when he must pass through the wall of oblivion, and he wants to leave a scratch on that wall - Kilroy was here - that somebody a hundred, or a thousand years later will see.

  William Faulkner

  Life, Success, Wall

  Quoted in Faulkner in the University, ed. Frederick L. Gwynn and Joseph L. Blotner (1959)

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• The string slices into the skin of his fingers and no matter how tough the calluses, it tears. But this beat is fast and even though his joints are aching, his arm's out of control like it has a mind of its own and the sweat tat drenches his hair and face seems to smother him, but nothing's going to stop Tom. He;s aiming for oblivion.

  Melina Marchetta

  Hair, Sweat, Mind

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• I like to think that it isn't weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair.

  Ian Mcewan

  Kindness, Thinking, Despair

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• In the end, living is defined by dying. Book-ended by oblivion, we are caught in the vice of terror, squeezed to bursting by the approaching end. Fear is ever-present, waiting to be called to the surface. Change brought fear, and fear brought destruction.

  Bernard Beckett

  Book, Waiting, Dying

  "Genesis". Book by Bernard Beckett, 2006.

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• Most critical writing is drivel and half of it is dishonest. It is a short cut to oblivion, anyway. Thinking in terms of ideas destroys the power to think in terms of emotions and sensations.

  Raymond Chandler

  Writing, Cutting, Thinking

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.49, Univ of California Press

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