John Myles White: Die Sudelbücher

Upon seeing her, the only thing I could think to say was that she was dressed as if she were named Goneril.

He was continuously surprised anew by her endless hitherandthithering; moreso because he was never certain whither she went. He was not even certain that there was a definite direction — that it was not movement for movement’s sake he was watching.

I should like to meet anyone who has ever felt, if but for the briefest of moments, that the stars in the night sky are really tears in the canopy of this world — and that, with resolve and perseverance, one might succeed in clawing one’s way out of this world through them.

This comedy we act out for the gods’ amusement is a tragedy to us who must live it.

She was too sweet to be steadfast; he too firm to be forgiving. But their love was the best that life could offer either of them and that was enough for them.

A: Why are you so upset with him? You would do the same things too under the right circumstances. You must know that, in the end, everyone has their price.
B: You’re right: everyone does have a price. My problem with him is he seems to be doing these things pro bono.

He was an artist more informed by a theory of aesthetics than by a sense of aesthetics.

She was a woman with whom I could only be gladly unhappy: she was ideally suited to sharing my misery, but a state of mutual happiness was quite simply impossible. She could only be happy while in love and she could never be in love with me; and when I was happy, her depression seemed hatefully fatalistic and inhibiting.

She had that sort of face that one cannot ever imagine smiling, a face that quite possibly physiologically was incapable of smiling, a face that seemed to try its best and yet still fail to maintain just the look of indifference on it, a face truly and deeply odious.

A: I slept like an angel last night.
B: Angels don’t sleep.
A: How do you know that?
B: Because it says so in the Bible.
A: Where in the Bible does it say that?
B: In the beginning of the New Testament.
A: Where in the beginning of the New Testament?
A: In the beginning, where it says, “in the beginning…”
B: That’s not in the beginning of the New Testament.
A: I’ll burn you.