Diamond Shreddies
What went on in No.1’s brain?
“What went on in No.1’s brain? He painted to himself a cross-section through that brain, painted neatly with grey water-colour on a sheet of paper stretched on a drawing-board with drawing-pins. The whorls of grey matter swelled to entrails, they curled round one another like muscular snakes, became vague and misty like the spiral nebulae on astronomical charts. . . . What went on in the inflated grey whorls? One knew everything about the far-away nebulae, but nothing about the whorls.”
—Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, 1941.
ginger-bread figures at a fair
“ ‘ “It is necessary to hammer every sentence into the masses by repetition and simplification. What is presented as right must shine like gold; what is presented as wrong must be black as pitch. For consumption by the masses, the political process must be coloured like ginger-bread figures at a fair.” ’ ”
—Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, 1941.
that particular blue
“He stopped at the window and leaned his forehead against the pane. Over the machine-gun tower one could see a patch of blue. It was pale, and reminded him of that particular blue which he had seen overhead when as a boy he lay on the grass in his father’s park, watching the poplar branches slowly moving against the sky.”
—Arthur Koestler, Darkness at Noon, 1941.
The ‘O’ in Obama
Meet Sol Sender (a pretty good name, that), the designer of the Obama logo (a plum assignment, this), at “The ‘O’ in Obama”, by Steven Heller.
gfhrytytu
“Please don’t tell anybody, but Mark Nechtr desires, some distant hard-earned day, to write something that stabs you in the heart. That pierces you, makes you think you’re going to die. Maybe it’s called metalife. Or metafiction. Or realism, Or gfhrytytu. He doesn’t know. He wonders who the hell really cares. Maybe it’s not called anything.”
—David Foster Wallace, ‘Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way’, Girl With Curious Hair, 1989.
a twenty-page poem that’s all punctuation
“ ‘Why you’re pissed is that I only said I thought a twenty-page poem that’s all punctuation wouldn’t be much fun for anybody to actually read.’”
—David Foster Wallace, ‘Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way’, Girl With Curious Hair, 1989.
a big blue dog
“ ‘The ocean looks like a big blue dog to me, sometimes.’ Faye says, looking. Julie puts an arm around Faye’s bare shoulders.”
—David Foster Wallace, ‘Little Expressionless Animals’, Girl With Curious Hair, 1989.
cool as a lemony moon
“ ’I was convinced I could sing like a wire at Kelvin, high and pale, burn without ignition or friction, shine cool as a lemony moon, mated to a lattice of pure meaning.’”
—David Foster Wallace, ‘Here and There’, Girl With Curious Hair, 1989.
in Letterman’s putty-colored green room
“I smoothed the blue dress I’d slipped on in Letterman’s putty-colored green room.”
—David Foster Wallace, ‘My Appearance’, Girl With Curious Hair, 1989.