Showing posts with label NYTRB. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NYTRB. Show all posts
"At this very moment, the town was full of people lying in bed thinking with an intense, an inexhaustible, an almost raging passion of becoming famous if they weren't already famous, and even more famous if they were; or of becoming wealthy if they weren't already wealthy, or wealthier if they were; or powerful if they weren't powerful now, and more powerful if they already were. There were times when the intensity with which they wanted these things impressed me. There was even, at times, a certain legitimacy to their desires."

My Face for the World to See by Alfred Hayes

"I am recording my experience only in order to have it securely and, so to speak, objectively fixed before me, to enjoy it again in my emotions while at the same time understanding it intellectually. It was quite wrong, quite untrue when I said just now that I wanted to draw a line under it by writing it down; on the contrary, I want to make what I lived through all too quickly even more alive, to have it warm and breathing beside me, so that I can clasp it to me again and again."

Fantastic Night & other stories by Stefan Zweig