Quotenik
categorized under:

duration

“At the right there was an old House—the window was open. We could see a table with a greenish oil cloth, on it a long bread, a bottle of wine, heavy white plates. We could only see the old hands of the people who were eating. A hand passed a basket with 2 peaches on it. It was all the paintings of the world, quiet, resisting time, everlasting. It is the only image of duration and eternity I have seen in a long time.”

more info

source: letter to Felix Pollak dated July 18, 1958 in Arrows of Longing (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1998), 128–29.

buy on Amazon

category: , , , , , , , ,

medium: letter

notes: Felix Pollak (1909–1987) was an American poet

“Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy—that’s the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.”

more info

source: East of Eden (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), 73.

buy on Amazon
view on Google Books

category: , , , ,

medium: fiction

Quality Quote Collecting