இலக்கணம் பின்னால் ஊர்ந்து ஊர்ந்து வரும், இலக்கியம் முன்னால் பறந்து சென்றுகொண்டிருக்கும்

For those of us who take literature very seriously, picking up a work of fiction is the start of an adventure comparable in anticipatory excitement to what I imagine is felt by an athlete warming up for a competition, a mountain climber preparing for the ascent: it is the beginning of a process whose outcome is unknown, one that promises the thrill and elation of success but may as easily end in bitter disappointment. Committed readers realize at a certain point that literature is where we have learned a good part of the little we know about living.

In my early teens, I heard about Naked Lunch and its mutating typewriters and talking cockroaches. While I would hardly classify its dystopic vision as erotica now, at the time, Naked Lunch was my first foray into consuming smut. It was because of Burroughs that I knew about the particular musk that blooms when a rectum is penetrated, and that death-by-hanging produces spontaneous trouser tents. The first Burroughs I read was Naked Lunch, but I buried myself in a few of his stories, and thus the arc of my recollection is just as non-linear as his narrative.

Mi čitamo knjige zato da bismo čitanjem proširili granice svog ličnog iskustva. Ako nam knjiga u tom pogledu ne daje apsolutno ništa, nijednog novog fakta, nijednog samostalnog pogleda, nijene originalne ideje, ako ničim ne pokreće i ne podstiče našu misao, mi takvu knjigu nazivamo praznom i ništavnom, bez obzira na to da li je pisana u prozi ili stihu, i uvek smo spremni da autoru takve knjige sa iskrenom dobronamernošću posavetujemo da se lati pravljenja čizama ili pečenja bureka.

Doğum yapalı bir saat bile olmamıştı. Tom'un nerede olduğunu Tanrı bilir. Narkozdan çıkınca yoğun bir terkedilmişlik hissi içimi kapladı ve hastabakıcıya kız mı oğlan mı diye sordum. Kız olduğunu öğrenince de, arkamı döndüm ve ağladım "pekala" dedim kendime "kız olduğuna sevindim. Umarım aptal olur. Çünkü bu dünyada bir kız için en iyisi aptal ve güzel olmak.

Onlar göze aldıklarına göre, ben de göze alacağım. Gerçeği söyleyeceğim, çünkü kendisine kurala uygun olarak başvurulan adaletin bunu eksiksiz olarak yapmaması durumunda, söyleyeceğime söz verdim. Benim görevim konuşmak, suç ortağı olmak istemiyorum. Yoksa gecelerim orada, işkencelerin en korkuncu içinde, işlemediği bir suçun cezasını çekmekte olan suçsuzun hayaletiyle dolup taşacak.

Knowing, above all, that I would come looking, and find what he had left for me, all that remained of The Jungle Book in the pocket of his doctor’s coat, that folder-up, yellowed page torn from the back of the book, with a bristle of thick, coarse hairs clenced inside. Galina, says my grandfather’s handwriting, above and below a child’s drawing of the tiger, who is curved like the blade of a scimitar across the page. Galina, it says, and that is how I know to find him again, in Galina, in the story he hadn’t told me but perhaps wished he had.

To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object. Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written. It is not enough even to be able to speak the language of that nation by which they are written, for there is a memorable interval between the spoken and the written language, the language heard and the language read.

And with distance in time it is the same as with distance in place. The imagination has its atmosphere and its sunlight as well as the earth has; only its mists are even more gorgeous and delicate, its aerial perspectives are even more wide and profound. It also transifgures and beautifies things in far more various ways. For the imagination is all senses in one; it is sight, it is smell, it is hearing; it is memory, regret, and passion. Everything goes to nourish it, from first love to literature - literature, which, for cultivated people, is the imagination's gastric juice.

In literature, too, we admire prose in which a small and astutely arranged set of words has been constructed to carry a large consignment of ideas. 'We all have strength enough to bear the misfortunes of others,' writes La Rochefoucauld in an aphorism which transports us with an energy and exactitude comparable to that of Maillard bridge. The Swiss engineer reduces the number of supports just as the French writer compacts into a single line what lesser minds might have taken pages to express. We delight in complexity to which genius has lent an appearance of simplicity. (p 207)

Literary style is like crystal-ware: the cleaner the wineglass, the brighter the brilliance. As a reader, I agree with those who believe that a colour of the dress, which a character has on, as well as any enumeration and description of dishes at dinner or in the kitchen should be mentioned only in case if all this has a strong consequent relation to the plot, but as an author, I can’t help mentioning all this, with no particular reason, just for love for my characters, desiring to give them something nice and pleasant. Melancholy grows a platinum rose. Affection grows a double rose.

I sometimes used to ask myself, what on earth did I love her for? Maybe fore the warm hazel iris of her fluffy eyes, or for the natural side-wave of her brown hair, done anyhow, or again for that movement of her plump shoulders. But, probably the truth was that I loved her because she loved me. To her I was the ideal man: brains, pluck. And there was none dressed better. I remember once, when I first put on that new dinner jacket, with the vast trousers, she clapsed her hands, sank down on a chair and murmured: 'Oh, Hermann...." It was ravishment bordering upon something like heavenly woe.

The past gathered out of the darkness where it stayed, and the dead raised themselves to live before him; and the past and the dead flowed into the present among the alive, so that he had for an intense instant a vision of denseness into which he was compacted and from which he could not escape, and had no wish to escape. Tristan, Iseult the fair, walked before him; Paolo and Francesca whirled in the glowing dark; Helen and bright Paris, their faces bitter with consequence, rose from the gloom. And he was with them in a way that he could never be with his fellows who went from class to class.

How to explain the sheer tingling joy one experiences when two interesting, complex, and occasionally aggravating characters have at last settled their misunderstandings and will live happily ever after, no matter what travails life might throw in their path, because Jane Austen said they will, and that's that? How to describe the exhilaration of being caught up in an unknown but glamorous world of balls and gowns and rides in open carriages with handsome young men? How to explain that the best part of Jane Austen's world is that sudden recognition that the characters are just like you?

هي واحدة من أكبر المفارقات بالنسبة للمسافر ؛ عندما نرحل نأسف لعدم البقاء و عندما نبقى نأسف لعدم الرحيل