A Quote by Howard Jacobson
There is much that makes one pause in 'If This is a Man', the record of Levi's 11-month incarceration in Auschwitz, much one cannot read without needing to lay aside the book and inhale the breath of common air.
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Write something and leave it aside so you've practically forgotten it as much as possible, a month or so, then come back and read it as if you're reading it for the first time.
The problem is grasping the clock. So what do I do? Let it go, lay it aside - put it down gently without any kind of aversion. Then I can pick it up again, see what time it is and lay it aside when necessary.
Love is all around you like the air and is the very breath of your being. But you cannot know it, feel its unfeeling touch, until you pause in your busy-ness, are still and poised and empty of your wanting and desiring. When at rest the air is easily offended and will flee even from the fanning of a leaf, as love flees from the first thought. But when the air or love moves of its own accord it is a hurricane that drives all before it.
We lay aside letters never to read them again, and at last we destroy them out discretion, and so disappears the most immediate breath of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and for others.
The air is precious to the red man, for all things share the same breath-the beast, the tree, the man, they all share the same breath. The white man does not seem to notice the air he breathes. Like a man dying for many days, he is numb to the stench.
Writing, painting, singing -- it cannot stop everything. Cannot halt death in its tracks. But perhaps it can make the pause between death's footsteps sound and look and feel beautiful, can make the space of waiting a place where you can linger without as much fear. For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives.
So much of the humor on new sitcoms plays to the lowest common denominator. Wit isn't nearly given as much attention as slipping on a banana peel. So much of the writing is so coarse, so obvious that it doesn't provide a shock, never mind a laugh. What makes something funny is alluding to it without laying it out explicitly. You let the audiences fill in the gaps and that's where the laughs come.
I didn't really like reading much before I did 'The Golden Compass'. But then my teacher told me to read it. And I thought, 'Oh God, I'm going to have to read a whole book by myself!' It's not that I couldn't read, it's just that I didn't really like books very much. But the book that she lent me I really enjoyed.
We've got to pause and ask ourselves: How much clean air do we need?
I am very bad at remembering the books I've read and so recently I had a wonderful experience. I decided I wanted to teach Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. I hadn't read it in twenty-five years. I was surprised to find how much I drew from that book. Stole from that book, learned from that book about writing. I had forgotten and there it was. Morrison has called that text faulted. I cannot see how.
However much you study, you cannot know without action. A donkey laden with books is neither an intellectual nor a wise man. Empty of essence, what learning has he whether upon him is firewood or book?
[If a book were] very innocent, and one which might be confided to the reason of any man; not likely to be much read if let alone, but if persecuted, it will be generally read. Every man in the United States will think it a duty to buy a copy, in vindication of his right to buy and to read what he pleases.
This is why I can't be with Levi. Because I'm the kind of girl who fantasizes about being trapped in a library overnight-and Levi can't even read.
I cannot let this opportunity pass without placing on record how much I have enjoyed my cricket with Kent.
The soul is a breath of living spirit, that with excellent sensitivity, permeates the entire body to give it life. Just so, the breath of the air makes the earth fruitful. Thus the air is the soul of the earth, moistening it, greening it.
A man can no more take in a supply of grace for the future than he can eat enough today to last him for the next 6 months, nor can he inhale sufficient air into his lungs with one breath to sustain life for a week to come. We are permitted to draw upon God's store of grace from day to day as we need it.
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