“Several years ago, I met a man who claimed he had escaped to Fate’s narrative from a book by Andrew Gallix.”
– Sam Mills, The Watermark, 2024
The Watermark
Category Archives: Quotes
The Condition of Snowmen
“‘All art aspires to the condition of snowmen.”
– T. J. B. Spencer, “Shakespeare the International Author.” The Future of the Modern Humanities, ed. J. C. Laidlaw, 1969
The Struggle to Efface Oneself
“‘To write is to participate in the struggle to efface oneself” (p. 14).
“Can mysticism be said to live on for us in the experience of art and as the experience of art? If so, such art will be premised upon its own negation. … As [T. S.] Eliot said in a speech to would-be poets in 1960, if poetry were ever to reach its goal, it would “annihilate poetry” (pp. 211-212).
– Simon Critchley, On Mysticism, 2024
Une forme extatique de la disparition
“Car le désert n’est que cela : une critique extatique de la culture, une forme extatique de la disparition.”
– Jean Baudrillard, Amérique, 1986
The Language of Destruction
“‘Why is the language of destruction so beautiful?’ Owen said.”
– Don DeLillo, The Names, 1982
The Ghoul of Literature
“‘If I were a writer,’ Owen said, ‘how I would enjoy being told the novel is dead. How liberating to work on the margins, outside a central perception. You are the ghoul of literature. Lovely.”
– Don DeLillo, The Names, 1982
Vanishing
“You can make vanishing into a project.”
– Hari Kunzru, Blue Ruin, 2024
The Suggestion of a Thought
“In Sappho’s poem, her addresses to gods are orderly, perfect poetic products, but the way—and this is the magic of fragments—the way that poem breaks off leads into a thought that can’t ever be apprehended. There is the space where a thought would be, but which you can’t get hold of. I love that space. It’s the reason I like to deal with fragments. Because no matter what the thought would be if it were fully worked out, it wouldn’t be as good as the suggestion of a thought that the space gives you. Nothing fully worked out could be so arresting, so spooky.”
– Anne Carson, “The Art of Poetry N° 88”, The Paris Review, Issue 171, Fall 2004
A Few Smears
“Some mornings I started with a painting that was almost finished and by the afternoon there would be nothing left but a few smears.”
– Hari Kunzru, Blue Ruin, 2024
As Long As Nothing Happens
“As long as nothing happens anything is possible, you agree?”
– Graham Greene, Our Man in Havana, 1958
ANDREW GALLIX 