Exhume greatness Quotes

“...the answer is not in the damn blank page - it's in the days or years before and you have to dredge it up - exhume the past again ...”

“An afternoon drive from Los Angeles will take you up into the high mountains, where eagles circle above the forests and the cold blue lakes, or out over the Mojave Desert, with its weird vegetation and immense vistas. Not very far away are Death Valley, and Yosemite, and Sequoia Forest with its giant trees which were growing long before the Parthenon was built; they are the oldest living things in the world. One should visit such places often, and be conscious, in the midst of the city, of their surrounding presence. For this is the real nature of California and the secret of its fascination; this untamed, undomesticated, aloof, prehistoric landscape which relentlessly reminds the traveller of his human condition and the circumstances of his tenure upon the earth. "You are perfectly welcome," it tells him, "during your short visit. Everything is at your disposal. Only, I must warn you, if things go wrong, don't blame me. I accept no responsibility. I am not part of your neurosis. Don't cry to me for safety. There is no home here. There is no security in your mansions or your fortresses, your family vaults or your banks or your double beds. Understand this fact, and you will be free. Accept it, and you will be happy.”

“Death is buried there into death Hunger strikes on its own last breathNo spine to shiver, no heart talks At life’s craving poverty mocksFrom the poem 'Exhumation”

“The aftermath of someone’s death is vertiginous, a murky, shimmering mass; to look at it head-on is to see only the fog of emotion. One must approach it sideways, entering it by way of an exhumation of facts and retrospections . . .”

“The path of destiny pulls you forward. It exhumes you from a state of being and propels you towards the juncture you were created for. A new frontier that you are forced to tread with a cross on your back, heavy as a boulder. When you fall to your knees at the hands of your betrayer, you can only hope to find the one sent to carry your burden -- shoulder the journey towards your final punishment.Sometimes duplicity and treason are markers of the enemy, and sometimes the failed intention of a masterful ally.”

“She never managed to find herself in these books no matter how hard she tried, exhuming traits from between the pages and donning them for an hour, a day, a week. We think in some ways, we have all done this our whole lives, searching for the book that will give us the keys to ourselves, let us into a wholly formed personality as though it were a furnished room to let. As though we could walk in and look around and say to the gray-haired landlady behind us, "We'll take it.”

“How many times, in those first weeks, did he enter the room and stand by the door, unable to speak? How many times did she ask, "Do you need anything?"And he would say, "No."And she would say "Are you sure?"And he would say, "Yes," but think, Ask again.And she would say, "I know," but think, Come to me.And he would say , "Ask again."And she would say, "Come to me."And saying nothing, he would.There they would be, side by side, her hand on his thigh, his head resting on her chest. If they had been teenagers, it would have looked like the beginning of love, but they'd been married for twenty years, and it was the exhumation of love.”

“We have a few old mouth-to-mouth tales; we exhume from old trunks and boxes and drawers letters without salutation or signature, in which men and women who once lived and breathed are now merely initials or nicknames out of some now incomprehensible affection which sound to us like Sanskrit or Chocktaw; we see dimly people, the people in whose living blood and seed we ourselves lay dormant and waiting, in this shadowy attenuation of time possessing now heroic proportions, performing their acts of simple passion and simple violence, impervious to time and inexplicable.”

“Living beings wide and far are creatively enticed into the idea of living only on the substance of leafy greenery by alluring allegations that seem to make apparent sense. Some want to avoid the dying aspect of life and prolong the bodily functions of their organs within their potential corpses over time and reduce the waste products given off by our walking structures to lessen worldly contamination. Others want to avoid consuming Earth’s usual containing features from being overly exhumed, or because we have never not lovingly smothered Earth’s natural oxygen sucking creatures, and so we do not consume the things that are taking nutrients from us so that we can preserve them instead, because we find it morally dissatisfying.”