The collection / 11 fragments

The living archive

Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

SearchTypeTopicEraCulture / collection labelCountry attributionTraditionOrder

Author

Leave empty for every voice. Browse all authors ↗

Reset

Culture labels and country attributions follow the source collections; earliest origins may be unknown.

11 results · Page 1 of 1Play this collection ▷

01Undated

You have to notice the truth in order to be able to avoid it.

Sarah Schulman / quote

↗

02Undated

Confusing being mortal with being threatened can occur in any realm. The fact that something could go wrong does not mean that we are in danger. It means we are alive. Mortality is the sign of life. In the most intimate and personal of arenas, many of us have love and trusted someone who violated that trust. So when someone else comes along who intrigues us, whose interests we share, who we enjoy being with, with whom there could b some mutual enrichment and understanding, that does not mean that we are being violated again. Experiencing anxiety does not mean that anyone is doing anything to us that is unjust.

Sarah Schulman / quote

↗

03Undated

Nothing disrupts dehumanization more quickly than inviting someone over, looking into their eyes, hearing their voice, and listening.

Sarah Schulman / quote

↗

04Undated

Any pain that human beings can create, human beings can transcend.

Sarah Schulman / quote

↗

05Undated

Some people have sex by putting fishhooks in each other. Couple this act with a simple understanding of the basic function of all living creatures to expand and contract. Now, try that with fishhooks.

Sarah Schulman / quote

↗

06Undated

It takes two to tango” isn’t even true on the dance floor. One person can do a lot of evil all on his or her own. But the Theory of Mutual Blame arose sometime before Doc was even born. Perhaps it was a takeoff on Freud’s seduction theory or the more generic practice of blaming victims for being alive. Its origins were unclear, but no one had ever had to take full responsibility for their own actions since.

Sarah Schulman / quote

↗

07Undated

You tell them one real thing and then the doctor thinks he knows you. He starts getting arrogant and overfamiliar, making insulting suggestions left and right. You have to protest constantly just to set the record straight. Finally he makes offensive assumptions and throws them in your face. A stranger in a bar could do the same…

Sarah Schulman / quote

↗

08Undated

Anna liked magazines. They were glossy machines. The only technology that she could fold. She read them on a regular basis because they were absorbing. Each one came out on a specific day of the week and was good for an hour of absorption.

Sarah Schulman / quote

↗

09Undated

I am not here to entertain straight people.

Sarah Schulman / quote

↗

10Undated

I dreamt that I took William Burrough’s penis and tied it up with piano wire. I hung him like a Chagall painting…In the next part J.G. Ballard swam through streets of female urine. The girls read his book Crash and then mowed him down with their Volkswagen, crushing his chest slowly against a brick wall. As he screamed in agony larger than representation can accommodate, they referred to his text and had orgasms. Later, they jumped up and down yelling, ‘You’re not a hero. You’re not a hero. You’re not. You’re not. You’re not.’ ““How do you analyze that part of the dream, Anna?”…”I guess I’m nervous about my birthday.

Sarah Schulman / quote

↗

11Undated

It drives me crazy who quickly the great ones get canonized. 'Blah-blah-blah is such a terrible loss.' Does that mean that the death of one mediocre slob is not as terrible? Do fags have to be geniuses to justify living?

Sarah Schulman / quote

↗