{EN} Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis

1. „People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.” (=nobody’s perfect, so don`t criticize others).

2. “Oh, the disgusted look on women’s faces as they step backwards through a doorway, out of the rain. Never watching where they are going, the people move through something prearranged, armed with lies. They’re always looking forward to going places they’ve just come back from, or regretting doing things they haven’t yet done. They say hello when they mean goodbye. Lords of lies and trash – all kings of crap and trash. Sings say No Littering – but who to ? We wouldn’t dream of it. Government does that, at night, with trucks; or uniformed men come sadly at morning with their trolleys, dispensing our rubbish, and shit for the dogs.”

3. „Her body is probably naked by now but there is nothing as naked as human eyes: they haven’t even got skin over them.”

4. „The business with the yellow cabs, it surely looks like an unimprovable deal. They’re always there when you need one, even in the rain or when the theatres are closing. They pay you up front, no questions asked. They always know where you’re going. They’re great. No wonder we stand there, for hours on end, waving goodbye, or saluting – saluting this fine service. The streets are full of people with their arms raised, drenched and weary, thanking the yellow cabs. Just the one hitch: they’re always taking me places I don’t want to go.”

5. „What tells me that this is right? What tells me that all the rest was wrong? Certainly not my aesthetic sense. I would never claim that Auschwitz-Birkenau-Monowitz was good to look at. Or to listen to, or to smell, or to taste, or to touch. There was, among my colleagues there, a general though desultory quest for greater elegance. I can understand that word, and all its yearning: elegant. Not for its elegance did I come to love the evening sky, hellish red with the gathering souls. Creation is easy. Also ugly. Hier ist kein warum. Here there is no why. Here there is no where, no how, no where. Our preternatural purpose? To dream a race. To make a people from the weather. From thunder and from lightning. With gas, with electricity, with shit, with fire.”

6. „’Mummy? Chickens are alive. We catch them and burn them – and then they’re dead! But you can’t eat chicks. Not little good chicks. Because chicks are good. You can just stroke them and everything. But you can eat ducks. Because ducks are fat.’”

O contributie Roxa