Captain Robinson felt himself, while under the influence of the drug, to be possessed of almost divine wisdom. He was aware that he not only knew the secret of the Universe, but had reduced it to a single sentence, which he was unfortunately never able to recall when he woke up. One night, so as to make sure of remembering it, he took a pad and pencil when he lay down to smoke. The sentence in which all wisdom was contained turned out to be:
The banana is great, but the skin is greater.
– George Orwell (review of Captain H.R. Robinson’s A Modern de Quincey, “Portrait of an Addict,” 1942)
Paul Valery had a profound idea: what is most deep is the skin.
– Gilles Deleuze (The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester, Continuum, London, 2004, p. 12)
– Andy Warhol (c.1966)
the eye … solves a light “problem”
– Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton, Continuum, London, 2004, p. 263)
instead of blowing his brains out as he had intended [Captain Robinson] merely blew out both eyeballs, blinding himself for life.
– George Orwell (in ibid., as is the title to this post)
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