With pain, at least it feels as though that part of the body is still alive. Numbness is a near certainty that something in you has died.
— Guillermo Arriaga, The Untameable, translated by Frank Wynne & Jessie Mendez Sayer, 2021, p.13
the story of David and Absalom … Faulkner had written a novel inspired by it. “And if Faulkner chose it, it’s because it’s ambiguous and intense,” …
In the Bible story, Absalom sends his servants to murder his half-brother Amnon, who has raped his sister Tamar. For his crime, and because of issues of succession, Absalom comes into conflict with his father, King David, and raises a revolt against him at Hebron. It pains the king to be at war with his son. There is no ceasefire between the two armies. King David’s followers find themselves at an advantage: Absalom is surrounded and tries to flee on a mule, and the mule walks underneath the thick boughs of a great oak, and his hair is tangled in the branches, and he is taken up between Heaven and Earth; and the mule he is riding walks away. Absalom is found by Joab, the king’s commander, who orders his summary execution. When King David hears that his son Absalom has been killed, he greatly sorrows and goes into the chamber above the gate, and weeps; and as he goes, he says: “Oh Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would god I had died for thee, Oh Absalom, my son, my son!” But Joab rebukes the king, saying that Absalom had been a fierce and implacable foe; this was no time for remorse, but for retaking of power and regaining the respect of his subjects. Overcome with grief, but resolute, King David decides to retake command.
— Ibid., p. 165
The Good Boys believed that the Devil was slowly leeching into the modern world, corrupting humanity and distancing Man from god. It was their moral duty to stop this. They were the vanguard of the evangelical moral army that would halt the Fall of Man.
— Ibid., p. 164, against which I noted, forget Thought Police. Hail the New Moral Army.
“You can take the tiger out of the jungle, but you can’t take the jungle out of the tiger.” I understood Borges and Spinoza: the tiger eternally wants to be a tiger.
— Ibid., p. 196
A lion does not wonder whether it is a lion. It is a lion.
— Ibid., p. 197
While he was hunting Nujuaqtutuq he had forgotten the golden rule: stop every hundred metres and look behind you, because the landscape you see ahead is not the same as the landscape you leave behind.
— Ibid., p. 285
The doctor grudgingly wrote [Chelo] a prescription and we stopped at a drugstore to buy contraceptive pills.
The woman behind the counter seemed reluctant to hand them over. She slid them across surreptitiously, as if they were illegal drugs. As Chelo was paying, the woman leaned closer: “Let god be the one to decide whether or not you have children, not you.” Chelo glared at her. “If that’s true, then let god be the one to tell me,” Chelo said.
— Ibid., p. 674
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