Adversaria (17)
‘Karl knows something of every handicraft, and in addition he has teh ability, peculiar to nearly all Norwegians, to tackle any situation with the most meagre equipment. He is what the Norwegians call for short an altmüligman—an everything-possible-man’ —Christiane Ritter (A Woman in the Polar Night, trans. Jane Degras, 52%)
‘…the heart of man is a wonderful thing, especially when it is carried in his wallet’ —Karl Marx (Capital, vol. 1, trans. Ben Fowkes, p. 336)
‘The beginning of wealth, of the levity of wealth, is discernible in the act of taking an item from a shelf of food without first checking the price’ —Annie Ernaux (Look at the Lights, My Love, trans. Alison L. Strayer, 40%)
‘Now that I know what a live polar fox is like I no longer want a dead one’ —Christiane Ritter (A Woman in the Polar Night, trans. Jane Degras, 26%)
‘An archetype is in no sense just an annoying prejudice; it becomes so only when it is in the wrong place.’ —C.G. Jung (Four Archetypes, trans. R.F.C. Hull, p. 18)
‘For the first time I realise that in the solitude of an all-too-powerful nature things have a different meaning from that we attribute to them in our world of constant reciprocal relations between man and man. It dawns on me that in many cases it may be more diffcult for a man to retain his ordinary humanity in the Arctic than to sustain his life in battle with the elements’ —Christiane Ritter (A Woman in the Polar Night, trans. Jane Degras, 43%)
‘The superstore’s art of making people believe in its benevolence’ —Annie Ernaux (Look at the Lights, My Love, trans. Alison L. Strayer, 75%)
‘Perhaps in centuries to come men will go to the Arctic as in biblical times they withdrew to the desert, to find the truth again’ —Christiane Ritter (A Woman in the Polar Night, trans. Jane Degras, 45%)
‘Through a stunning reversal, it is the machines that look smart and humans stupid. I can’t get used to this [self check-out/superstore] system, either’ —Annie Ernaux (Look at the Lights, My Love, trans. Alison L. Strayer, 78%)
‘And suddenly I realise that civilisation is suffering from a severe vitamin deficiency because it cannot draw its strength directly from nature, eternally young and eternally true. Humanity has lost itself in the unnatural and in speculation’ —Christiane Ritter (A Woman in the Polar Night, trans. Jane Degras, 79%)