„… das Todestor, als das wichtigste der unsichtbaren Tore, für uns alle, ohne Unterscheidung, Tag und Nacht, geöffnet… Er nannte den Tod die wundersamste Reise, die der Mensch vermöchte, ein wahres Zauberstück, die Tarnkappe aller Tarnkappen… die letzte und unangreifbare Burg aller Freien und Tapferen.“

—  Ernst Jünger

The Secret of Permanent Creation: Whatever you’re thinking; think something else. Whatever you’re doing; do something else. The Absolute Secret of Permanent Creation: Desire nothing, decide nothing, choose nothing, be aware of yourself, stay awake, calmly seated, do nothing

— Robert Filliou

Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comicbooks survive. And the three-dimensional sex-magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.

Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

Brodersen had awaited that line of attack. That was my own offhand example. Calm down. But okay, here `tis again. But tell us, Joelle. Navigation is yours, then, Langendijk said formally. Archer communicates secretly, with the secret connivance of the watch ship captain in the Solar System- communicates secretly with his secret masters, who tell him to take us to a secret place? Isn’t that a little melodramatic? Earnestly: Think, too- the law of space is above politics. You don’t find any of this unthinkable, do you? N-no. As captain of a watchcraft, Archer has authority over me, he said. Good Lord, you can’t mean that, Second Engineer Torsten Sverdrup protested. That was very soon after its formation. Which is a logical non sequitur, actually. What are you free to tell me? I presume you can give me some argument, some reason to dog my hatch. The wealthiest man on Demeter is not altogether a private citizen. Finally, he enlisted in the Emergency Corps of the World Union Peace Command. Not quite a surprise. Prepare to obey his instructions. Is he? I don’t pretend to be very sensitive where people are concerned, but I have had some exposure to cliques and cabals on high political levels.

Hartmann Fahrgeschäfte,
Bochum, September 2014

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

— Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

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Gibt es etwas Traurigeres als ein entschlüsseltes Werk?

–Kerstin Decker, “Mein Herz – Niemandem”, Das Leben der Else Lasker-Schüler