#squalor

We hate our squalor. ↗

— Andrei Platonov

#our #squalor

The mask of art is the means through which corruption is spread. The mask makes vice seem beautiful, turns squalor and nastiness into glamorous thrill, seduces the onlooker into the game – and leaves him or her with the corpse on his hands. ↗

— Jennifer Birkett

#corpse #corruption #mask #seduction #squalor

The west has a great deal to answer for in the Middle East, from Britain's belated empire-building after the First World War to the US and British policy that condemns modern Iraq to the material and social squalor of a half-century ago. ↗

— James Buchan

#ago #answer #belated #britain #british

Men of integrity, by their very existence, rekindle the belief that as a people we can live above the level of moral squalor. We need that belief; a cynical community is a corrupt community. ↗

— John W. Gardner

#belief #community #corrupt #cynical #existence

I came up with American Splendor. Some people think it's American Squalor. ↗

— Harvey Pekar

#came #i #i came #people #some

I tell you, say the rich, the poor are naught but dirty wind welling in air-shafts over the cinders and droppings of the past, their voices thick with grease and ordure, sewer-greed to corrode the ear with the horrors of the past and the voids of new stupidity. One could drown waiting for the poor to make one fine distinction. Yes, destroy us say the rich and you lose the roots of God. ↗

— Norman Mailer

#rich #squalor #wealth #death