#tension

...what goes on inside believers is mysterious. So far as it can be guessed at - if for some reason you wanted to guess at it - it appears to be a kind of anxious pretending, a kind of continual, nervous resistance to reality. It looks as if, to a believer, things can never be allowed just to be what they are. They always have to be translated, moralised - given an unnecessary and rather sentimental extra meaning. A sunset can't just be part of the mixed magnificence and cruelty and indifference of the world; it has to be a blessing. A meal has to be a present you're grateful for, even if it came from Tesco and the ingredients cost you £7.38. Sex can't be the spectrum of experiences you get used to as an adult, from occasional earthquake through to mild companionable buzz; it has to be, oh dear oh dear, a special thing that happens when mummies and daddies love each other very much... Our fingers must be in our ears all the time - lalala, I can't hear you - just to keep out the plain sound of the real world. The funny thing is that to me it's exactly the other way around. In my experience, it's belief that involves the most uncompromising attention to the nature of things of which you are capable. It's belief which demands that you dispense with illusion after illusion, while contemporary common sense requires continual, fluffy pretending. Pretending that might as well be systematic, it's so thoroughly incentivised by our culture. ↗

— Francis Spufford

#unapologetic #experience

There was a time when I could have slept with his friend Briffa, for instance. Around him the air was always fraught with possibilities. ↗

— Michael Ondaatje

#potential #romantic-potential #sexual-tension #romantic

She had thought of literature all these years (her seclusion, her rank, her sex must be her excuse) as something wild as the wind, hot as fire, swift as lightning; something errant, incalculable, abrupt, and behold, literature was an elderly gentleman in a grey suit talking about duchesses… Orlando then came to the conclusion (opening half-a-dozen books)…that it would be impolitic in the extreme to wrap a ten-pound note round the sugar tongs when Miss Christina Rossetti came to tea…next (here were half-a-dozen invitations to celebrate centenaries by dining) that literature since it all these dinners must be growing very corpulent; next (she was invited to a score of lectures on the Influence of this upon that; the Classical revival; the Romantic survival, and other titles of the same engaging kind) that literature since it listened to all these lectures must be growing very dry; next (here she attended a reception given by a peeress) that literature since it wore all those fur tippets must be growing very respectable; next (here she visited Carlyle’s sound-proof room at Chelsea) that genius since it needed all this coddling must be growing very delicate… ↗

— Virginia Woolf

#pretensions #respect

He(Prophet Muhammad) was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without Pope's pretensions, Caesar without the legions of Caesar: without a standing army, without a bodyguard, without a palace, without a fixed revenue; if ever any man had the right to say that he ruled by the right divine, it was Muhammad, for he had all the power without its instruments and without its supports. ↗

— Reverend B. Smith

#atheist #bodyguard #caesar #christian #divine

As a parent, I have a job as a role model to my children, and by extension, to other young people. ↗

— Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

#extension #i #job #model #other

Right now, politics follows the rules of talk radio - using conflict, tension, fear, and resentment to find new recruits. ↗

— John Avlon

#fear #find #follows #new #now

There's a basic kind of tension here. It's between those who say, I'd like to clear cut this forest and reduce it to saw timber because that's an economically productive thing for me to do. ↗

— Bruce Babbitt

#because #between #clear #cut #economically

Stripped of ethical rationalizations and philosophical pretensions, a crime is anything that a group in power chooses to prohibit. ↗

— Freda Adler

#chooses #crime #ethical #group #philosophical

It's tough to be a 15- or 16-year-old athlete competing around the country. There's tension, there's media. I had no idea what I was getting into. ↗

— Lance Armstrong

#athlete #competing #country #getting #had

There's always been a lot of pressure and tension on the line. If 'Pi' didn't work out, I have no idea what my career would be. I don't think I would have gotten another shot at it. If 'Requiem for a Dream' didn't work out, they would have called me a 'one-hit wonder with a sophomore slump'. ↗

— Darren Aronofsky

#another #been #called #career #dream