Tom McCarthy QUOTES

1 " If people were to tell other people everything about themselves, we’d live in a dull world. "

2 " People need foundation myths, some imprint of year zero, a bolt that secures the scaffolding that in turn holds fast the entire architecture of reality, of time: memory-chambers and oblivion-cellars, walls between eras, hallways that sweep us on towards the end-days and the coming whatever-it-is. We see things shroudedly, as through a veil, an over-pixellated screen. When the shapeless plasma takes on form and resolution, like a fish approaching us through murky waters or an image looming into view from noxious liquid in a darkroom, when it begins to coalesce into a figure that's discernible, if ciphered, we can say: This is it, stirring, looming even if it isn't really, if it's all just ink-blots. "

― Tom McCarthy , Satin Island

3 " Everything, as Peyman said, may be a fiction – but the Future is the biggest shaggy-dog story of all. "

― Tom McCarthy , Satin Island

4 " It’s about the possibility, or otherwise, of meaning in the world. And the possibility, or otherwise, of writing. And the possibility, or otherwise, of the resolution of everything into some coherent, cogent vision. "

― Tom McCarthy

5 " It’s very fluid, this space between philosophy and literature, and that’s something that resonates for me. "

― Tom McCarthy

6 " But now there are no natives – or we’re the natives. "

― Tom McCarthy , Satin Island

7 " Incomprehensible is no better than banal – it’s just its flip-side. "

― Tom McCarthy , Satin Island

8 " We’re the noblest savages of all. "

― Tom McCarthy , Satin Island

9 " Literature has to remain frustrating — to withhold something, remain incomplete — or it’s not literature anymore, but rather entertainment, edification or interpretation. That’s literature’s USP: staying unresolved, keeping its most vital messages unspoken, creating a zone of noise where everything and nothing is said at the same time. "

― Tom McCarthy

10 " All great enterprises are about logistics. Not genius or inspiration or flights of imagination, skill or cunning, but logistics. "

― Tom McCarthy , Remainder

11 " People need foundation myths. "

― Tom McCarthy , Satin Island

12 " [...]to be real--to become fluent, natural, to cut out the detour that sweeps us around what's fundamental to events, preventing us from touching their core: the detour that makes us all second-hand and second-rate. "

― Tom McCarthy , Remainder

13 " Forget family, or ethnic and religious groupings: corporations have supplanted all these as the primary structure of the modern tribe. "

― Tom McCarthy , Satin Island

14 " We require experience to stay ahead, if only by a nose, of our consciousness of experience—if for no other reason than that the latter needs to make sense of the former, to (as Peyman would say) narrate it both to others and ourselves, and, for this purpose, has to be fed with a constant, unsorted supply of fresh sensations and events. "

― Tom McCarthy , Satin Island

15 " For anthropologists, even the exotic’s not exotic, let alone the everyday. "

― Tom McCarthy , Satin Island

16 " To the anthropologist, as I explained before, it’s generic episodes and phenomena that stand out as significant, not singular ones. To the anthropologist, there’s no such thing as a singular episode, a singular phenomenon—only a set of variations on generic ones; the more generic, therefore, the more pure, the closer to an unvariegated or unscrambled archetype. "

― Tom McCarthy , Satin Island

17 " Everything becomes buffering, and buffering becomes everything. "

― Tom McCarthy , Satin Island

18 " I stopped right in the middle of the road. There was no traffic. Before heading back towards my flat to get the number I paused for a while, I don't know how long, and stood in what had been the marksmen's sightlines. I turned the palms of my hands outwards, closed my eyes and thought about that memory of just before the accident, being buffeted by wind. Remembering it sent a tingling from the top of my legs to my shoulders and right up into my neck. It lasted for just a moment-but while it did it felt not-neutral. I felt different, intense: both intense and serene at the same time. I remember feeling this way very well: standing there, passive, with my palms turned outwards, feeling intense and serene. "

― Tom McCarthy , Remainder

19 " It's not that I'm being shy. It's just that -- well, for one, I don't even remember the event. It's a blank: a white slate, a black hole. I have vague images, half-impressions: of being, or having been -- or, more precisely, being about to be -- hit; blue light; railings; lights of other colours; being held above some kind of tray or bed. But who's to say that these are genuine memories? Who's to say my traumatized mind didn't just make them up, or pull them out from somewhere else, some other slot, and stick them there to plug the gap -- the crater -- that the accident had blown? Minds are versatile and wily things. Real chancers. "

― Tom McCarthy , Remainder

20 " Master-meaning! Concealed revealment! I spent my twenties wanting to be Lévi-Strauss – which is ironic, since he spent most of his life wanting to be somebody or something else: a philosopher, say, or novelist, or poet. "

― Tom McCarthy , Satin Island

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