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41 " Faith wasn’t a mystery to him; the mystery to him was holding on to faith. He "
― Howard Jacobson , The Finkler Question
42 " But the shouts and smell of smoke had a powerful effect on me. I don't say they excited me, but they gave a sort of universality to what I was feeling. I am who I am because I am not them - well, I was not alone in feeling that. We were all who we were because we were not them. So why did that translate into hate? I don't know, but when everyone's feeling the same thing it can appear to be reasonableness. "
― Howard Jacobson , J
43 " That was what was cruel about superficial change: it exposed what could never change. "
44 " A phrase such as ‘the idea derived from evolution that ontogenesis recapitulates phylogenesis’ for example, not impossibly intricate in itself but somehow resistant to effort, as though it triggered something obdurate and even delinquent in his mind. Or the promise to look at an argument from three points of view, each of which had five salient features, the first of which had four distinguishable aspects. It was like discovering that a supposedly sane person with whom one had been enjoying a perfect normal conversation was in fact quite mad. Or, if not mad, sadistic. "
45 " But aunties are equivocal figures of affection, wicked and unreliable, pretending love only so long as they are short of love themselves, and then off. "
46 " There is no word for the sound a life makes. "
― Howard Jacobson , The Making of Henry
47 " And thinking of her waiting to be found, while he was waiting to find, gave a beautiful symmetry to the love he felt for her. "
― Howard Jacobson
48 " Do you ask 'Nu' of? Or do you ask, transitively? 'Nu?' he asked. And is it even a question in the accepted sense? 'Nu,' he said. Would that have been better? Nu, meaning how are things with you, but also I know how things are with you. "
49 " you might as well wager on God because that way, even if He doesn’t exist, you’ve nothing to lose. Whereas if you wager against God and He does exist . . . "
50 " Come over,’ he said. ‘I’ll order in Chinese.’‘You speak Chinese now?’‘Funny guy, Libor. Be here at eight.’‘You sure you’re up for it?’‘I’m a philosopher, I’m not sure about anything.’.. "
51 " But you don't always have to ask to know. "
52 " you can’t have belief without intolerance. "
53 " Just when you've overcome the grief, you realise you are left with the loneliness. "
54 " Henry believes he knows exactly when the ninety-four-year-old woman in the neighbouring apartment dies. He hears her turn off. Until now he has not been able to distinguish her from her appliances – her washing machine, her vacuum cleaner, her radiators, her television. But the moment she gives up the ghost he detects the cessation of a noise of which he was not previously aware. A hum, was it? A whirr? Impossible to say. There is no word for the sound a life makes. "
55 " Is that what lives on longest, the sadness? The proof of our being weak, not the proof of our being strong? "
56 " On account of their innate aggressiveness, songs of that sort were no longer played on the console. Not banned – nothing was banned exactly – simply not played. Encouraged to fall into desuetude, like the word desuetude. "
57 " Archaeology, Concrete Poetry, Media and Communications, Festival and Theatre Administration, Comparative Religion, Stage Set and Design, the Russian Short Story, Politics and Gender. On finishing his studies – and it was never entirely clear when and whether he had finished his studies, on account of no one at the university being certain how many modules made a totality – Treslove found himself with a degree so unspecific that all he could do with it was accept a graduate traineeship at the BBC. "
58 " I exaggerate but only to revive the dying art of hyperbole. "
― Howard Jacobson , Live a Little
59 " Could that be why Treslove so often found himself alone? Was he protecting himself against the companioned happiness he longed for because he dreaded how he would feel when it was taken from him? "
60 " He didn’t want to feel better. He owed it to what he’d been told to feel worse. That was what living a serious life meant, wasn’t it, honoring the gravity of things by not pretending they were light? Rozenwyn Feigenblat had told him he was an ethicist, not an artist. He agreed with her. An artist owed a duty to nothing except his own irresponsibility. It was OK for an artist to frolic in the water, no matter how bloody the waves or how high the tide rose. An ethicist had an obligation to drown. "