Home > Topic > the concrete
1 " Freedom - rather more complicated in the concrete than the abstract, yes? "
― Ian C. Esslemont , Orb Sceptre Throne (Novels of the Malazan Empire #4)
2 " To the person who believes this- as the western world did up until a few centuries ago- this physical, sensible world is good because it proceeds from a divine source. The artist usually knows this by instinct; his senses, which are used to penetrating the concrete, tell him so. When Conrad said that his aim as an artist was to render the highest possible justice to the visible universe, he was speaking with the novelist's surest instinct. The artist penetrates the concrete world in order to find at its depths the image of its source, the image of ultimate reality. This in no way hinders his perception of evil but rather sharpens it, for only when the natural world is seen as good does evil become intelligible as a destructive force and a necessary result of our freedom. "
― Flannery O'Connor
3 " We stopped and listened. Just on the cusp of hearing I detected a rhythmic pounding, more a vibration in the concrete than a sound.'Drums,' I said and then because I couldn't resist it. 'Drums in the deep.''Drum and Bass in the deep,' said Kumar. "
― Ben Aaronovitch , Whispers Under Ground (Rivers of London, #3)
4 " It is generally supposed, and not least by Catholics, that the Catholic who writes fiction is out to use fiction to prove the truth of the Faith, or at the least, to prove the existence of the supernatural. He may be. No one certainly can be sure of his low motives except as they suggest themselves in his finished work, but when the finished work suggests that pertinent actions have been fraudulently manipulated or overlooked or smothered, whatever purposes the writer started out with have already been defeated. What the fiction writer will discover, if he discovers anything at all, is that he himself cannot move or mold reality in the interests of an abstract truth. The writer learns, perhaps more quickly than the reader, to be humble in the face of what-is. What-is is all he has to do with; the concrete is his medium; and he will realize eventually that fiction can transcend its limitations only by staying within them. "
― Flannery O'Connor , Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose
5 " None but ourselves will put the concrete on our road to success. "
6 " Even if you bury me underground and put a concrete slab over the hole – one day you will wake up to find a crack in the concrete with a tiny green sprout shooting through. When you see that shoot – that will be me! "
― Archibald Marwizi , Making Success Deliberate
7 " My faith has been tempered in Hell. My faith has emerged from the flames of the crematoria, from the concrete of the gas chamber. I have seen that it is not man who is impotent in the struggle against evil, but the power of evil that is impotent in the struggle against man. The powerlessness of kindness, of senseless kindness, is the secret of its immortality. It can never be conquered. The more stupid, the more senseless, the more helpless it may seem, the vaster it is. Evil is impotent before it. The prophets, religious teachers, reformers, social and political leaders are impotent before it. This dumb, blind love is man's meaning.Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness. But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer. "
― Vasily Grossman , Life and Fate
8 " When the train stopped, when she got off and heard the concrete of the platform under her heels, she felt light, lifted, impelled to action. She started off, walking fast, as if the speed of her steps could give form to the things she felt. "
― Ayn Rand , Atlas Shrugged
9 " Is it that by its indefiniteness it shadows forth the heartless voids and immensities of the universe, and thus stabs us from behind with the thought of annihilation, when beholding the white depths of the milky way? Or is it, that as in essence whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color; and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows- a colorless, all-color of atheism from which we shrink? And when we consider that other theory of the natural philosophers, that all other earthly hues — every stately or lovely emblazoning — the sweet tinges of sunset skies and woods; yea, and the gilded velvets of butterflies, and the butterfly cheeks of young girls; all these are but subtile deceits, not actually inherent in substances, but only laid on from without; so that all deified Nature absolutely paints like the harlot, whose allurements cover nothing but the charnel-house within; and when we proceed further, and consider that the mystical cosmetic which produces every one of her hues, the great principle of light, for ever remains white or colorless in itself, and if operating without medium upon matter, would touch all objects, even tulips and roses, with its own blank tinge — pondering all this, the palsied universe lies before us a leper; and like wilful travellers in Lapland, who refuse to wear colored and coloring glasses upon their eyes, so the wretched infidel gazes himself blind at the monumental white shroud that wraps all the prospect around him. And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt? "
― Herman Melville , Moby-Dick or, the Whale
10 " The blazing sun beat down on the concrete of the museum's front yard- Reverend Ryu Yosop felt as if the heat were sucking up all the moisture in his brain and heart. What different colors he and his brother Yohan must have used as each of them painted their own picture of home, of the carnage. These people have constructed yet a different vision of their own, Yosop thought to himself, but it all stems from the same nightmare, the one we created together. "
― Hwang Sok-yong , The Guest
11 " I write poems. I'm often laughed at for doing so. My friends and foes, who were born in 1980's or even later aren't savvy with this concept of the reading and writing poems. They're probably not at fault because while they were being brought up in their respective environments, they weren't really taught how to appreciate poetry. Sadly, those same indifferent souls are now raising their children in the same robotic way, keeping them away from an art form as pure as poetry. Anyway, on the path my life, my poems, written and unwritten, are spread throughout like breadcrumbs. Alas! I'm savouring these breadcrumbs alone because no one has chosen to walk by me, maybe because they're skeptic about the taste of these crumbs. They've hypothetically assumed that these crumbs, these poems are bitter. Sigh! They aren't courageous enough to gather the strength to actually taste them. Perhaps this way, the real sweetness of my crumbs, of my poems stays obscured to them. But I haven't let them crush this sweetness beneath their feet and that's why, I've chosen to walk alone instead. How can I not savour these crumbs if I already know that they're leading me to the apex of my life? How can I not write poems if a voice inside me is constantly pecking my hands to give it a form? This voice is my meditation. This voice is my shadow, a shadow which is stubborn enough to remain intact even when I'll be gone. This voice is my concrete, the concrete that I'm made up of. This voice is my power, the power that will shake your senses. This voice is my poetry. "
12 " I write poems. I'm often laughed at for doing so. My friends and foes, who were born in 1980's or even later aren't savvy with this concept of the reading and writing poems. They're probably not at fault because while they were being brought up in their respective environs, they weren't really taught how to appreciate poetry. Sadly, those same indifferent souls are now raising their children in the same robotic way, keeping them away from an art form as pure as poetry. Anyway, on the path my life, my poems, written and unwritten, are spread throughout like breadcrumbs. Alas! I'm savoring these breadcrumbs alone because no one has chosen to walk by me, maybe because they're skeptic about the taste of these crumbs. They've hypothetically assumed that these crumbs, these poems are bitter. Sigh! They aren't courageous enough to gather the strength to actually taste them. Perhaps this way, the real sweetness of my crumbs, of my poems stays obscured to them. But I haven't let them crush this sweetness beneath their feet and that's why, I've chosen to walk alone instead. How can I not savor these crumbs if I already know that they're leading me to the apex of my life? How can I not write poems if a voice inside me is constantly pecking my hands to give it a form? This voice is my meditation. This voice is my shadow, a shadow which is stubborn enough to remain intact even when I'll be gone. This voice is my concrete, the concrete that I'm made up of. This voice is my power, the power that will shake your senses. This voice is my poetry. "
13 " You could harbor a man in your bed or your body, play on his nervous system like Paderewski at the keyboard, and not shift his brain one inch out of the concrete of dogma. (p. 5) "
― Jonathan Lethem , Dissident Gardens
14 " I didn't just feel it; I recorded each and every sensation. I can replicate each one. I will. I'll play it back plus ten for the pastardthat caused my love to fall. And before they go down, I'll wet the concrete with their brain mattter. I'll explode their marrow out of their bones and make a mess of their capillaries. I'll make a paste of their eyes, Yasmine, I promise. I'll make them bleed from their ears and turn their digestive system against them. They'll digest their own organs. I'll increase their pain receptors so that their clothes feel like sandpaper. I'll make their own breath soun d like a DC-10 is landing in their chest. I'll fill their longs with every excessive fluid in their body I can find. I'll make a decomposing mess of them, I swear I will. They'll pray to gods they don't belive in for the pain to end before I explode each taste bud in their mough and inflame their genitals with the stray parasites they immune system usually fights off. "
― , The Liminal People
15 " In a sense, the Earth is mounting an immune response against the human species. It is beginning to react to the human parasite, the flooding infection of people, the dead spots of the concrete all over the planet, the cancerous rot-outs in Europe, Japan and the United States, thick with replicating primates, the colonies enlarging and spreading and threatening to shock the biosphere with mass extinctions. Perhaps the biosphere does not 'like' the idea of five billion humans. "
― Richard Preston , The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus
16 " I hope people understand that when you tax corporations that the concrete and the steel and the plastic don't pay. People pay. And so when you tax corporations, either the employees are going to pay or the shareholders are going to pay or the customers are going to pay. And so corporations are people. "
