the smog QUOTES

1 " As melancholia replaced the jarring of my invention, I sat.

Unable to breathe in the smog I had created, unable to stand on my betraying legs, unable to howl at the heavens over my sordid soul.

In this inferno, I became paroxysmic, my self-hatred, superparamount, numbness dulling the agony of such a devilish act,

An iron curtain fell upon the surrounding world, or at least what I had left of it to be owned by the laconic eclipse.

All the angels fled, disowning my prayers, the lurid world backed away, leaving me forsaken and detached,

I could no longer hear the bombings, hear them fall, my own fabrication, only the dead air that came after, the intense silence.

Cynical and paralyzed, I realized I had purloined a portion of Hell and given it to the unwilling Earth,

Punishing those I had no right to punish, judging those I had no reason to condemn, destroying cities I had never set foot in.

This is how I became Death, the destroyer of Worlds. "

― Moonshine Noire

2 " And then, like most of the times she went down that road of thought, things started lighting up. Rays filtered through the smog like tentacles – and a quite intangible hope infected the darkness with its resolution. She never knew where these urges to 'move forward' came from. Their source eluded her – but she knew they were there somewhere, just as mysterious and uncontrollable as the darkness. Treacles of light had unwittingly penetrated these dark alleyways in her thinking. Illumination came slowly, but it was undeniable. "

― , Consequence

3 " Language is a piss poor attempt at telepathy is what it is. We try to put our thoughts into each other's heads through language...But half the intended meaning gets lost in the transmission, and the other half is filtered through existing assumptions. Everything is a half truth!

That's the whole problem! You can't understand me through the smog of your presumptions and prejudices. Multiply that six billion times and you'll begin to understand the desperation of our global situation "

― Tony Vigorito , Just a Couple of Days

4 " Yeah, you’re right about having entire rooms full of film and photos… in that Sydney Mines house I have a darkroom, I have boxes of film and home movie footage… I have a few projectors, I have piles of Kodachrome slides… I like photographs. The world is always running away from society and the only way to keep the stuff that’s happened in the past is by taking photographs, I can keep memories of things alive with photographs,” Alecto responded. “People say that a time machine can’t be invented, but they’ve already invented a device that can stop time, cameras are the world’s first time machines… The steel mill, the coal mines, the train tracks, the smog in the sky, I’ve been able to rescue it on super-8 and Kodachrome, and no one can remediate those photographs, I can keep them as long as I want to. "

5 " Korea is often called the “Land of the Morning Calm.” It’s a country where you notice the filth and the smog on your first trip and you can’t imagine why you ever thought it was a good idea to visit. Then you meet the people and you walk among their culture and you get a sense there is something deeper beneath the surface, and before you know it, the smog doesn’t matter and the filth is gone—and in its place there is incredible beauty. The sun rises first over Japan, and as Korea is waiting for the earth to spin, for streaks of light to brighten its eastern sky, in that quiet moment there is a calmness that makes Korea the most beautiful country in the world. "

― Tucker Elliot , The Day Before 9/11

6 " The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers' bathing suits. It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog that made their colors so brilliant, that behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story. "

― Michael Connelly , The Black Echo (Harry Bosch, #1, Harry Bosch Universe, #1)

7 " And it was to this city, whenever I went home, that I always knew I must return, for it was mistress of one's wildest hopes, protector of one's deepest privacies. It was half insane with its noise, violence, and decay, but it gave one the tender security of fulfillment. On winter afternoons, from my office, there were sunsets across Manhattan when the smog itself shimmered and glowed… Despite its difficulties, which become more obvious all the time, one was constantly put to the test by this city, which finally came down to its people; no other place in America had quite such people and they would not allow you to go stale; in the end they were its triumph and its reward. "

― Willie Morris