Weekend Words: Extra
It's been an extra-chilly week in New York, just the time for an Extra Edition of Weekend Words.
It’s been an extra-chilly week in New York, just the time for an Extra Edition of Weekend Words.
“Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being somebody, to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his overanimation. One can either see or be seen.”
—John Updike, Self-Consciousness: Memoirs
“The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.”
—Federico Garcia Lorca
“I did toy with the idea of doing a cook-book. The recipes were to be the routine ones: how to make dry toast, instant coffee, hearts of lettuce and brownies. But as an added attraction, at no extra charge, my idea was to put a fried egg on the cover. I think a lot of people who hate literature but love fried eggs would buy it if the price was right.”
—Groucho Marx
“Muddle is the extra unknown personality in any committee.”
—Anthony Sampson
“When I was on my last leg, I couldn’t even borrow my friend’s extra peg.”
—Sly Stone
“Human Love… It is that extra creation that stands hurt and baffled at the place of death. Being human, wanting children and sunlight and breath to go on, forever.”
—Christopher Leach
“They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.”
—Philip Larkin, “This Be the Verse”
“Love is the extra effort we make in our dealings with those whom we do not like and once you understand that, you understand all. This idea that love overtakes you is nonsense. This is but a polite manifestation of sex. To love another you have to undertake some fragment of their destiny.”
—Quentin Crisp
