Читать книгу A Rude Awakening - Brian Aldiss - Страница 4

My suspicion is that in Heaven the Blessed are of the opinion that the advantages of that locale have been overrated by theologians who were never actually there. Perhaps even in Hell the damned are not always satisfied.

Jorge Luis Borges, THE DUEL

‘The idea of prostitution is a meeting point of so many elements – lechery, bitterness, the futility of human relationships, physical frenzy and the clink of gold – that a glance into its depths makes you dizzy and teaches you so much! It makes you so sad, and fills you with such dreams of love!’

‘But one can live a full life,’ suggested Claudin, ‘without frequenting prostitutes.’

‘No, you can’t,’ thundered Flaubert. ‘A man has missed something if he has never woken up in an anonymous bed beside a face he’ll never see again, and if he has never left a brothel at dawn feeling like jumping off a bridge into the river out of sheer physical disgust with life.’

Robert Baldick, DINNER AT MAGNY’S

‘Remember you were of the Fourteenth Army and never say die.’

General Sir William Slim, disbanding the Forgotten Army