top of page
.png){kind=small}
Quotes by Belgian Authors
"I believe very strongly that when it comes to desire, when it comes to attraction, that things are never black and white, things are very much shades of grey."
"If we don't live in the same vibe, it is hard to be aware of each other. When our reading differs from our neighbors' reality, our surroundings may take a range of discordant shades and daily episodes become unrecognizable. But if we endeavor to find out, the "who is who, the "what is what and the "where is Waldo, we might demonstrate our social literacy and connectedness. ['Fish for silence.']"
"Curiously enough, it seems to be only in describing a mode of language which does not mean what it says that one can actually say what one means."
"Dwelling among shipwrecked dreams and losing oneself in wishful thinking cannot be a solution to tribulations. Identifying cracks and apprehending the defaults in one's life is essential to find a way to get out of a ghetto and to start a search for a new haven. ['The world was somewhere else']"
"The word survivor suggests someone who has emerged alive from a plane crash or a natural disaster. But the word can also refer to the loved ones of murder victims, and this was the sense in which it was used at a four-day conference in early June at Boston College."
"Success is like reaching an important birthday and finding you're exactly the same."
"I'm half-Irish, half-Dutch, and I was born in Belgium. If I was a dog, I'd be in a hell of a mess!"
"I refuse to be held responsible for bringing back a wave of pasty-faced people into the world."
"For some, life may be a playground to undermine the brainwaves of others or simply a vainglorious game with an armory of theatrics, illustrating only bleak self-deception, haughty narcissism and dim deficiency in empathy. ['Another empty room']"
"When living is too sweet and swanky, it may be very hard to appreciate the simplest things in life. ['Is that all there is?']"
"The world is a show and the show is a performance of the wealthy, the beautiful and the fortunate. The invulnerable, the matchless and the exclusive live a life like dazzling fish in a scintillating seascape behind glass. Everybody may admire them, but nobody can touch them. ['Keeping up with the Joneses']"
"Through dreams and ideas we are seduced to go back to particular places and instances of our past. In the course of the years, these singular moments and spaces of our history very often receive then another color and dimension. Our mind tries however to tame and keep in control the phantoms of times past. If not so, our memory can be subject to an irreversible mutilation. ['The mutilated memory']"
"Work to survive, survive by consuming, survive to consume: the hellish cycle is complete."
"We do not believe that the Marxist program, which embodies the continuity of the experience of the actual class struggle and real revolutions of the last one hundred and fifty years, is a definitely closed book."
"Some fail to bear in mind that everyone is sentenced to death. Death is a treacherous virus that strikes randomly. The only truth is that nobody is going to make it out alive. We are all living on probation and our expiry date is indefinite. ['Living on probation']"
"You can have relatively high levels of class consciousness with a lower level of class militancy than one would have expected."
"Trotsky rises to give me his hand, then sits at his desk, gently allowing his regard to light on my person."
"I heard a definition once: Happiness is health and a short memory! I wish I'd invented it, because it is very true."
"Nevertheless during these two seasons, Chapman impressed me a lot because he had the faculty to pull himself out of the most critical situations."
"People die from lack of shared empathy and affinity. By establishing social connectedness, we give hope a chance and the other can become heaven. ['Le ciel c'est l'autre']"
"People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth."
"New York is more than a state of mind. It is the completion of a dream. ['New York at arm's length of desire']"
"In this sport luck and tragedy are only a few hundredths of seconds apart from each other."
"Daily life is governed by an economic system in which the production and consumption of insults tends to balance out."
"All incidents which we experience are warily interpreted and translated in the dark chamber of our mind. They inspire us how to behave, how to think, how to act and prompt our predilections and our way of visualizing the world. The mind opens itself then to welcome the enchantments of life or to tear up destructive thinking patterns. The brain becomes truly a precious resilient partner. ['Camera obscura of the mind']"
"Some don't want to be happy, inasmuch as they undergo happiness merely as languor and yawning. They are dissatisfied with a bland and vacuous state of glee and, instead, prefer to keep on running like raging bulls through the whims and quirks of life. In reality, their dissatisfaction is their contentment. ['Happiness blowing in the wind']"
"When we have all data online it will be great for humanity. It is a prerequisite to solving many problems that humankind faces."
"I saw Mussolini tirelessly contemplate a parade of thousands of young men."
"Placebo is music for outsiders, by outsiders and our gigs are like conventions of outcasts, which is cool."
"Living is like tearing through a museum. Not until later do you really start absorbing what you saw, thinking about it, looking it up in a book, and remembering - because you can't take it in all at once."
"I feel very comfortable with the way I look, and I feel very comfortable with the kind of confusion that it creates in people's minds."
"Women emerging like aliens in a hesitant future, in a men's world with impervious codes, may feel like dots in an uncharted territory. Discovering the crucial points, which don't line up with the unbearability of reality, may be a key to the right compass in life. ['Terra incognita']"
"When we feel we have benched ourselves for too long, we must loosen up the unessential, get over our endless cringing and make a bold leap to the glowing stars of our dream. ['Steaming ahead']"
"In the kingdom of consumption the citizen is king. A democratic monarchy: equality before consumption, fraternity in consumption, and freedom through consumption."
"When the shine is wearing off and the underlying cracks of a garlanded lifestyle become painfully apparent, reality may inexorably take its toll and gruelingly reveal the presence of a blatant and hideous gap of irrelevance and vanity. ['Could the milk man be the devil?']"
"By assembling in our mind all the consequential facts we have lived through and by reviewing, appraising or sometimes idealizing the numerous key points of the past, authenticity may gradually mutate and actuality decay at last. At that point in time we are to experience a maimed factuality. ['Labyrinth of the mind']"
"Emotional predictive profiling may help identify contingent fissures in the stature of endangered relationships. Still and all, it might be wise to let the genie out of problematic bottles in the first place, in advance of scouting the causes of surreptitious subliminal convulsions. ['Beware of the neighbor']"
"The most important thing is to enjoy your life - to be happy - it's all that matters."
"Hope may inspire and inveigle us, but we cannot just live on hope. Certainly, love can be hope, but it is merely a contingency, since it might either mend our life or break our heart. ['Waiting for the smoke signals']"
bottom of page