The feature common to all these men is that nothing in life is a vital necessity for them, a shrine in their hearts, a religion, organically merged with their whole being, so that to deprive them of it would mean depriving them of their lives. Everything about them is superficial, nothing is rooted in their natures... Even the best educated people, people with lively natures and warm hearts, are prone in their practical lives to depart from their ideas and plans, very quickly resign themselves to the realities of life, which, however, they never cease to revile as vulgar and disgusting. This shows that all the things they talk and dream about are really alien to them, superficial ; in the depth of their hearts they cherish only one dream, one ideal—undisturbed repose, quietism, Oblomovshchina.
There is a concept that is the corrupter and destroyer of all others. I speak not of Evil, whose limited empire is that of ethics; I speak of the infinite.
“We are nihilistic thought, suicidal thought that come into God’s head,” Kafka said. This reminded me at first of the Gnostic view of life: God as the evil demiurge, the world as his Fall. “Oh no,” said Kafka, “our world is only a bad mood of God, a bad day of his.” “Then there is hope outside this manifestation of the world that we know.” He smiled. “Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope—but not for us.”
How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history—greater than the fall of empires—I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.
I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? Marvelous! The facade fell on sixty-five grandmothers at a special mass. Was that evil? If so, who did it? If he's up there, he just loves it, Officer Starling. Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place.
Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened. You can't reduce me to a set of influences.
Murray: He's some kinda vampire? Clarice Starling: They don't have a name for what he is.
Given Kubrick’s comments in rare but revealing interviews throughout his career, it would be fair to say that he dwells upon the nihilistic condition of contemporary culture in order to point beyond such a condition, in the spirit of Nietzsche’s active nihilism. In good dialectical fashion, he highlights the negative in order to indicate our positive capacity for creative and individualistic selfcreation.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
They give birth astride a grave, the light gleams an instant, then its night once more.
I never knew the words of the old songs I think I am no one
We checked out all the prophecies. We studied fat philosophies We made a graph... We chanted "omni Padhni Disney Iceman Acme Leary Marx Illuminatus Christus Clarke..." We'd watch for saucers in the dark. We'd hunt lost arks; Tried splitting quarks - when all we wanted was a Mark Just a something proving something's out there Are you listening? No chance