PRIMITIVE

In addiction to her dark and primitive beauty, and a substantial loss of weight that drew one's attention to her full, imposing bosom and the hardness of the bones in her somber face, [...] she wore simple, expensive clothes - but more casually than the designer had intented, and the fit was never quite right; her body belonged in the jungle, covered only essentially, possibly with fur or grass.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

CASS STREET

'PENGUINS!'
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

BOOKS VS TELEVISION

It was her belief in the value of effort itself that prevented her from buying a television set.
She was a passionate reader, and she thought that reading was one of the noblest efforts of all; in contrast, she found writing to be a great waste of time - a childish self-indulgence, even messier then finger painting - but she admired reading, which she believed was an unselfish activity that provided information and inspiration. She must have thought it a pity that some poor fools had to waste their lives writing in order for us to have sufficient reading material. [...]
But she drew the line at television. It took no effort to watch [...] My grandmother observed that television was draining what scant life remained in the old people 'clean out of them'; yet she instantly craved a TV of her own!
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

THEIR EVERY MOVEMENT (ANIMAL UNHAPPINESS)

She had her hands clenched together in violent prayer, and her husband held her around shaking shoulders because she was racked by sobs as disturbing as the animal unhappiness of a retarded child. [...] They were big, broad people and their exit out the crowed pew, their entrance into the aisle - where they stood out, so alone - their every movement was neither easy nor graceful.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

NOT MARX

Some people mistake my work for satire. I don’t object because satire is a powerful force, so if the work is seen that way it serves one function. But I don’t agree. The pictures are taken in the spirit of finding myself in the other, or finding the other in myself. They are taken in the spirit of empathy. Emotional, physical, sensual empathy. This work is political, but not polemical. There is potential for the formation of an underlying theme in how the system suppresses and distorts both the rich and the poor, but it is not Marx who chooses the characters in this book; it is lust, attraction, and destiny.
(Larry Fink | Social Graces)

THE HEART OF MY MARTINS CREEK

[...] I moved to Martins Creek, Pennsylvania. [...] This newcomer from the city found himself in the middle of some old-time problems: wind and weather, erosion, flood, right-of-way. In the beginning, every to weeks or so, I'd get dressed up in my tuxedo, plow the road, and drive off to the city to photograph another benefit. At the same time, I was getting to know people of Martin Creek, and feeling less like a voyeur, more like a neighbor. At the heart of my Martin Creek are the Sabatines. I met John Sabatine while shopping for a lawnmower for cheap. I went down the road and there he was, Big John, spitting tobacco on his shadow and into the sun. John's a very friendly guy who likes to impress, but not necessary in a positive way. With his huge hands and body he makes proclamations of I am, I can, I will, often, if not always, in conflict with his true, lazy, lovable self. [...]
Jeannie, his wife, is a gal who never learned to read or write, but she's smart as a whip. Cursing and loving, living in the present with no considered longing for the past or the future, she's an angel inhabited by the devil. Jeannie loves her kids and is a child herself. An ornery rebel, she doesn't follow John, no sir, she leads. But he doesn't follow either. It's one hell of a marriage.
(Larry Fink | Social Graces)

NUMBNESS

I wanted to illuminate and lose myself in the dark spectrum of glitter. [...] I run for the bars - swear glimmers from my face and I start to liquify. [...] I'm aware of the camera's prying aggresion in the midst of flesh, attraction, repulsion, illusion. Later, the drinks wear off, and I share a numbness with the last of the party guests. Staggering out the door, I am drained and complete, in control and beyond control. This predisposition toward darkness and desire is my compulsion; the conflict between angry politics and sensual submersion partially resolves in the silver image.
(Larry Fink | Social Graces)

STOLEN CAR EPISODES

I rebelled, in my adolescent way, by running with the rocks and the hoods, wearing bizarre zoot suit clothing, and fantasizing about stolen car episodes into the night.
(Larry Fink | Social Graces)

JUST US

Nothing is a whim. Time stretches us fat and thin. Its evolution serves to address questions asked eternally and opens up avenues of uncertainty since, save for perhaps objective sciences, answers are never sure.
Pictures are sure. They remain fixed in the moment they were seized; their reading is as always ambiguos, subject to the changing perceptions and intuitions bred by delusion or by experience.
Twenty-five years ago I had hope; now I have fortitude. The Sabatines are splayed across the Pennsylvania hills; John is dead; the family is hardly talking, if at all. The battle of bones and carcasses on Little Creek Road is gone, as is my relationship to that process. [...]
Expectations are lower, and the struggle for true justice has shifted to the status quo of Just Us.
(Larry Fink | Social Graces)

SHAPE OF PARTIES

The party takes shape, then, in a rather ominous space inhabited by introspective beings. [...] A party can be visually defined as an array of individual egos in chance conjuction, sometimes pocketed with clandestine anxiety. [...] Fink studies the poignant intervals hemmed in by the fading and blooming of smiles.
(Max Kozloff on Larry Fink | Social Graces)

OBJECTS AND THINGS

What is uncanny - and a source of wonder to me - is that I am sure that the young man in this picture would have been unaware as to precisely why he chose to paint the objects and things he painted. And yet, from the vantage piont of his old age, he found that he had unconsciously chosen to use things that all fitted in with a pattern that could be seen only at the end of the process. Everything fell into place; [...]
(Christopher Bucklow on a portrait of Philip Guston by Arthur Ames | Foam #11)

LA SCOPERTA DELLO SPAZIO

Eppure, quando sei stato fuori, quando hai visto il sole e tua madre, dev'essere stato bello.
E' stato come accecare. Erano tanti anni che non uscivo da quella tomba di cemento. M'ero dimenticato com'è fatto il sole, e fuori c'era un sole fortissimo. Quando me lo son trovato addosso ho dovuto chiudere gli occhi. Poi li ho riaperti un poco, ma un poco soltanto, e con gli occhi semichiusi sono andato avanti. E andando avanti ho scoperto lo spazio. La mia cella era lunga un metro e mezzo per tre, camminando potevo fare solo due passi e mezzo. Al massimo tre. Riscoprire lo spazio mi ha dato le vertigini. Sono stato per cadere. Anche ora, del resto, se cammino per più di cento metri, divento stanco e disorientato. No, non è stato bello. E se non ci credi non me ne importa. O me ne importa e pazienza. Poi d'un tratto, in tutto quel sole, ho visto una macchia. E la macchia era un gruppo di gente. E da quel gruppo di gente s'è staccata una figura nera. E m'è venuta incontro, e un po' per volta è diventata mia madre. [...]
Alekos, ti capita mai di maledire il giorno in cui facesti quell'attentato?
Forse vuoi domandarmi se mi capita mai di maledire il giorno in cui fallì l'attentato. Era un bell'attentato. Intelligente, preparato bene, scientifico. Non si limitava alla morte di Papadopulos. Dopo la morte di Papadopulos ci sarebbero stati i funerali di Papadopulos e in questa occasione ci sarebbe stato il secondo attentato: avremmo eliminato la Giunta.
(Alexandros Panagulis intervistato da Oriana Fallaci | L'Europeo #36/1973)

MR FRIENDLY FACES

But what did he do? I never knew. [...] Mr Fish was the quintessential neighbor; he was all neighbors - all dog owners, all the friendly faces from familiar backyard, all the hands on your shoulders at your mother's funeral.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

REST IN PIECES

When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time - the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drowers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

MRS MERRILL

His wife was from California, the sunny part. My grandmother used to speculate that she had been one of those permanently tanned, bouncy blondes - a perfectly wholesome type, but entierly too easy persuaded that good health and boundless energy for good deeds were the natural results of clean living and pratical values. No one had told her that health and energy and the Lord's work are harder to come by in bad weather. Mrs Merrill suffred in new Hampshire. [...] Even in the summer, she couldn't tan; she turned so dead white in the winter, there was nothing for her to do in the sun but burn.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

DAWN ALL THE DAY

Once in her room, I sensed that I have traveled to another time zone; after the darkness of my room and the black hall, my mother's room glowed - by comparison to the rest of the house, it was always just before dawn in my mother's room.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

SNOWING ON TORONTO

Toronto is sober, but not austere; Gravesend is austere, but also pretty; Toronto is not pretty, but in the snow Toronto can look like Gravesend - both pretty and austere.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

MINUS

My mother and my grandmother and I - and Lydia, minus one of her legs - were eating dinner on a Thursday evening in the spring of 1948.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

MEMORY MONSTER

Your memory is a monster; you forget - it doesn't.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)

THE ONE

'YOUR MOTHER HAS THE BEST BREASTS OF ALL THE MOTHERS.' No other friend could have said this to me without starting a fight. [...] 'YOUR MOTHER'S THE ONE,' he said worshipfully. 'AND SHE SMELLS BETTER THAN ANYONE ELSE, TOO,' he added.
(John Irving | A Prayer For Owen Meany)