Erik

“Dear Critics, since you employ the term "absurd humor," you should introduce its counterpart, "absurd seriousness." Learn to distinguish between forced and primitive seriousness, lighthearted and gallows seriousness. This bracingly sensical conception will jump-start critics and journalists alike. Do we not require, in life as in art, indiscriminate seriousness? bawdy seriousness? sparkling seriousness? spirited seriousness? I would read with pleasure about thinker X's "terrific sense of seriousness," about bard Ys "pearls of seriousness," about avant-garde Z's "offensive seriousness." Some reviewer or other will finally decide to remark that "playwright N. N.'s feeble play is redeemed by the effervescent seriousness of its conclusion" or that "in W.S's poetry one catches notes of unintentional seriousness." And why don't humor magazines have columns of seriousness? And why, moreover, do we have so many humor magazines and so few serious ones? Well?”
― Wisława Szymborska, Nonrequired Reading

“In their silent reticence was evident the reality that somewhere along the journey they'd passed the point where human goodness gave way to the calculus of survival.”
― Omar El Akkad, What Strange Paradise

“So Ryan was red as a beetroot. And Clara was black as yer boot”
― Zadie Smith, White Teeth

“This story—which begins and begins—starts again here.”
― Ann Patchett, These Precious Days: Essays