#banality

Dawn was written well before 9/11. People speak a lot today about the banality of evil, but not all evil is banal. Some of it is carefully structured and well-thought-out. That's where the real danger lies. ↗

— Alan Dean Foster

#banal #banality #before #carefully #danger

Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it. ↗

— Christopher Lasch

#banality #endless #erected #order #overcome

My life is short. I can't listen to banality. ↗

— V. S. Naipaul

#i #life #life is short #listen #my life

At Dachau. We had a wonderful pool for the garrison children. It was even heated. But that was before we were transferred. Dachau was ever so much nicer than Auschwitz. But then, it was in the Reich. See my trophies there. The one in the middle, the big one. That was presented to me by the Reich Youth Leader himself, Baldur von Schirach. Let me show you my scrapbook. ↗

— William Styron

#banality #dachau #evil #hate #holocaust

Television has lifted the manufacture of banality out of the sphere of handicraft and placed it in that of a major industry. ↗

— Nathalie Sarraute

#handicraft #industry #lifted #major #manufacture

There arose a belief in style - and in banality. Banality encompassed politics, too, because it was a common belief that politics were not worthy of art. ↗

— Douglas Sirk

#art #banality #because #belief #common

Creativity is contagious. And so is banality. Criticism is an art in itself. Don’t let the dullness around destroy the creativity within. T.S. Eliot said, “honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.” Good to remember… ↗

— Elif Shafak

#creativity #art

I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture — a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It’s maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it’s not these things, quite. It’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I’m small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#banality #death #despair #dread #ennui

It is the sheer ugliness and banality of everyday life which turns my blood to ice and makes me cringe in terror. ↗

— Jean Lorrain

#horror #life #reality #terror #ugly