#pera

But when they made love he was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone else. Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in a hat. He was exasperated because he didn't know what that look meant. He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening. So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. He climbed into people’s eyes and became an exasperating expression. ↗

— Arundhati Roy

#despair #desperation #exasperation #eyes #indifference

I certainly have gotten caught up in the music business at various times in my life, mostly because you want to get along with whatever record company you're dealing with. I don't want to be flaky. I don't want to be some temperamental, hard-to-work-with musician. ↗

— Frank Black

#because #business #caught #certainly #company

The opera tells the story with all the built-in contradictions and from many different angles. ↗

— Harrison Birtwistle

#built-in #contradictions #different #different angles #many

If I place love above everything, it is because for me it is the most desperate, the most despairing state of affairs imaginable. ↗

— Andre Breton

#affairs #because #despairing #desperate #everything

Since I was a child I've loved going to the opera, theatre and ballet. ↗

— Christian Lacroix

#child #going #i #loved #opera

I was on the board of Andre Agassi's foundation, and seeing the way it operated blew my mind. In 2002, I told my wife, I want to start a foundation to give back, I want it to be for kids in hard circumstances, and I want it to be culinary-driven, because that's who I am. ↗

— Emeril Lagasse

#am #andre #back #because #blew

I launched The Emeril Lagasse Foundation to provide culinary training, and developmental and educational programs to children in the cities where my restaurants operate. I think everyone has a responsibility to give back to the community if they can, and to help future generations learn new skills. ↗

— Emeril Lagasse

#children #cities #community #culinary #developmental

For a long time, I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I was desperate to find something that fit me and I just decided that if I could organically make a professional living out of the things that interested me, then I would be a happy person. ↗

— Padma Lakshmi

#decided #desperate #find #fit #grew

My number one goal was not getting 'A's' - and I proved it. I was a 'C' student. You have to be ready to learn. If you're not interesting in learning, it doesn't work. As I grew older and wanted to learn and desperately wanted inside information, learning was a lot easier. ↗

— Brian Lamb

#easier #getting #goal #grew #i

It had all the earmarks of a CIA operation; the bomb killed everybody in the room except the intended target! ↗

— William F. Buckley, Jr.

#cia #earmarks #everybody #except #had