The love I felt for her on that train ride had a capital and provinces, parishes and a Vatican, an orange planet and many sullen moons -- it was systemic and it was complete.
Gary ShteyngartRead
That's what tyrants do, I guess. They make you covet their attention; they make you confuse attention for mercy.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that tyrants manipulate people's desire for their attention, leading them to mistake it for kindness or compassion.
In this quote, Gary Shteyngart reflects on the nature of tyrants and how they wield power over others. He points out that tyrants create a dynamic where their subjects crave attention, which is often misinterpreted as benevolence. This underscores a deeper commentary on the relationship between power and perception, illustrating how twisted motivations can distort reality and morality.
In practice
During a lecture on political power dynamics, one might use this quote to illustrate the psychology of oppression.
The love I felt for her on that train ride had a capital and provinces, parishes and a Vatican, an orange planet and many sullen moons -- it was systemic and it was complete.
My hair would continue to gray, and then one day, it would fall out entirely, and then, on a day meaninglessly close to the present one, meaninglessly like the present one, I would disappear from the earth. And all these emotions, all these yearnings, all these data, if that helps to clinch the enormity of what I'm talking about, would be gone. And that's what immortality means. It means selfishness. My generations belief that each one of us matters more than you or anyone else would think.
In contravention of my belief that any life ending in death is essentially pointless, I needed my friends to open up that plastic bag and take one last look at me. Someone had to remember me, if only for a few more minutes in the vast silent waiting room of time.
When civilization takes a nose dive, how can you look away? You've got to be there. You've got to be at the bottom of the swimming pool taking notes.
Every returning New Yorker asks the question: Is this still my city? I have a ready answer, cloaked in obstinate despair: It is. And if it's not, I will love it all the more. I will love it to the point where it becomes mine again.
Then I celebrated my Wall of Books. I counted the volumes on my twenty-foot-long modernist bookshelf to make sure none had been misplaced or used as kindling by my subtenant. βYouβre my sacred ones,β I told the books. βNo one but me still cares about you. But Iβm going to keep you with me forever. And one day Iβll make you important again.β I thought about that terrible calumny of the new generation: that books smell.
In metaphysics, the notion that earth and all that's on it is a mental construct is the product of people who spend their lives inside rooms. It is an indoor philosophy.
In the middle of everything evil, in an evil place, you can find goodness. Goodness. I'd even call it godliness.
What makes me myself rather than anyone else is the very fact that I am poised between two countries, two or three languages, and several cultural traditions. It is precisely this that defines my identity. Would I exist more authentically if I cut off a part of myself
when the imitation of Christ does not mean to live a life like Christ, but to live your life as authentically as Christ lived his, then there are many ways and forms in which a man can be a Christian.
Our crime against criminals lies in the fact that we treat them like rascals.
There can be no prescription old enough to supersede the Law of Nature and the grant of God Almighty, who has given to all men a natural right to be free, and they have it ordinarily in their power to make themselves so, if they please.
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