“One artist with the pseudonym (it was natural to assume) of Pilot Mouse had taken over a gallery and installed . . . another gallery. We viewers went in one at a time, and inside was a simulation of an uptown gallery, complete with gallery goers—really guerrilla actors—who walked around and looked at the antique store paintings on the wall.”
“Look in the mirror
Familiar figure
Staring right back at me
Split decision
Now my reflection’s talking
But I didn’t speak
He said, oh my god, you’re piecing it together
You are just a shadow of me
Oh my lord, you’ve never left the mirror
You were never ever free
But tonight, you will play that tambourine, yeah
You will be that chosen master
You will leave with the girl this time
You will be the leading actor
Movie of your own design
And when you hit disaster
The answer will be yours to find
You’re the mirror’s master
Now forever, I’m resigned
Take in the vision
My imperfections
Shatter in the mirror of me
Another shadow
Slips into the chateau
Hoping that I cannot see
I said, oh my god, I’m piecing it together
You were just a memory
Oh my lord, you’ve never left the mirror
You were never ever free
But tonight you will play that tambourine, yeah
You will be that chosen master
You will leave with the girl this time
You will be the leading actor
Movie of your own design
And when you hit disaster
The answer will be yours to find
You’re the mirror’s master
Now forever I’m, resigned”
“MAN IN BLACK: All right: where is the poison? The battle of wits has begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right and who is dead.
VIZZINI: But it’s so simple. All I have to do is divine from what I know of you. Are you the sort of man who would put the poison into his own goblet, or his enemy’s? [pauses to study the MAN IN BLACK] Now, a clever man would put the poison into his own goblet, because he would know that only a great fool would reach for what he was given. I’m not a great fool, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But you must have known I was not a great fool; you would have counted on it, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
MAN IN BLACK: You’ve made your decision then?
VIZZINI: Not remotely. Because iocaine comes from Australia, as everyone knows. And Australia is entirely peopled with criminals. And criminals are used to having people not trust them, as you are not trusted by me. So I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you.
MAN IN BLACK: Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
VIZZINI: Wait till I get going! Where was I?
MAN IN BLACK: Australia.
VIZZINI: Yes — Australia, and you must have suspected I would have known the powder’s origin, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
MAN IN BLACK: [beginning nervousness] You’re just stalling now.
VIZZINI: You’d like to think that, wouldn’t you? You’ve beaten my giant, which means you’re exceptionally strong. So, you could have put the poison in your own goblet, trusting on your strength to save you. So I can clearly not choose the wine in front of you. But, you’ve also bested my Spaniard which means you must have studied. And in studying, you must have learned that man is mortal so you would have put the poison as far from yourself as possible, so I can clearly not choose the wine in front of me.
MAN IN BLACK: [nervously] You’re trying to trick me into giving away something — it won’t work —
VIZZINI: [triumphant] It has worked — you’ve given everything away — I know where the poison is.
MAN IN BLACK: [fool’s courage] Then make your choice.
VIZZINI: I will. And I choose [stops suddenly and points at something behind the Man in Black] what in the world can that be?
MAN IN BLACK: [Turns, looks] What? Where? I don’t see anything.
VIZZINI quickly switches the goblets while the MAN IN BLACK has his head turned.
VIZZINI: Oh, well, I-I could have sworn I saw something. No matter.
The MAN IN BLACK turns to face him again. VIZZINI starts to laugh.
MAN IN BLACK: What’s so funny?
VIZZINI: I’ll tell you in a minute. First, let’s drink — me from my glass, and you from yours.
And he picks up his goblet. The MAN IN BLACK picks up the one in front of him. As they both start to drink, VIZZINI hesitates a moment. Allowing the MAN IN BLACK to drink first, he swallows his wine.
MAN IN BLACK: You guessed wrong.
VIZZINI: [roaring with laughter] You only think I guessed wrong... [louder now] ...that’s what’s so funny! I switched glasses when your back was turned. Ha-ha, you fool.
The MAN IN BLACK sits silently.
VIZZINI: You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.” But only slightly less well known is this: “Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line!Ahahahaha, ahahahaha, ahahaha—
thud *
VIZZINI laughs and roars and cackles and whoops and is in all ways quite cheery until he falls over dead. The MAN IN BLACK steps past his corpse, taking the blindfold and bindings off BUTTERCUP, who notices VIZZINI lying dead. The MAN IN BLACK pulls her to her feet.
BUTTERCUP: Who are you?
MAN IN BLACK: I am no one to be trifled with, that is all you ever need know.”
“Keen as her interest in the rugged relics of the Roman past that lay scattered about her and in which the corrosion of centuries had still left so much of individual life, her thoughts, after resting a while on these things, had wandered, by a concatenation of stages it might require some subtlety to trace, to regions and objects charged with a more active appeal. From the Roman past to Isabel Archer’s future was a long stride, but her imagination had taken it in a single flight and now hovered in slow circles over the nearer and richer field.”
“Mandelbrot’s insights imply that when viewed through a coarse-grained lens of varying resolution, a hidden simplicity and regularity is revealed underlying the extraordinary complexity and diversity in much of the world around us. Furthermore, the mathematics that describes self-similarity and its implicit recursive rescaling is identical to the power law scaling discussed in previous chapters. In other words, power law scaling is the mathematical expression of self-similarity and fractality. Consequently, because animals obey power law scaling both within individuals, in terms of the geometry and dynamics of their internal network structures, as well as across species, they, and therefore all of us, are living manifestations of self-similar fractals.”
“So, naturalists observe, a flea,
Hath smaller fleas that on him prey;
And these have smaller still to bite ‘em;
And so proceed ad infinitum.”
Cutely, this quatrain is quoted by Geoffrey West in SCALE.
“Women have served all these centuries as looking-glasses possessing the magic and delicious power of reflecting the figure of man at twice its natural size.”
“‘Well, you’re not in love with her, I hope.’
’How can that be, when I’m in love with Another?’
’You’re in love with yourself, that’s the Other!’”
“Full souls are double mirrors, making still
An endless vista of fair things before,
Repeating things behind.”
“Some boys hate themselves
Spend their lives resenting their fathers
Some girls hate their bodies
Stand in the mirror and wait for the feedback
Saying God, make me famous
If you can’t just make it painless
Just make it painless
Assisted suicide
She dreams about dying all the time
She told me she came so close
Filled up the bathtub and put on our first record
Saying God, make me famous
If you can’t just make it painless
Just make it painless
It goes on and on, I don’t know what I want
On and on, I don’t know if I want it
On and on, I don’t know what I want
On and on, I don’t know if I want it
(On and on I don’t know what I want)
(On and on I don’t know if I want it)
(On and on I don’t know what I want)
(On and on I don’t know if I want it)”
“I thought, I found a way to enter
It’s just a reflektor (It’s just a reflektor)
I thought, I found the connector
It’s just a reflektor (It’s just a reflektor) Just a reflektor
It’s just a reflektor (It’s just a reflektor)
It’s just a reflektor (It’s just a reflektor)
It’s just a reflektor (It’s just a reflektor)
reflektor (Just a reflektor)
(Just a reflektor) just a reflektor
(Just a reflektor) just a reflektor (reflektor)
(Just a reflektor)
(Just a reflektor)
(Just a reflektor, just a reflektor)
(Just a reflektor, just a reflektor)
Just a reflection, of a reflection
Of a reflection, of a reflection, of a reflection
Will I see you on the other side? (Just a reflektor)
We all got things to hide (Just a reflektor)
It’s just a reflection of a reflection
Of a reflection, of a reflection, of a reflection
Will I see you on the other side? (Just a reflektor)
We all got things to hide (Just a reflektor)”
“There’s that great passage in Proust where Marcel talks about imagining the face of the girl you’ve only glimpsed from behind. How beautiful the unseen face always is. I have yet to experience the disappointing reality of César.”
“Art is an old language with a great many artificial affected styles, and sometimes the chief pleasure one gets out of knowing them is the mere sense of knowing.”
“Human knowledge had become unmanageably vast; every science had begotten a dozen more, each subtler than the rest; the telescope revealed stars and systems beyond the mind of man to number or to name; geology spoke in terms of millions of years, where men before had thought in terms of thousands; physics found a universe in the atom, and biology found a microcosm in the cell; physiology discovered inexhaustible mystery in every organ, and psychology in every dream; anthropology unearth buried cities and forgotten states, history proved all history false, and painted a canvas which only a Spengler oran Eduard Meyer could vision as a whole; theology crumbled, and political theory cracked; invention complicated life and war, and economic creeds overturned governments and inflamed the world; philosophy itself, which had once summoned all sciences to its aid in making a coherent image of the world and an alluring picture of the good, found its task of coordination too stupendous for its courage, ran away from all these battlefronts of truth, and hid itself in recondite and narrow lanes, timidly secure from the issues and responsibilities of life. Human knowledge had become too great for the human mind.”
“We have advanced from canoes to galleys to steamships to space shuttles—but nobody knows where we’re going. We are more powerful than ever before, but have very little idea what to do with all that power. Worse still, humans seem to be more irresponsible than ever. Self-made gods with only the laws of physics to keep us company, we are accountable to no one. We are consequently wreaking havoc on our fellow animals and on the surrounding ecosystem, seeking little more than our own comfort and amusement, yet never finding satisfaction.
Is there anything more dangerous than dissatisfied and irresponsible gods who don’t know what they want?”
“...in order to establish such complex organizations, it’s necessary to convince many strangers to cooperate with one another. And this will happen only if these strangers believe in some shared myths. It follows that in order to change an existing imagined order, we must first believe in an alternative imagined order. In order to dismantle Peugeot, for example, we need to imagine something more powerful, such as the French legal system. In oder to dismantle the French legal system we need to imagine something even more powerful, such as the French state. And if we would like to dismantle that too, we will have to imagine something yet more powerful. There is no way out of the imagined order. When we break down our prison walls and run towards freedom, we are in fact running into the more spacious exercise yard of a bigger prison.”
“And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all.”
“I’ll be your mirror
Reflect what you are, in case you don’t know
I’ll be the wind, the rain and the sunset
The light on your door to show that you’re home
When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside you’re twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands
Cause I see you
I find it hard to believe you don’t know
The beauty that you are
But if you don’t let me be your eyes
A hand in your darkness, so you won’t be afraid
When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside you’re twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands
Cause I see you
I’ll be your mirror”
“Does such a thing as ‘the fatal flaw,’ that showy dark crack running down the middle of a life, exist outside of literature? I used to think it didn’t. Now I think it does. And I think that mine is this: a morbid longing for the picturesque at all costs.”
“There are visions a man can only tolerate in a mirror. To see them face-to-face turns him to stone.”