Signs And Symbols Quotes

“I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, who knew who she was. No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships—gone. She went on living, but with a tabula rasa as her diary and calendar and notebook. I think of this every time I hear of the callow ambition to 'make a new start' or to be 'born again': Do those who talk this way truly wish for the slate to be wiped? Genocide means not just mass killing, to the level of extermination, but mass obliteration to the verge of extinction. You wish to have one more reflection on what it is to have been made the object of a 'clean' sweep? Try Vladimir Nabokov's microcosmic miniature story 'Signs and Symbols,' which is about angst and misery in general but also succeeds in placing it in what might be termed a starkly individual perspective. The album of the distraught family contains a faded study of Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.”
― Vladimir Nabokov

“The good of a book lies in it being read. A Book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in turn speak of things.”
― Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

“We don't have to believe that the sign we see is our loved one. We just have to be open to the possibility it might be.”
― Angie Corbett-Kuiper

“Anytime you meditate, some electric jerks occur in your thigh...the symbol of premonition of an unpleasant event that has happened or will take place in future.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson

“What he really wanted to do was to tear a hole in his world and escape.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Signs and Symbols

“Tracing the history of herders-farmers clashes goes back as far as the early 90s. Sometimes it takes several decades to decode the meaning of something that has been with you for a long period. Even in the 200 Naira note, it was boldly drawn where cows are heading to eat farm produce. It was boldly embedded, but we are just realizing it today, maybe because we don't take note or don't care to notice.”
― Olawale Daniel

“When you're expecting bad news you have to be prepared for it a long time ahead so that when the telegram comes you can already pronounce the syllables in your mouth before opening it.”
― Robert Pinget

“We can recognize our loved ones without our eyes. We can feel them through our senses. We can learn to recognize our gift of intuition that we all have but seldom ever trust.”
― Angie Corbett-Kuiper

“What was I waiting for? For signs and miracles, stars on the firmament..?”
― Annemarie Schwarzenbach, All the Roads Are Open: The Afghan Journey

“In life, we must first see to believe. In death, we must first believe, and then we will see.”
― Angie Corbett-Kuiper

“Spirit channels through everything!”
― Paula Marucci, Fruit Fly Intelligence: Awareness of our Interconnections with All That Is Leads to an Extraordinary Life!

“They say your heart breaks to let the light in, but at some point some of our hearts break so hard and so often that they’re just filled with light, which has no choice but to shine back out. Maybe saints realize that before the rest of us do, which is why they’re always pointing to their hearts. They ask us not to harden against, but open to. They speak in tongues of trinkets, flowers and beads and glitter, small innocent things that insist throughout even the darkest times—bits of bright that are the philosophers’ stone. Strung up and clung to, shapeshifting the world itself.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir

“The muses aren’t the material, but they speak through the tools, sparking signals in a language of symbols we can only read backwards.The wounds have been the way. Back to where we started, brought to our knees, eye-level with those small oracles that speak directly to our heart.”
― Robin Brown, Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir