Thoughts on { Events | Sigurdur Gudmundsson / Margaret Atwood / Stendhal / Philip Roth / Robert Penn Warren, 1890-2004
“I cannot provide the reality of events, I can only convey their shadow.”
Stendhal, The Life of Henry Brulard, 1890
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“She knows herself to be at the mercy of events,
and she knows by now that events have no mercy.”
Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin, 2000
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“Son, anything can happen to anyone,” my father told me, “but it usually doesn’t.”
Philip Roth, The Plot Against America, 2004
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“For meaning is never in the event but in the motion through event.
Otherwise we could isolate an instant in the event and say that this is the event itself.
The meaning. But we cannot do that. For it is the motion which is important.”
Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men, 1946
