A Literary Mixtape
If you love someone, then you give them a mixtape. Everyone knows this — well, except for you kids these days who use MP3s and Napsters and such and thus are condemned to never know the glory of a true cassette mixtape; and no, making “retro” ones doesn’t count, and why? Because I said so, that’s why. Moving on.
Where was I? So, moving on. All lovers know the glory of a true mixtape — nothing says “I love you,” plus “I spent six hours on this,” plus “I want you to submit to my artistic taste” like a mixtape. The smudged fingerprints on the reverse/rewind button, the song that’s missing three seconds because it’s been clipped from the radio — it’s all in there.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been keeping random lists of quotes, and I could never figure out why, or what for. Back when I was writing a novel, I tricked myself into thinking I would use some of the quotes as epigraphs… ending up with me having four pages of epigraphs for my first novel.
I did this once before for Thought Catalog — posted an article that was a bunch of quotes which I had tried to nudge around slightly by theme. I thought people would hate it. But actually, people liked it. I didn’t know what I was doing at the time, but now I get it.
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…What I have created is the concept of “a literary mixtape.” That’s all I’m doing. When you make a “cassettesingle” for a loved one, what you’re doing is taking your favorite songs and hopefully aligning them to create a mood. That’s all I’m doing here. …I had to drop certain quotes, realign some. Some quotes (or “tracks,” if you prefer) wouldn’t fit in no matter how much I loved them; they were just “off,” as with a real tape. And some demanded to be put in.
So without yapping about it too much, here’s my “Lit Mixtape.” I’ll come back when it’s done and then we can talk. Let’s roll the garbage. I have helpfully also provided some glitter stickers just like I would with a real cassette. Also, I misquoted some sh-t — accidentally on purpose — because it’s my damn tape. Enjoy.
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…A thousand tymes have I herd men telle
That ther Joye is in hevene and ther Peyne, in helle,
And I well accorde that it be so;
But–
–Geoffrey Chaucer
But the information comes at night. The communications technology it picks is not the phone or the fax or the E-mail. It is the telex — so its teeth can chatter in your head. The information makes sleep interdisciplinary, syllabus disciplines, and then disciplines unknown or not yet devised: eschatoscopy, synchrodesics, thermodonture.
–Martin Amis, The Information
FERRO: We’re in the pipe. Five by five.
CORPORAL HUDSON: We’re on an express elevator to Hell, wheeehooooo!
—Aliens (Director’s Cut)
And this like a dream
Keeps other time
And daytime is
The loss of this…
–W.H. Auden
There was no need to row, for the current drifted them steadily to the east. None of them slept or ate. All that night and all next day they glided eastward, and when the third day dawned — with a brightness you or I could not bear even if we had dark glasses on — they saw a wonder ahead. …What they saw — eastward, beyond the sun — was a range of mountains. It was so high that either they never saw the top of it or they forgot it. None of them remembers seeing any sky in that direction. And the mountains must really have been outside the world. For any mountains even a quarter of a twentieth of that height ought to have had ice and snow on them. But these were warm and green and full of forests and waterfalls however high you looked. And suddenly there came a breeze from the east, tossing the top of the wave into foamy shapes and ruffling the smooth water all round them. It lasted only a second or so but what it brought them in that second none of those three children will ever forget. It brought both a smell and a sound, a musical sound. Edmund and Eustace would never talk about it afterwards. Lucy could only say, “It would break your heart.” “Why,” said I, “was it so sad?” “Sad!! No,” said Lucy.
–The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
…One night
On watch, I thought I saw in the fore cross-trees
Three women leaning forward, with white hair
Streaming behind, who sang above the wind
A song that charmed my senses, while I was
Frightened beyond fear, horrified past horror, calm,
(Nothing was real) for, I thought, now, when
I like, I can wake up and end the dream.
–T.S. Eliot, ‘The Waste Land’ (original manuscript)
It’s partly true, too, but it isn’t all true. People always think something’s all true.
–The Catcher in the Rye
I know the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist…
—Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools;
They never ask why build.
–Anne Sexton, ‘Wanting to Die’
There is in mankind a certain * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Hic multa * * * * * * * * * * * * *
desiderantur * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
* * * * * * * * * * * * And this I take to be
a clear solution of the matter.
–Jonathan Swift, A Tale of a Tub
May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan.
–Don DeLillo, White Noise
The unfacts, did we have them, are too precisely few to warrant our certitude.
–James Joyce, Finnegans Wake
I considered it desirable that he should know nothing about me but it was even better if he knew several things which were quite wrong.
—Flann O’Brien, The Third Policeman
and it’s a story that might bore you but you don’t have to listen, she told me, because she always knew it was going to be like that…
—Bret Easton Ellis, The Rules of Attraction
Colors so bright, they broke my heart.
–Donna Tartt, The Secret History
Beauty was mine, and I had mystery,
Wisdom was mine, and I had mastery…
—Wilfred Owen, Strange Meeting
…And in þis he shewed me a lytil thyng þe quantite of a hasyl nott. Lyeng in þe pawme of my hand as it had semed. And it was as rownde as eny ball. I loked þer upon wt þe eye of my vnderstondyng. and I þought what may þis be. And it was answered generally thus. It is all þat is mad. I merueled howe it myght laste. For me þought it myght sodenly haue fall to nought for lytyllhed. & I was answered in my vnderstondyng. It lastyth & euer shall for god louyth it. And so hath all thyng his begynning by þe loue of god. In this lytyll thyng I sawe thre propertees. The fyrst is. þt god made it. þe secunde is þet god louyth it. & þe þrid is. þat god kepith it.
—Julian of Norwich, A Revelation of Love (1373)
“That guy’s gotta stop. …He’ll see us.”
–James Dean (last words)
“Fire.”
–James Tiberius Kirk, Star Trek II
This cosmos, which is the same for all, no god nor man did create — but it ever was, and is, and shall be an everlasting fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out.
–Heraclitus, Fragment B30
“Well, the sun’s coming up. Or the earth’s going down, as the fashionable theory has it.”
–Rosencrantz and Guildernstern Are Dead
…Hearts to one purpose bent
Through summer and winter seem
Enchanted to a stone
To trouble the living stream.
The horse that comes from the road.
The rider, the birds that range
From cloud to tumbling cloud,
Minute by minute they change;
A horse-hoof slides on the brim,
And a horse plashes within it;
The long-legged moor-hens dive,
And hens to moor-cocks call;
Minute by minute they live:
The stone’s in the midst of it all.
—William Butler Yeats
The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.
Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn’t hard to master.
Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.
–Elizabeth Bishop
…I turned to the young man on my right and said “How is it,
there?” And he begged me protestingly don’t ask, we are poor
poor. And the whole room was suddenly posters and
presentations
of brake linings and other automotive accessories, cardboard
displays, the dead roaming from one to another
as bored back in life as they are in hell, poor and doomed
to mere equipments…
–Charles Olson
…And meanwhile, in the moonlight, the trees shake their heads like disco dancers in the nightlife of long ago.
—Martin Amis, London Fields
I went inside and I wrote: It is midnight. It is raining. It was not midnight. It was not raining.
—Samuel Beckett
All will be well and all will be well and all manner of thing shall be well.
–Julian of Norwich
Shut your eyes and see.
—James Joyce
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…So! Why’d I do this? I did this because I love books more, so much more than anything. So much more than music. Even though we all like music. …And who’d I make this for? Why, I made it for you guys. Because I lurve yew.
And then there’s the other thing! Now. So. So now. …So now, first of all, and in the spirit of Linux-esque Open Sourcing, I urge you to submit your own favorite quotes, or your own “mixtapes” in the comment section, so that the journey — and the adventure — may continue.
…And second, I’m sorry if this mixtape sucks; I liked my first version better, babe, you know how that goes.
And third, and finally, let’s all go to my van — it’s that one, there; with the wolf and the moon painted on the side — and let’s all have some fine bud, and let’s literary-ishly make out. Whaddya say? Whoa, not so fast there, lover. Calm down, honey. We’ve got allll night. …After all; it’s a slow ride, baby. Take it easy.