2666: Picador Classic

Zero, nothing. But the idea makes him laugh. Behind every answer lies a question, Ansky remembers the peasants of Kostekino say. Behind every indisputable answer lies an even more complex question.

if it was true that all effort led to a vast abyss, she had two recommendations to begin with, first, not to cheat people, and, second, to treat them properly. Beyond that, there was room for discussion.

“The person who really writes the minor work is a secret writer who accepts only the dictates of a masterpiece.

In this country we’ve always confused clarity with stubbornness, don’t you think? We think we’re clear-sighted when in fact we’re stubborn.

Never before had Ansky better understood or delighted more in suprematism, Kazimir Malevich’s invention, nor the first tenet of Malevich’s declaration of independence signed in Vitebsk on November 5, 1920, which proclaims: “The fifth dimension has been established.”

Life is demand and supply, or supply and demand, that’s what it all boils down to, but that’s no way to live. A third leg is needed to keep the table from collapsing into the garbage pit of history, which in turn is permanently collapsing into the garbage pit of the void. So take note. This is the equation: supply + demand + magic. And what is magi

a sum, he thought when he was alone again, is always approximate, there is no such thing as a correct sum, only the Nazis and teachers of elementary mathematics believed in correct sums, only sectarians, madmen, tax collectors (God rot them), numerologists who read one’s fortune for next to nothing believed in correct sums.

And do you know what it means to have class? To be, in the final instance, a sovereign entity.

“True,” said Halder, “one never knows anything about one’s father.” A father, he said, is a passageway immersed in the deepest darkness, where we stumble blindly seeking a way out.