The Magic Mountain (1924) by Thomas Mann & the Natures of Love & Death
“Death and love—no, I cannot make a poem of them, they don’t go together. Love stands opposed to death.”
Where Books and Readers Come Together
“Death and love—no, I cannot make a poem of them, they don’t go together. Love stands opposed to death.”
“The pianist could speak with both the quickstep of the city and the balladry of the countryside, he was a one-man Book of Songs and Book of History.”
“The painting that had impressed them, entitled Say Hello to My Little Friend, was an acrylic rendering of a marmoset doing cocaine.”
“HBS smacks of an ivory tower, cut off from the world outside.”
“On some subjects—for instance, writers’ workshops—one is tempted to pull punches or rest satisfied with oversimplified answers; but I’m assuming, as the primary reader of this book, an intensely serious beginning novelist who wants the strict truth (as I perceive it) for his life’s sake, so that he can plan his days of technique, theory, and attitude; and become as quickly and efficiently as possible a master of his craft” (p xxii).
“It’s not even accurate to call it the past, for the events related in these pages didn’t occur in the past. The details that have been preserved are already abundant. Sealed in floating bottles, they will hopefully reach the new universe and endure there.”
“Maybe I am fated to always be alone, Tsukuru found himself thinking.”
“Suppose a vast number of civilizations are distributed throughout the universe, on the order of the number of detectable stars. Lots and lots of them. Those civilizations make up the body of a cosmic society. Cosmic sociology is the study of the nature of this super-society” (p 12).
“She was intoxicated by her brilliant, crimson dream until a bullet pierced her chest.”
“Well, to me, that’s what love is. Not that anyone can understand me, though.”
“I write to create.”
“She was a stone-faced statue when Horace shut the door and locked it. He walked down the hall, locked the door to the front of the chamber, went upstairs, and made himself some bacon and eggs for breakfast.”
A superbly written piece of brutal heartlessness and blatant betrayals on all sides.
Here is a hauntingly good reading of “This Moment is Your Life.”
“Her stare often moved me into speechlessness, captivated me into forgetfulness, and I longed to know what she was thinking without her ever having to say a single word. But I knew such things were impossible for me.”














