Excerpts from Zorba the Greek, with which I will continue to be obsessed for at least another day or so:
"But at times I was seized with compassion. A Buddhist compassion, as cold as the conclusion of a metaphysical syllogism."
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"We were leaving the Berlin museum, where he had been to have one last look at his favorite painting--Rembrandt's Warrior, with his bronze helmet, emaciated cheeks and his dolorous and strong-willed expression. 'If ever in my life I perform an action worthy of a man,' he murmured, as he gazed at the implacable and desperate warrior, 'it will be to him that I owe it.'"
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"All the problems which we find so complicated or insoluble he cuts through as if with a sword, like Alexander the Great cutting through the Gordian knot. It is difficult for him to miss his aim, because his two feet are held firmly on the ground by the weight of his whole body. African savages worship the serpent because its whole body touches the ground and it must, therefore, know all the earth's secrets. It knows them with its belly, with its tail, with its head. It is always in contact or mingled with the Mother. The same is true of Zorba. We educated people are just empty-headed birds of the air."
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"'What came over you to make you dance like that?'
'What could I do, boss? My joy was choking me. I had to find some outlet. And what sort of outlet? Words? Pff!'"
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"My life is wasted, I thought. If only I could take a cloth and wipe out all I have learnt, all I have seen and heard, and go to Zorba's school and start the great, the real alphabet! ... I should learn to run, to wrestle, to swim, to ride horses, to row, to drive a car, to fire a rifle. I should fill my soul with flesh. I should fill my flesh with soul."
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"'I lived six months with her. Since that day--God be my witness!--I need fear nothing. Nothing, I say. Nothing, except one thing: that the devil, or God, wipe out those six months from my memory.'"
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"And I said to you then, I remember: 'What do Greece, Our Country, Duty mean? The truth is here!' And you replied: 'Greece, Our Country, Duty mean nothing. And yet, for that nothing we willingly court destruction.'"
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"'Life is trouble,' Zorba continued. 'Death, no. To live--do you know what that means? To undo your belt and look for trouble!'"
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"If the scriptures had said: 'Today, light is born," man's heart would not have leapt. The idea would not have become a legend and would not have conquered the world. ... But the light which is born in the dead of winter has become a child and the child has become God, and for twenty centuries our soul has suckled it."
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