Quick
Aphorisms
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781770413818
- Publish Date
- Apr 2017
- List Price
- $16.95
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781773050171
- Publish Date
- Apr 2017
- List Price
- $13.99
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Description
The highly anticipated follow-up to the wildly popular Glimpse
Quick is George Murray’s second collection of aphorisms — a form that straddles the lines between poetry, philosophy, humour, and prose. He describes these pieces as “poetic essences” — sometimes even as “poems, without all the poetry getting in the way.” Some are deep, some clever, some funny, some all three. The best, he says, should read like common-sense statements that have never actually been expressed.
Built out of more than 450 short statements, Quick is a series of thoughts and ruminations, any one of which could be an entire poem but instead has been compressed into a single profundity. Following his bestselling Glimpse, Murray continues to explore a wide range of themes: from deep existential disquiet to the comforts of the meaning of belief; from what it means to be alive to how the world deals with hate, love, the sublime, and the ridiculous.
About the author
George Murray's three previous books of poetry include The Hunter (McClelland & Stewart, 2003) and The Cottage Builder's Letter (M&S, 2001). His poems, fiction and criticism have appeared in many publications in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia and Europe. Murray won the 2003 New York Festivals Radio and Television Gold Medal for Best Writing for his broadcast poem "Anniversary: A Personal Inventory" and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is the editor and publisher of the popular literary website Bookninja.com and a contributing editor for several literary magazines, including Canadian Notes and Queries and The Drunken Boat. He lives in St. John's, Newfoundland.
Excerpt: Quick: Aphorisms (by (author) George Murray)
Aphorisms by George Murray
1
Every opening of the eye is an entry.
2
Epiphany is the third ball thrown towards hands that have already caught one each.
3
The first boy to snip a flower from your garden for his lover is an enterprising lad, but every one after that is a thief.
4
Stupidity is society’s shitty weather: there’s no use complaining about it.
5
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while looking for a different result; of course, this is also the definition of science.
6
Life is to poetry as a random number generator is to math: it screws everything up until it accidentally makes everything right.
7
Intention is a photograph that hasn’t yet been taken.
8
A stroke of genius and a stroke are separated only by hospital time.
9
Dare is the larval form of deed.
10
The problem with now is it’s over before you kn
11
Fears are like clothing: for years you grow into and out of them until you stop growing and find the ones that fit you best.
12
Humanity: even after all this evolution we’re still smiling and biting with the same teeth.
13
Quiet reflection doesn’t lead to epiphany, it just leads to knowing your mind, in which all epiphanies are already present.
14
The closer one comes to perfection the more disappointing the failure.
15
Memory is the purest form of imagination.
(Wordsworth, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”)
16
A man’s worst enemy is his best friend’s envy.
17
The gulf between an ass and a fool is narrower than the one between a pompous ass and a pompous fool.
18
Friendship is the park in which power likes to play.
19
People wear their politics like bathing suits: some like board shorts, some like Speedos.
20
As said by mystics and proctologists both: this too shall pass.
21
Politics weaponizes idiocy.
22
Friends are the things you have while searching for brothers.
23
Believing you believe in something is a fundamentalist act.
24
The asshole’s mantra: if you can’t be in charge, be the sheriff.
25
A riot is one person’s problems communicated.
26
Yes may grow from maybe but maybe seldom grows from no.
27
It takes fewer movements to make a gesture than gestures to make a movement.
28
One of the hardest lessons one learns growing up is that the lessons weren’t just for you.
29
Commiseration is a full enough meal for the heart.
(Bishop, “The Fish”)
30
Are mistakes made at the point of action or the point of recognition?
31
Today and tomorrow are neighbours and the fence between them is you.
32
The fire of any idea is subject to the rain of any given day.
33
A noose is a one-person net.
34
Everybody: the prime concern of average people.
35
Living well includes living poorly; in fact, it relies on failure.
36
Each leaf is a table at which the sun dines.
37
If the emperor had got those clothes on sale, no one would have complained.
38
Why doesn’t 50 percent seem as significant as one in every two?
39
Fog becomes rain when you move through it.
40
Dignity is what we call the constellation of panics and solutions that form a sense of self.
Editorial Reviews
“Many of them are humorous but cuttingly accurate . . . and the very best of Murray’s aphorisms are dense, compressed orbs of poetic power.” — Winnipeg Free Press
“This very quickness of the collection, part Chinese fortune cookie, part wisdom pocket, should not be mistaken for lack of depth. Murray’s work honours long-lived resolve. It is preferable to bite off small morsels of this book, savour each aphorism like something sacred, delicious.” — Atlantic Books Today
