Joshua Aiz > Joshua's Quotes

“There is a terrible emptiness in me, an indifference that hurts.”
― Albert Camus, The First Man

“The agnosticism I had upheld throughout my conscious life had not made me a Christian. But in the camps I had not seen better people than the believers. Depravity affected everyone's souls; only the believers held out.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“Cowardice is the most terrible of vices.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita

“It was at this point that he realized that he felt no fear and that life had no value for him.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“Every minute of camp life is poisoned.
There is a lot in the camps that a man must not know or see, and if he does see it, he is better off dead.
Prisoners in the camps learn to hate labor. That is all they can learn there.
They are taught flattery, lying, vileness, petty and serious, and they become egotists.
When they are released, they see that not only have they failed to grow while in the camps but that their interests have narrowed and become wretched and coarse.
Moral barriers have been pushed aside.
You find out that you can do something vile and still live.
You can lie and still live.
You can make promises and fail to keep them and still live.
You can spend a friend's money on drink.
You can beg for charity and still live! You can live as a beggar.
It turns out that a man who has done something vile doesn't then die.
He learns to live a life of idleness, deceit, and resentment against everyone and everything.
He overvalues his own sufferings and forgets that everyone has their own grief; he just can't understand it and doesn't want to.
Skepticism is all very well, and that is the best you can take away from the camp.
The prisoner learns to hate people.
He is afraid that he is a coward. He is afraid that he will suffer the same fate again. He is afraid of denunciations, of his neighbors, of everything a human being should not be afraid of.
He is morally crushed. His ideas of morality have changed and he hasn't noticed.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales

“It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”
― Epictetus

“A horse can't endure even a month of the local winter life in a cold stall if it's worked hard hours in subzero weather. . . . But man lives on. Perhaps he lives by virtue of his hopes? But he doesn't have any hope . . . . . He is saved by a drive for self-preservation, a tenacious clinging to life, a physical tenacity to which his entire consciousness is subordinated. He lives on the same things as a bird or a dog, but he clings more strongly to life than they do. He has a greater endurance than that of any animal.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales

“Not a lot of flesh was left on my bones. This flesh sufficed only for malice, the last human feeling to go. Not indifference but malice was the last human feeling, it was the closest to the bone.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; or, the Whale

“That same sense of direction that animals possess perfectly also awakens in man under the right conditions.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales

“An intellectual, once imprisoned, is crushed by the camp. Everything that used to be dear to him is trampled into the dust, and he sheds his civilization and culture in the shortest imaginable time, a matter of weeks.
In any discussion the main argument is a fist or a stick. The means of compulsion is a rifle butt or a punch in the mouth.
An intellectual turns into a coward, and his own brain suggests a justification for his actions. He can persuade himself of anything, he can take any side in an argument. The criminal world calls intellectuals "life teachers," fighters "for the people's rights."
A "slapping," a punch, is enough to turn an intellectual into the obedient servant of some thieving Senia or Kostia.
Physical influence becomes moral influence.
The intellectual becomes a permanently scared creature. His spirit is broken. Even when he gets back to life in freedom, he will still have this intimidated and broken spirit.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales

“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“I saw that the only group of people able to preserve a minimum of humanity in conditions of starvation and abuse were the religious believers, the sectarians (almost all of them), and most priests. Party workers and the military are the first to fall apart and do so most easily.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“Nothing could be avoided, and nothing could be foreseen. What was the point of unnecessary fear?”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“Friendship is not born in conditions of need or trouble. Literary fairy tales tell of ‘difficult’ conditions which are an essential element in forming any friendship, but such conditions are simply not difficult enough. If tragedy and need brought people together and gave birth to their friendship, then the need was not extreme and the tragedy not great. Tragedy is not deep and sharp if it can be shared with friends.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales

“I believed a person could consider himself a human being as long as he felt totally prepared to kill himself, to interfere in his own biography. It was this awareness that gave me the will to live. I checked myself — frequently — and felt I had the strength to die, and thus remained alive.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Tales

“Our life is what our thoughts make it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“I discovered that the world should be divided not into good and bad people but into cowards and non-cowards. Ninety-five percent of cowards are capable of the vilest things, lethal things, at the mildest threat.”
― Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Stories

“If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“Be more than motivated, be more than driven, become literally obsessed to the point where people think you're fucking nuts.”
― David Goggins, Can't Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds

“There are more alcoholics on this Earth now than ever before. More cashiers too. In turn, this makes it more impressive to swim against the current. The timing is right for those who wish to be different. Masculinity and heroism are glorified tenfold when the world is in such disarray. There is nothing to be sad about. You were born in the golden moment, in the meat of the golden ratio. Go set something on fire.”
― Mike Ma, Gothic Violence

“I'm not usually like this. I'm not usually so on edge, so
forthright. I'm not usually exhaling death pheromones into the common man's air. I'm not usually foaming at the mouth. But today, I feel the blood flowing with a little more ease. I've felt like this for a while now. Weeks maybe. Months possibly. I believe that my brain
is getting more oxygen than normal. Perhaps it's my increase in both raw meat & garlic consumption.”
― Mike Ma, Harassment Architecture

“If you truly want to make it, you have to go fully into the void. You need to accept that you may not come out the other side. You have to walk so far and so confidently that not a measure could be half. You're diving with empty hands into a dark ocean where you can either sink or swim. You have to make yourself so foreign to the normal world that you'd be a spectacle upon return. The gap between you and the average man widens.”
― Mike Ma, Gothic Violence

“The cashier race and their boundaries of what's acceptable are a pitfall for many. No ancient hero, or his soldiers, listened to what the cubicle kind had to say. The pencil pushers and paper shufflers of this world are doomed to remain as such, pressing button and passing ill judgement. Pay no mind until it's time to kill or enslave them.”
― Mike Ma, Gothic Violence

“Stood in firelight, sweltering. Bloodstain on chest like map of violent new continent. Felt cleansed. Felt dark planet turn under my feet and knew what cats know that makes them scream like babies in night.

Looked at sky through smoke heavy with human fat and God was not there. The cold, suffocating dark goes on forever and we are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later. Born from oblivion; bear children, hell-bound as ourselves, go into oblivion. There is nothing else.

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It’s us. Only us. Streets stank of fire. The void breathed hard on my heart, turning its illusions to ice, shattering them. Was reborn then, free to scrawl own design on this morally blank world.

Was Rorschach.

Does that answer your Questions, Doctor?”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“The enemies of today are contagiously weak; their communion is a dangerous trading of hard-to-cure poisons.”
― Mike Ma, Harassment Architecture

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“The slightest understanding of fashion is your acceptance that the world is predicated on looks and violence.”
― Mike Ma, Gothic Violence

“Every new day is the erasing of something more. Mistakes and shortcomings used to be a secret motivation. It was something that pushed you forward, faster. Now mistakes are sold as personality traits, to the point where the many willingly make them. Soon comes the inversion, where successes are kept under wraps because it's too pretentious or uppity to share them”
― Mike Ma, Gothic Violence

“There's a concert tonight and the few friends I've got here have invited me to come out. They aren't my real friends though, mostly because I can't be racist, sexist, or myself around them”
― Mike Ma , Harassment Architecture