Category Archives: Stolen Words

Stolen Words / The present was only a duplicate of the past

Leave a reply

I bought a book for £6.99 that was only thirty-five pages long. It was so short that I read it in a hot bath in only ten minutes. But I liked the cover, and what I read resonated with me.

Things like:

“I was aware that this entailed a kind of cruelty towards this younger man who was doing things for the first time. Invariably when he spoke of his plans for a future with me, I replied, ‘The present is enough,’ never mentioning that for me the present was only a duplicate of the past.”

and,

“The people he greeted on the street were always young, often other students. When he stopped to talk, I stood aside; they watched me sidelong. He tore me away from my generation, but I was not part of his.”

The Young Man / Annie Ernaux / 2022

Stolen words/Look at him, he really is magnificent

Leave a reply
Studio Portrait III/Keith Vaughan/c1938

“I live in Paris. I am a pupil at the Louis-le-Grand. I am sixteen. People say: what a beautiful child! Look at him, he really is magnificent. Black hair. Green, almond-shaped eyes. A girl’s complexion. I say: they are mistaken, I am no longer a child.”

In the Absence of Men/Philippe Besson/2001

Stolen Words/He had already read Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers

Leave a reply

“Strangely, his name was Jean, which he pronounced as the French do, and although just turned 17, he had already read Jean Genet’s Our Lady of the Flowers, and believed he was reincarnated from someone who died of an o.d. in 1979 at Studio 54. He knew way too much about that infamous club, and about infamy in general.”

The ‘bicycle thief’ of Manhattan’s West 14th Street Pier/
Fred H. Berger/Propaganda Magazine/Winter 1999

Stolen words/When one is beyond love, where does pleasure lie?

Leave a reply

I see something written by somebody else, and like it. But I will forget the words, and they will be gone. I shall put them here. When I am old, and remember nothing, I will know that they didn’t get lost.

“When one is beyond love, where does pleasure lie? What does one do, seeing the lustful, disrespectful world going about its business, the young up one another’s arse? Was there ever an end to it, this irresistible, normal, subnormal craving for sex? Or did it go tauntingly on?”

Alan Hollinghurst/The Swimming Pool Library

Stolen words/The ‘bicycle thief’ of Manhattan’s West 14th Street Pier

Leave a reply

I see something written by somebody else, and like it. But I will forget the words, and they will be gone. I shall put them here. When I am old, and remember nothing, I will know that they didn’t get lost.

“I was startled to see a nimble young youth on bicycle come to rest before my gaze, silhouetted by the violent blaze of twilight. Straddling his bike like a desperado, he stood transfixed by the dazzling spectacle of blazing colours. I thought, ‘rather pensive for a toughie; the kid has the soul of a poet.’ So, I approached him and saw that his face had ‘bicycle thief’ written all over it. I asked him if he would acquiesce to having his picture taken – he agreed, this boy who stepped out of Genet’s mythology of the young hoodlum, whose coltish grace and coquetry were his adornment.”

Fred H. Berger/Propaganda Magazine/Winter 1999