E M Cioran

Big Frank recently read a short story by the late David Foster Wallace entitled “Backbone”. In it there is this great quotation from E. M Cioran in reference to the human heart, which he calls: “God’s open wound.” Not knowing anything about Cioran, Big Frank went digging, and here are a few quotations from him. Emil Cioran was a Romanian writer (1911 – 1995), who wrote in French.

What surrounds us we endure better for giving it a name — and moving on.

Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.

To Live signifies to believe and hope — to lie and to lie to oneself.

We inhabit a language rather than a country.

We change ideas like neckties.

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.

The obsession with God dislodges earthly love. One cannot love both God and a woman at the same time without being torn between them: they are incompatible with each other. One woman is enough to rid us of God, and God can rid us of all women.

Lucidity is the only vice which makes us free — free in a desert.