34 Quotes by Cliff James

More clowns from the darkness: Donald Trump becomes president.

Olympus is still a patriarchy. Zeus heads his royal household as jealously as Jehovah rules his harem of dull, harp-playing angels. Both are templates for order on earth, don’t you think?

No other way is possible but agony, but suffering, says god, says Peter's god, says Peter.

A metamorphosis had come over us. It was something internal, an electrical pulse in the brain, some slight variation in the aortic rhythm that had forever altered our states, transformed our external structures. We were not who we had been, nor yet what we would become.

It insists on our absolute belief in unverifiable creeds and, in return, promises a reward that can only be verified after we cease to exist. By demanding the unconditional renunciation of our reason in this way, bad-faith prevents us from living an authentic, intentional life: it anaesthetises our integrity.

England sinks, the waters rise, but exile is not all about weeping by the rivers. There are also insights in the wilderness.

It is near time to speak of Peter – not the saint, but the Bishop of Lewes.  Gethsemane was significant to Peter. He made it significant to others.  There is a house in the South Downs of England, between Berwick and Wilmington, a bishop’s house – a former bishop – where the Garden of Gethsemane was made manifest.

Peter didn’t go quietly to his Gethsemane. He refused to drink from the cup that he had forced so many others to drink.

The border of a nationality does not exist ‘in-itself’ in the same way that, say, a mountain, a shell or the moon exists. The border of a nationality is a condition that exists, if it can be said to exist at all, in the mind of the one who passively accepts it as existing. It is a ready-cut cloth, a costume, a fabricated flag, which is used to cover our nothingness.