John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 7h“If dirty words frighten you,” said Giovanni, “I really do not know how you have managed to live so long. People are full of dirty words. The only time they do not use them, most people I mean, is when they are describing something dirty.” James Baldwin, Giovanni's Room, 1956. 020
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 7h📺 Saturday Night Live, The Exorcist 2 (ft. Richard Pryor), 1975: youtu.be/B8dKnFU5LUE?...youtu.beThe Exorcist 2 (ft. Richard Pryor) - SNLYouTube video by Saturday Night Live 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 7hRichard Pryor, Exorcist, 1974: youtu.be/ZmkZOWN_w0k?...youtu.beExorcist (Remastered Version)YouTube video by Richard Pryor - Topic 100
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 7hDR. KLEIN: Have you ever known your daughter to swear? To use obscenities? CHRIS MACNEIL: No, never. [...] Specifically, what did she say? DR. KLEIN: Specifically, Mrs. MacNeil, she advised me to keep my fingers away from her goddamn cunt. 100
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 7h"You dont always get what you want. But then you dont always want what you get so it’s probably pretty much of a wash." Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger, 2022. 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 11/10/2026🎥 Stellan Skarsgård in Erik Skjoldbjærg's Insomnia (1997). 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 11/10/2026„Überhaupt war das Leben zwar abscheulich, aber auch sehr komisch, und sie vermißte Freunde, die mit ihr lachen wollten. Immer hatte sie gern gelacht, jetzt natürlich seit Jahren nicht mehr; ganz allein zu lachen war unheimlich.“ Marlen Haushofer, „Freunde“, Schreckliche Treue, 1968. 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 11/10/2026📷 Gerhard Richter, Cage 5, 2006. [Oil on canvas, 300 x 300 cm] 030
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 11/10/2026Once he has become acquainted with this new work, the well-read man, however jaded his palate, feels his interest awaken in the reality which it depicts." Marcel Proust, Within Budding Grove, 1919. [Tr. D. J. Enright, Terence Kilmartin and C. K. Scott Moncrieff] 010
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 11/10/2026and is made up not of the sum of all previous masterpieces but of something which the most thorough assimilation of every one of them would not enable him to discover, since it exists not in their sum but beyond it. 100
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 11/10/2026"So it is that a well-read man will at once begin to yawn with boredom when one speaks to him of a new “good book,” because he imagines a sort of composite of all the good books that he has read, whereas a good book is something special, something unforeseeable, 100
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 11/10/2026📷 Édouard Manet, The Monet Family in Their Garden at Argenteuil, 1874. 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 10/10/2026Alle Gedanken aber lassen sich anwenden zur völligen Vernichtung unserer eigenen Existenz, wie zur Vernichtung jeder Existenz. Einen Gedanken haben, heißt ja, sich wieder um einen Gedanken von den Menschen und ihren Begriffen zuerst, dann von sich selber entfernen.“ Thomas Bernhard, Watten, 1969. 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 10/10/2026„Jeder Gedanke ließe sich völlig lautlos entwickeln, habe ich früher gedacht, jeder Gedanke am lautlosesten in die Unendlichkeit hinein, aber das ist nicht möglich, einen Gedanken völlig lautlos in die Unendlichkeit hinein entwickeln. 100
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 10/10/2026« Le savoir et le connaître ne veulent pas la même chose dans l’âme des hommes. Qui pense trahit. Sa curiosité se désolidarise des autres membres du groupe. Et ce qui surgit comme contenu à sa pensée peut être radicalement asocial. » Pascal Quignard, Mourir de penser, 2014. 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 10/10/2026and he was your lover? I won’t judge you, just let me know. That possibility makes you a much more interestin’ person. I wish I’d knowed that side of you. [...] I should have suspected you was gay by the way you liked to watch that wrasslin’ on the television."" Percival Everett, The Trees, 2021. 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 10/10/2026"[...] she was talking to Wheat, even though he was dead. He probably heard her just as well when he was alive. “Did that Negro man kill you? Did you kill him? Did you know him? Oh why did he have your nuts in his hand? That’s what I really want to know. Were you secretly funny 100
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 09/10/2026–Are you going to shoot him? –Sex is no good without the kill. 🎥 Mai Zetterling, Night Games, 1966. 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 09/10/2026»Let Warhol have his shoes and his electric chair, Picabia and Kafka divine machines—let me have my grand piano and my guillotine« William N. Copley 🖼️ Copley, Porgy and Bess, 1959. 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 09/10/2026"We are the children of death and it is death that rescues us from the deceptions of life." Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl, 1937. [Tr. D. P. Costello] 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 09/10/2026I suppose it should be a comfort to understand that one cannot be dead forever where there’s no forever to be dead in." Cormac McCarthy, The Passenger, 2022. 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 09/10/2026"We dont move through the days, Squire. They move through us. Until the last cruel crank of the ratchet. [...] the passing of time is irrevocably the passing of you. And then nothing. 100
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 09/10/2026🖼️ William N. Copley, New World Map, 1948. [Collage on wood, 91 x 60 cm] 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 09/10/2026The last time I had brought him maps, for I had heard that nothing cures melancholy like looking at maps." Olga Tokarczuk, Flights, 2007. [Tr. Jennifer Croft] 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 09/10/2026"I knew, of course, that he suffered attacks of melancholy; now the black bile had reached the level of his brain – perhaps because of those, as he called them, phantom pains. 100
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 09/10/2026who fawned and grovelled before the mighty of earth and heaven as the hungry dog outside the butcher’s shop wagged his tail in the hope of receiving a fragment of offal." Sadegh Hedayat, The Blind Owl, 1937. [Tr. D. P. Costello] 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 09/10/2026"I felt that this world had not been made for me but for a tribe of brazen, money-grubbing, blustering louts, sellers of conscience, hungry of eye and heart—for people, in fact, who had been created in its own likeness and 100
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2026🖼️ Hubertus Giebe, Wally, 1986. [Öl auf Hartfaser] 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2026"[...] when one is young, one always looks young, when one is older, then it's too late anyway. then if one does not look younger, the judgement of the world is merciless: did not make cosmetic provision when young!" Elfriede Jelinek, Women as Lovers, 1975. [Tr. Martin Chalmers] 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2026🖼️ Gottfried Helnwein, The Temptation, 1985. [Coloured pencil on paper, 89 x 63 cm] www.helnwein.com/en/works/dra... 010
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2026wunderte sich über den geraden Wuchs, die behenden Beinchen, die zierlichen Händchen und Füßchen, bewunderte Steffi, bewunderte sie so sehr, daß in all den Jahren dem kleinen Mädchen keine Ahnung von ihrer Häßlichkeit gekommen war.“ Veza Canetti, „Geduld bringt Rosen“, 1932. 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2026der Mund eine noch breitere Fortsetzung, die Augen waren nicht da. Man sah wohl zwei rotbraune Pünktchen, aber das leuchtete nicht, blickte nicht, sprach nicht und bedeutete nichts. Statt eines Teints hatte sie Sommersprossen. Und doch wunderte sich das Ehepaar Mäusle nicht wenig über dieses Kind, 100
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2026„Steffi, ein zwölfjähriges, sehr kleines Mädchen, hatte goldrotes Haar. Jedes mäßig hübsche Mädchen wäre durch dieses goldrote Haar zu einer Schönheit gekrönt worden, bei Steffi erhöhte es nur ihre Häßlichkeit. Es schien, daß sich alle Häßlichkeit auf Steffi kapriziert hatte. Die Nase breite Löcher, 100
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2026📷 Vora Hitz, Kinderbildnis Grete Ring, um 1895. 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2026"True, there was something of the dreamy Balthus prepubescent in the elusiveness of Mary Ann Healy’s gaze; yet, her face was too ruddy-healthy, her body (inside an ill-fitting Langhorne uniform) no more defined than a sack of soiled laundry." Joyce Carol Oates, Fox, 2025. 010
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2026🖼️ Balthus, Étude pour Thérèse, 1937. [Plume et encre] 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2026"Teaching middle school was not unlike grazing a buffet of exquisite foods hidden among plebeian, coarse, and unappetizing ones, it is not the fault of certain foods that they fail to arouse our appetites." Joyce Carol Oates, Fox, 2025. 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2026🎥 Károly Eperjes as Van Rees in Robert Sigl's Laurin (1989). 010
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2026"Harry's mother believes all teachers are pæderasts: why else would they enter so loathsome a calling?" Alasdair Gray, Something Leather, 1990. 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2026🎥 Dóra Szinetár in Robert Sigl's Laurin (1989). 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2026"Prepubescent was the key: pubescent with all it entailed of budding mammalian female flesh, the unspeakable horror of menstruation, was distasteful to him, a connoisseur of the Balthus ideal which is the essence of the forbidden." Joyce Carol Oates, Fox, 2025. 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 08/10/2026"[...] people either love cops or hate them. It’s been my experience that most interesting people hate them. Hell, I’m a cop and I hate them.” Percival Everett, The Trees, 2021. 011
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 07/10/2026🖼️ »Mother, there's nothing more to eat — Why don't you go out on the street? From: Death in the Artic« William N. Copley, The Strumpet Muse. Images from Robert W Service, 1994. 000
John Wynberg @johnwynberg.bsky.social · 07/10/2026A small child lamenting, »Mother, there is no more to eat / Why don't you go back on the street?« I can't resist a line like that. Service used to be very popular, and now nobody knows his work, which is all the better because it makes me seem very original." William N. Copley, 1991 000