- Birthday, Film, Nonfiction, Writing

“I’m hanging on to life for dear life.”

Happy birthday, Derek Jarman! Here are some quotes from the brilliant filmmaker:

“But the wind does not stop for my thoughts. It whips across the flooded gravel pits drumming up waves on their waters that glint hard and metallic in the night, over the shingle, rustling the dead gorse and skeletal bugloss, running in rivulets through the parched grasswhile I sit here in the dark holding a candle that throws my divided shadow across the room and gathers my thoughts to the flame like moths.”

Modern Nature

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“I’m not afraid of death but I am afraid of dying.”

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“I’m hanging on to life for dear life.”

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“Always becoming, never arriving. Life is at a standstillonly ideas flash past. In such confusion I find myself running after them: Hey! Stop! Stop! But they escape, leaving me staring at a grey English spring.”

Modern Nature

  • John Madera is the author of Nervosities (Anti-Oedipus Press, 2024). His other fiction is published in Conjunctions, Salt Hill, The &Now Awards 2: The Best Innovative Writing, and many other journals. His nonfiction is published in American Book Review, Bookforum, The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Rain Taxi: Review of Books, The Believer, The Brooklyn Rail, and many other venues. Recipient of an M.F.A. in Literary Arts from Brown University, New York State Council on the Arts awardee John Madera lives in New York City, Rhizomatic and manages and edits Big Other.

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