Still Life Pasolini Quotes & Sayings

The birds sang in the dust
in an elaborate weave, ambiguous,
deafening, prey to existence
poor passions lost between the modest
summits of groves of mulberry and elder;
and I, like them, in secluded places
reserved for the lost and pure,
would wait for evening to fall,
for the silent smells of fire
and joyous misery to fill the air,
for the Angelus bell to toll, veiled
in the new peasant mystery
fulfilled in the ancient mystery. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

Death does determine life. Once life is finished it acquires a sense; up to that point it has not got a sense; its sense is suspended and therefore ambiguous. However, to be sincere I must add that for me death is important only if it is not justified and rationalized by reason. For me death is the maximum of epicness and death. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

Death does determine life. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

The sexual freedom of today for most people is really only a convention, an obligation, a social duty, a social anxiety, a necessary feature of the consumer's way of life. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

Behold those times re-created by
the brutal power of sunlit images,
the light of life's tragedy.
The walls of the trial, the field
of the firing squad; and the distant
ghost of Rome's suburbs in a ring,
gleaming white in naked light.
Gunshots: our death, our survival. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

First the mania for confession,
then the mania for clarity,
issued from you, dark, hypocritical
sentiment! Let them now
condemn my every passion, let them
drag me through the mud, call me twisted,
foul pervert, dilettante, perjurer;
you keep me apart, give me life's assurance:
I burn at the stake, play the card of fire
and win: I win this small,
vast possession, my infinite,
miserable pity
which makes even righteous anger my friend.
And I can do this because I've endured you too long! — Pier Paolo Pasolini

The sense comes back to me of life
as it always was then, an affliction
even blinder because wondrously filled
with sweetness. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

Once life is finished it acquires a sense; up to that point it has not got a sense; its sense is suspended and therefore ambiguous. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

The mark which has dominated all my work is this longing for life, this sense of exclusion, which doesn't lessen but augments this love of life. — Pier Paolo Pasolini

We survive, in the confusion
of a life reborn beyond reason. — Pier Paolo Pasolini