How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"But for ourselves, we resent teachers. Let a man get up and say, "Behold, this is the truth," and instantly I perceive a sandy cat filching a piece of fish in the background. Look, you have forgotten the cat, I say… I have made up thousands of stories; I have filled innumerable notebooks with phrases to be used when I have found the true story, the one story to which all these phrases refer. But I have never yet found that story. And I begin to ask, Are there stories?" (7b.5)
Bernard is thinking about the difficulty of telling how much truth is in language, suggesting that he and others like him reject "teachers" who talk endlessly about "the truth." Instead of being a pompous teacher, he turns to his storytelling. But Bernard does appear to search for something true beneath words—"the one story to which all these phrases refer"—and admits to doubting whether this story can be actually be found. In fact, he asks if there are any stories at all. Silly, doesn't he know he's in one?
Quote #8
"Waves of hands, hesitations at street corners, someone dropping a cigarette into the gutter—all are stories. But which is the true story? That I do not know. Hence I keep my phrases hung like clothes in a cupboard, waiting for someone to wear them. Thus waiting, thus speculating, making this note and then another, I do not cling to life. I shall be brushed like a bee from a sunflower. My philosophy, always accumulating, welling up moment by moment, runs like quicksilver a dozen ways at once. But Louis, wild-eyed but severe, in his attic, in his office, has formed unalterable conclusions upon the true nature of what is to be known." (8b.15)
Bernard says again that he's never found the one story that could use all those perfect little phrases he's been collecting. He thinks that this failing makes his philosophy deeply flawed. In contrast, Louis has pinned things down pretty well, having "formed unalterable conclusions upon the true nature of what is to be known." Lucky Louis.
Quote #9
"How tired I am of stories, how tired I am of phrases that come down beautifully with all their feet on the ground. Also, how I distrust neat designs of life that are drawn upon half-sheets of note-paper. I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on the pavement. I begin to seek some design more in accordance with those moments of humiliation and triumph that come now and then undeniably… Of story, of design, I do not see a trace then." (9b.2)
Bernard is speaking to a stranger he has invited to eat with him as he prattles on about his life story. He is kind of trashing his own habit of collecting perfect phrases, indicating that he now seeks a "broken" language. He also says he is tired of stories and their "neat designs." Hmm, well, The Waves might be his kind of novel, then, eh?