The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the… Continue reading Aldous Huxley
I hear the tide turning. Lasteager wave over-taken and pulled back by the first wave of the ebb. The pull backby moon-ache. The great knotsof moon-awake energyfar out. — Denise Levertov, from “The Tide,” Poems, 1960-1967 ( New Directions Publishing Corporation, 1983)
Loneliness is like being the only person left alive in the universe, except that everyone else is still here. — Simon Van Booy, Everything Beautiful Began After. (Harper Perennial; Original edition July 5, 2011)
Behind the corpse in the reservoir, behind the ghost on the links,Behind the lady who dances and the man who madly drinks,Under the look of fatigue the attack of migraine and the sighThere is always another story, there is more than meets the eye. — W.H. Auden, from “At Last the Secret Is Out,” As… Continue reading W.H. Auden
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. ― Aldous Huxley, Complete Essays, Vol. II: 1926-1929. (Ivan R. Dee, November 7, 2000)
I’m afraid of losing my obscurity. Genuineness only thrives in the dark. Like celery. — Aldous Huxley
Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life? — Aldous Huxley, Antic Hay. (Kessinger Publishing May 2005) Originally published 1923.
How should we like it were stars to burn With a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me. — W.H. Auden, from “The More Loving One,” Homage to Clio. (Random House 1960)
Each year is like putting a new coat over all the old ones. Sometimes I reach into the pockets of my childhood and pull things out. — Simon Van Booy, from “Little Birds,” The Secret Lives of People in Love (Turtle Point Press, 2007)
That is probably the most painful part: when you are still tormented by the thought that one last effort of will might improve things. — Geoff Dyer, The Colour of Memory (Canongate Books, 2012)
The Vale of Soul-Making 