The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all…I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world,… Continue reading Eugène Ionesco
Insomnia […] is not just a state of sleeplessness, a matter of negatives. It involves the active pursuit of sleep. It is a state of longing. — Marina Benjamin, Insomnia. (Catapult, November 13, 2018)
I loved you, so I drew these tides of / Men into my hands / And wrote my will across the / Sky in stars ― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph. (Private edition 1922)
So this sadness returns quietly. Always quietly. No great trumpeting or horn blast. No drum circle or full-bodied gospel wail. No stunning metaphor or dazzling simile. There is only this throbbing and distant and empty and quiet. Always this white noise of rush and tide. It’s what silence sounds like. Water. — Bassey Ikpi, I’m… Continue reading Bassey Ikpi
It is vain futility to describe the way you smile; it is mere impossibility to speak at all when you are around. I don’t dare breathe. Keep smiling. I don’t dare move at all. — Friedrich Nietzsche, Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche. (Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.; 2nd edition December 15, 1996)
Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun to learn content and peace of mind since I have resolved at all risks to do this. ― Thomas Henry Huxley,… Continue reading Thomas Henry Huxley
Think of someone you want to touch whom you cannot touch, someone forbidden. Think of a room where there is nothing except the two of you: still, you cannot touch them. Think of the heat between two hands about to touch, the language that exists in that silence. — Chelsea Hodson, from “A Simple Woman,”… Continue reading Chelsea Hodson
