What follows are
three quotes from recent readings, all of which struck to the very core of my
being:
For people of my age, the places that they truly loved and
to which they once belonged are no longer there. The places of their childhood
and youth have ceased to exist, the villages where they went on holiday, the
parks with uncomfortable benches where their first loves blossomed, the cities,
cafés
and houses of their past. And if their outer form has been preserved, it’s all the
more painful, like a shell with nothing inside it anymore. I have nowhere to
return to. It’s like a state of imprisonment. The walls of the cell are the
horizon of what I can see. Beyond them exists a world that’s alien to me and
doesn’t belong to me. So for people like me the only thing possible is here and
now, for every future is doubtful, everything yet to come is barely sketched
and uncertain, like a mirage that can be destroyed by the slightest twitch of
the air. ~ Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the
Bones of the Dead
**** ****
Lad of Athens, faithful be
To Thyself,
And Mystery --
All the rest is Perjury --
~ Emily Dickinson
**** ****
[A book] is the voice of a person that needs me. I am there
to help him speak. ~ Martin Buber, I
and Thou
