"It would be nice if no little boy in bed, hearing, or thinking he hears, a sound, were ever at all frightened. But if he is going to be frightened, I think it better that he should think of giants and dragons than merely of burglars."
- C.S. Lewis, 𝘖𝘯 𝘚𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴
ALT Radical Fashion from the Schembart Carnival (1590)
"Lennie ain't no fighter, but Lennie's strong and quick, and Lennie don't know no rules."
- John Steinbeck, 𝘖𝘧 𝘔𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘔𝘦𝘯
"Elsewhere is a negative mirror: The traveler recognizes the little that is his, discovering the much he has not had and will never have."
- Italo Calvino, 𝘐𝘯𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘊𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴
"She followed the lines in his face with a geographical eye and an imaginary pen, giving each line a name, as though they were discovered rivers."
- David Ohle, 𝘔𝘰𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯
"In my chess game with the dark lord I had made perhaps a fatally wrong move."
- Iris Murdoch, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘭𝘢𝘤𝘬 𝘗𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦
ALT Checkmate (originally titled Die Schachspieler, or The Chess Players) was created in 1831 by German artist Friedrich Moritz August Retzsch
Leave the idle alone:
". . . to require a Letter of a Man lost in idleness is the utmost cruelty; you cut the thread of his existence, you beat, you pummel him, you sell his goods and chattels, you put him in prison, you impale him, you crucify him."
- John Keats, Letter to Charles Wentworth Dilke, Shanklin, Isle of Wight, 31 July 1819
“To begin with, that which is read shall
be nothing more than that which is written, flowing into a new book along with that which is said about it and certain new things, which are nothing more than old forgotten things. Until there is nothing more than the terribly old, rewritten over and over again, put in a different order, thus is there the new and so shall there be the new for as long as forgetting exists.”
- Michael Lentz, 𝘚𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘩
". . . she was like a lovely cold vase, unadorned save by an escaping ray."
- James Hilton, 𝘓𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘏𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘻𝘰𝘯
"This is a famous lesson that we may learn from Kou Kai Tchou, who lived some fifteen centuries ago. He would always hesitate to reach the succulent marrow when he was eating a piece of sugarcane, for, as he explained—'I introduce myself gradually into the region of delights.'"
- James Hilton, 𝘓𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘏𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘻𝘰𝘯
Blemmyes!
Zakarīyā’ ibn Muḥammad al-Qazwīnī, 𝘈𝘫ā’𝘪𝘣 𝘢𝘭-𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘩𝘭ū𝘲ā𝘵 𝘸𝘢-𝘨𝘩𝘢𝘳ā’𝘪𝘣 𝘢𝘭-𝘮𝘢𝘸𝘫ū𝘥ā𝘵 (Marvels of things created and miraculous aspects of things existing), MS P 2 (National Library of Medicine), 1537, f. 59a.
Some thoughts on literature.
open.substack.com/pub/bookne…
"Not characters in a drama: ciphers. Evil and good."
- Rosalind Belben, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘵
ALT William Blake - The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed In Sun
"No other place could have been so idyllic--a shallow singing river beyond a stone wall fashioned for eternity and lolling peaceably across the meadow, cows."
- Rosalind Belben, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘵
"Someone medical communicates with someone clerical utilising the dependents, themselves harbingers of, bringers of information, not vital but mortal, not waving but drowning."
- Rosalind Belben, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘓𝘪𝘮𝘪𝘵
Questions of the day:
1) Does Clarice Lispector write as a Cubist painter paints?
2) Does language signify nothing beyond what it expresses?
