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Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet … then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.
From Moby Dick
The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the interval, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks’ windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memor
... See moreMarcel Proust • In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7]
For years and years I struggled just to love my life. And then the butterfly rose, weightless, in the wind. “Don’t love your life too much,” it said, and vanished into the world.
Mary Oliver • Dream Work
I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it call itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow myself to use, silence, exile, and cunning.—
James Joyce • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (AmazonClassics Edition)
I may want to read the book that is the subject of this article eventually, sounds right up my alley. Consider following current fiction kick
If you notice anything, it leads you to notice more and more.
Mary Oliver • Dream Work
Farther in the distance, I could even see mighty Brazil nut trees towering over the forest. I looked at it all in a new way. Is nature beautiful if your family dies in it without help? I determined that the beauty in nature is really the beauty of our perception of it. No, it wouldn’t be beautiful without humans to declare it so. But, my God, it wa
... See moreDaniel L. Everett • Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle (Vintage Departures)
—Pity is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the human sufferer. Terror is the feeling which arrests the mind in the presence of whatsoever is grave and constant in human sufferings and unites it with the secret cause.—
James Joyce • A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (AmazonClassics Edition)
Pirahãs take naps (fifteen minutes to two hours at the extremes) during the day and night. There is loud talking in the village all night long. Consequently, it is often very difficult for outsiders to sleep well among the Pirahãs. I believe that the Pirahãs’ advice not to sleep because there are snakes is advice that they literally follow—sleeping
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