“And now I know what most deeply connects us after that summer so many years ago, and it isn’t poetry, although it is poetry”

“The centrifugal force of our planet is still fearfully strong…I have a longing for life, and I go on living in spite of logic. Though I may not believe in the order of the universe; yet I love the sticky little leaves as they open in spring. I love the blue sky. I love some people, whom one loves, you know, sometimes without knowing why. I love some great deeds done by men, though I’ve long ceased perhaps to have faith in them, yet from old habit one’s heart prizes them.”

a friend suggested i read ‘the task of the translator’ by walter benjamin when i asked her if she could recommend texts in translation sciences… it’s so fascinating! i’m reading a pdf, look at this part:

“She’s all emotion: heart and womb, tears and blood, a voice that sometimes rises to hysteria, sometimes sinks to a melancholy whine, but isn’t often enough detached, self-critical (in a genuine sense: she is of course self-pitying and self-contemptuous, self-despising).”

“Like most people, I suppose, I’ve lived almost entirely among delusions, and now I’m at the awkward stage of finding it out. I want another delusion to go on with.”

“You notice it first as April ends and May begins, a change in the season, not exactly a warming—in fact not at all a warming—yet suddenly summer seems near, a possibility, even a promise. You pass a window, you walk to Central Park, you find yourself swimming in the colour blue: the actual light is blue, and over the course of an hour or so this blue deepens, becomes more intense even as it darkens and fades, approximates finally the blue of the glass on a clear day at Chartres, or that of the Cerenkov radiation thrown off by the fuel rods in the pools of nuclear reactors. The French called this time of day “l’heure bleue.” To the English it was “the gloaming.” The very word “gloaming” reverberates, echoes— the gloaming, the glimmer, the glitter, the glisten, the glamour—carrying in its consonants the images of houses shuttering, gardens darkening, grass-lined rivers slipping through the shadows.”

“each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen,”

“The number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it.”