Alex: Jonfen. What you said at the hotel about Ukrainians before the war. Jonathan: Yeah? Alex: Do you think it's possible that my grandfather, he... [Very long silence] Jonathan: Your shirt's inside out. Alex: What? Jonathan: Your shirt's inside out...
Lista: [in Ukrainian] [recounting the Nazis' torture of the Trachimbroders] Lista: First there was Yosef. He was a shoemaker. They held a gun to his daughter's head and commanded him to spit. He spit. They all spit, and tore, and kicked, and whatever...
What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?" "Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the h...
Note, to-day, an instructive, curious spectacle and conflict. Science, (twin, in its fields, of Democracy in its)—Science, testing absolutely all thoughts, all works, has already burst well upon the world—a sun, mounting, most illuminating, most ...
Above me I feel your love my Goddess Full of the promise that through you my Goddess All things ripen and come to fruition my Goddess As the diaphanous boundary between worlds my Goddess Is illuminated by the white light of your sign my Goddess I ask...
All I know is that the fear I have been battling all night is breaking down the door of my ignorance. As my feet slam down I feel not the hard, wet asphalt but the soft Persian rug that led to the staircase in my father’s home. In the glow of light...
This process of assimilation, which takes place in depth, requires a state of relaxation that is becoming rarer and rarer. If sleep is the apogee of physical relaxation, boredom is the apogee of mental relaxation. Boredom is the dream bird that hatch...
The act of writing itself is much like the construction of a mirror made of words. Looking at certain illuminated corners of or cracks within the mirror, the author can see fragments of an objective reality that comprise the physical universe, social...
Space, as you can see, is a complete void, nothing but clear air, without solid objects or the illumination of light. On some of our photographs of space, however, studied close to, even without a magnifying glass or an enlargement lens, you will not...
In the midst of the darkness of loss, I found light. Admittedly, in those first weeks, it might have been but a single small spark I sensed deep inside of me, but that spark guided me in the twisted, dark journey of grief. As I stumbled over the root...
Those who are truly enlightened, those whose souls are illuminated by love, have been able to overcome all of the inhibitions and preconceptions of their era. They have been able to sing, to laugh, and to pray out loud; they have danced and shared wh...
I love to watch the fine mist of the night come on, The windows and the stars illumined, one by one, The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily, And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pas...
AND where did the books go when the world turned against them? When the flames of wrath blackened their pages and erased the words, they fled to find solace and redemption in the dark places of the world. “They were exiled into darkness so their ow...
The quality of light by which we scrutinize our lives has direct bearing upon the product which we live, and upon the changes which we hope to bring about through those lives. It is within this light that we form those ideas by which we pursue our ma...
A little porch light from a distant farmhouse dimmed, feeling alone and unneeded until his smallest spark of illumination snuffed out entirely. The night fell as dark as it was quiet. Meanwhile, every secret eye within the vicinity―from insect to a...
I wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation. I wanted to shake the stone and light out of my system. I wanted the dark fecundity of nature, the deep well of the womb, silence, or else the lapping of the bla...
A rural Venus, Selah rises from the gold foliage of the Sixhiboux River, sweeps petals of water from her skin. At once, clouds begin to sob for such beauty. Clothing drops like leaves. "No one makes poetry,my Mme. Butterfly, my Carmen, in Whylah,” ...
Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our heats? Can the writer renew our hope for liter...
I'm like the moon," he started, "the hidden side of the moon. Not seen because it don't want to be seen. Everyone knows ther's is shadow there, but no one looks. It's like that with me, Byrd. I'm part illuminated, part in shadow-and that part that sh...
We human beings build houses because we're alive but we write books because we're mortal. We live in groups because we're sociable but we read because we know we're alone. Reading offers a kind of companionship that takes no one's place but that no o...
Alex: [voice over] This is Grandfather. Like my father and myself, he too is dubbed Alex. My grandmother, Anna, died two years before of a cancer in her brain. Precluding this, Grandfather became very melancholy, and also, he says, blind. His most re...
