Malachy Tallack > Quotes

“Faced with the sky we imagine gods, faced with the ocean we imagine islands. Absence is terrifying, and so we fill the gaps in our knowledge with invented things. These bring us comfort, but they conflict, too, with our desire for certainty and understanding. And sometimes that desire gives us back the absences we sought to fill.”
― Malachy Tallack, The Un-Discovered Islands: An Archipelago of Myths and Mysteries, Phantoms and Fakes

“When someone you love is going to die, when you know they are going to die and there is nothing you can do to stop it, life splits. Half of you continues as if everything were normal. You get up in the morning, eat breakfast, brush your teeth. You do your work, see friends, watch television, go to sleep. You function. The other half, though, is always looking forward. It sees beyond the dying to the dead. It anticipates the absence that is to come. And yet somewhere there, between those two halves, the automaton and the seer, you must continue to love and to care for the one who is not gone yet, who is still there, temporary but real.”
― Malachy Tallack, The Valley at the Centre of the World