Joy

“The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”
― James Baldwin

“The light that fell in here was mottled by the stained-glass windows of the treetops, where every leaf was like a piece of crystal playing with the light according to its own rules. Wojnicz walked along a central nave toward an altar in the distance, not yet visible, but everything foretold it—this was a church full of labyrinths, side naves, crypts beneath the stones, tabernacles hidden in holes in the trees, altars materializing on the mossy trunks of toppled beeches. This church was not at all definite, like a man-made church, but a place of constant change: of water into life, and of light into matter. Everything here was rustling, swelling, gathering, growing and multiplying, budding and trilling. The green moss and gray lichen made the forest seem carpeted in Persian rugs—in velveteen, sheepskin, woolly felt and soft flannel. Why on earth hadn’t he come here sooner?”
― Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story

“Be still, my heart; thou hast known worse than this. On that day when the cyclops, unrestrained in fury, devoured the mighty men of my of my company; but still thou didst endure till thy craft found a way for thee forth from out the cave, where thou thoughtest to die.”
― Homer, The Odyssey

“Here we are watching them, as usual from below, we see them like big, strong columns topped by small, chattering projections—their heads. Their feet mechanically crush the forest litter, snap the small plants, tear up the moss, and squash the tiny bodies of insects that have failed to heed the vibrations heralding imminent annihilation. For a short while after they pass, beneath the forest floor the mushroom spawn quivers, that vast, immense, motherly structure transmits information to itself—where the intruders are, and in which direction they are bending their steps.”
― Olga Tokarczuk, The Empusium: A Health Resort Horror Story