Manara

“الموت الذي يقتل الحياة بالخوف حتى قبل أن يجيء. لو رُدَّ إلى الحياة لصاح بكل رجل: لا تخف! الخوف لا يمنع من الموت ولكنه يمنع من الحياة. ولستم يا أهل حارتنا أحياء ولن تتاح لكما الحياة ما دمتم تخافون الموت.”
― نجيب محفوظ, أولاد حارتنا

“Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face.

Hello, you who made the morning

and spread it over the fields

and into the faces of the tulips

and the nodding morning glories,

and into the windows of, even, the

miserable and the crotchety –



best preacher that ever was,

dear star, that just happens

to be where you are in the universe

to keep us from ever-darkness,

to ease us with warm touching,

to hold us in the great hands of light –

good morning, good morning, good morning.



Watch, now, how I start the day

in happiness, in kindness.”
― Mary Oliver

“If I were dead and buried And I heard your voice, Beneath the sod My heart of dust Would still rejoice.”
― Dalton Trumbo

“I want to love somebody because I want to be loved. In a rabbit-fear I may hurl myself under the wheels of the car because the lights terrify me, and under the dark blind death of the wheels I will be safe. I am very tired, very banal, very confused. I do not know who I am tonight. I wanted to walk until I dropped and not complete the inevitable circle of coming home. I have lived in boxes above, below, and down the hall from girls who think hard, feel similarly, and long companionably, and I have not bothered to cultivate them because I did not want to, could not, sacrifice the time. People know who I am, and the harder I try to know who they are, the more I forget their names - I want to be alone, and yet there are times when the liquid eye and the cognizant grin of a small monkey would send me into a crying fit of brotherly love. I work and think alone. I live with people, and act. I love and cherish both. If I knew now what I wanted I would know when I saw it, who he was.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath