Astrid Halder

“Tell a wise person, or else keep silent,
because the mass man will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you,
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher love-making
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter.
Now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“It is a longing so intense that it creates what it desires, it cannot endure any touch of correction; it is, as I say, unspeakable.”
― Shirley Jackson, The Sundial

“If a shred of integrity fell into your soul, it would die a very lonely death.”
― Jasper Fforde, The Song of the Quarkbeast

“A man who grows that much hair,' critics were fond of saying, 'must have a lot to hide.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2061: Odyssey Three